Pandora News - Contracts sent out, parts (hopefully) moving in (2011-10-26)

While I don't really have much time lately, I still feel I need to let you know what happened lately.

1. Meeting with EBV (part distributor)

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a meeting with EBV, one of the biggest part distributors worldwide. We buy (and bought) all TI parts from them.
And their headquarters is only 80km away from me, which is great http://boards.openpandora.org/public...fault/wink.png

I had the meeting for two reasons:
First, they wanted to know what the Pandora is all about (they only knew it's an embedded Linux device). And second, they help me to move the parts from Texas to Germany.

Some background information:
Batch 2 was planned to happen right after Batch 1 in Texas at CircuitCo... the plan was to start in February / March (yes, 2011...)
We all know this didn't work out - however: the needed TI parts for Batch 2 had already been delivered by EBV to Texas.
So we have these parts lying in Texas but now we need them in Germany...
All we need to do is pack them into boxes and send them to Germany... sounds easy, eh?
Well, nope.
It's crazy complicate... and here's why:
1) The parts are partly owned by OpenPandora Ltd. and partly still owned by EBV.
2) Those parts need to go from a third party company (CC) to another third party company (GC).
3) Well... now try to fill out the documents needed to get these parts through customs. Sounds like fun, right?

Dealing with custom documents if you're not experienced isn't easy. However, dealing with such a complicated case is hard ever IF you have experience with customs.
Luckily, EBV has agreed to prepare the documents for me - so we won't have any custom issues when moving them to Germany.
I am really thankful about that http://boards.openpandora.org/public...ault/smile.png It saves me a lot of energy and time.

Some funny side-story:
You might know I've got an arcade machine in my office. When the two guys from EBV visited me, one of them immediately saw the machine and asked if it has real boards or some MAME emulation inside it.
"Heck - he seems to know something about the retro-gaming scene", I thought.
And yep, it's true: He collects pinball machines and likes retro gamings... well, as said, they didn't know what you can do with the Pandora. It was a GREAT background to start explaining the Pandora to them... http://boards.openpandora.org/public...ault/smile.png


2. Contracts...

Whew, I sent out a bit over 30 loan agreements, adding up to a total of about 380K EUR now!
That's some great amount to get the Pandora produced in Germany!
So within the next days, more and more money should appear on my account.
We're still perfectly within our planned timeframe, no delays so far http://boards.openpandora.org/public...ault/smile.png


3. TV Out Cables

As promised, as soon as I got the investment capital, I'll order the TV Out cables.
I requested an updated quotation and as soon as I get it, the order will be placed.
Finally http://boards.openpandora.org/public...ault/smile.png


4. Future Plans

As soon as I'm finished organizing everything, I'll finish the RMAs I got and try to fix boards from CC.
Well, and to reply to all my eMails... a big sorry to everyone who is waiting for his RMA unit or for a reply.
I'm getting help with office work from November on, so things will improve here.

Of course, for November / December, some more promotion is planned as well so that we can really sell all the Pandoras we're producing.

When delivery finally starts, I want to concentrate on software development (OS, apps and games) and support different projects as good as possible.

I'll also try to achieve that ARM Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Arch, etc. will officially support the Pandora as well (with bootable images from SD Cards).
A lot can be done to improve the Pandora, and don't want to miss any opportunities here.
There's a reason that it is open: So that EVERY user can do what HE wants - so the more options there are, the better.

So much for today, more informations as soon as I get them http://boards.openpandora.org/public...ault/smile.png

http://boards.openpandora.org/index....in-2011-10-26/