De Pandora Handheld #4

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Op maandag 16 mei 2011 21:09 schreef Bosbeetle het volgende:
Dit is ook een gaaf spel ik ben er alleen niet zo goed in.

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Op woensdag 25 mei 2011 16:16 schreef Maanvis het volgende:
wanneer wordt ie goedkoper?

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Op dinsdag 31 mei 2011 21:16 schreef o.us het volgende:
Shit, waar kan ik dit krijgen?

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Op woensdag 1 juni 2011 00:04 schreef kingmob het volgende:
Wat een meesterlijk apparaat, hoe kan ik hier nog nooit van gehoord hebben
Jammer van de prijs, maar mooi initiatief. Gebruikt iemand hem toevallig ook om zijn xbmc media center aan te sturen? Dat zou mij namelijk over de streep trekken als dat goed wordt ondersteund

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Op woensdag 1 juni 2011 00:09 schreef Bosbeetle het volgende:

[..]

Ik heb hem daar niet voor gebruikt maar ik kan je wel zeggen dat xbmc er zelf naar geport is, hij kan dus gewoon zelf xbmc draaien

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Op woensdag 1 juni 2011 00:11 schreef kingmob het volgende:

[..]

Dat is nogal nutteloos alleen. De vraag is of er een remote skin voor bestaat of dat je alleen de webinterfaces kan gebruiken. Voor de ipad en iphone zijn er bijvoorbeeld hele goede apps.

XBMC on Pandora test

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Op maandag 6 juni 2011 22:19 schreef Punnik het volgende:
idd een tijdje aan de lader , maar ook weer niet extreem lang.

jammer idd dat die hotfix te laat komt

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Op dinsdag 7 juni 2011 10:27 schreef Bunta-Fujiwara het volgende:
Pfff ik zat te denken om zo'n ding te kopen maar ik zie er vanaf. Teveel problemen kwa bouw kwaliteit zie ik.....

Ik wacht wel tot al die ziektes eruit zijn. Die accu ziet er overigens niet echt degelijk uit....

Lijkt wel een reep chocolade.

Ik hou het wel even bij mijn Caanoo.

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Op dinsdag 7 juni 2011 16:39 schreef Punnik het volgende:
ik had ook 1 van de eersten , geloof iets van nummer 58 ofzo..... daarna zijn ze al een stuk beter gebouwd inderdaad , maar deze moet denk ik maar even worden omgeruilt ja :S

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Op maandag 13 juni 2011 13:40 schreef Punnik het volgende:
die van mij is opgestuurd en aangekomen yeah !!
nu wachten totdat ze weer 1 terug sturen .......

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Op woensdag 13 juli 2011 00:00 schreef Gambolputty het volgende:
..én maar weer ff volgen

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As you might have read on the boards, Batch 2 will NOT be produced by CircuitCo anymore.
I am currently contacting companies in Germany to get some quotations.
More about that in the next blog entry.

First, I’ll try to explain the reasons for that move and summarize everything that happened during
the last few months.

January / February: Production resumes

As you might remember, CircuitCo promised us to finish the full 4000 PCB population until the end of last year, so that we had fully working PCBs and only the new nubs would have to be soldered onto them after that.
That would have been a cool thing, as it would’ve meant that Batch 1 would’ve been finished in January / February.
Well, as most of you might know, this hasn’t happened.
Then a new guy had been employed by CC. His job was to do quality management and to oversee the Pandora production.
We got weekly status updates at first, which was great!
He analyzed the bottlenecks, all issues, etc.
While the production speed he told us was slower than we had hoped, at least we now knew what was going on, what issues there were to be solved and we got realistic sounding quantity numbers.

This worked well for the next few months. They regularly sent new boards and while quite a few had some issues, we could continue shipping and send back the non-working boards for repairs.

By selling some units as Premium Pandoras, we could cope with the monthly costs we had as well as with any refunds or money needed for RMAs.

May / June: WiFi issues occur

Then, as you might also know, a LOT of boards of a complete batch had WiFi issues.
Production then came to a halt, we sent these boards back to have them fixed and I created four new testing rigs including a new testing SD Card (with notaz’ help) which tests almost anything the Pandora can do.
They can also run individual tests, so they can work on a PCB with broken WiFi for example and only run the WiFi test.

June / July: Communication gets worse again

That’s when communication and our faith in CC started to break down again.
While at first we got a few quick replies regarding the testing SD Card, we didn’t get a status update for weeks, even though we were asking for that once a day.
Two weeks after they got the new testing setup, they started to work on WiFi… 1,5 weeks later they had a problem with one of the tests. I had a bug in the script that prevented one test from working.
But it took CC 1,5 weeks to realize that. It sure felt like they haven’t done anything within that time…

What’s going on right now with CC?

We are missing about 1000 PCBs from batch 1, and it seems the only ones they have left are boards with issues they need to fix.
Most of these boards had aged bare PCBs. When PCBs are lying around for a year without being populated, they start oxidating – which had happened here. This leads to all kind of issues, as parts don’t
solder properly anymore. Well, if they HAD populated the PCBs last year like the promised us they would, this wouldn’t have happened…
(Note to fearful Pandora owners: The oxidation no problem if your board is already populated, it won’t stop working suddenly. Once the parts are on the board, they have proper contact and won’t fail)
Anyways, they agreed to pay for the new parts needed to fix those PCBs with issues.
They also mentioned they will fix 125+ boards per week, we’ll see if that will work out. But they told us they will finish Batch 1.

Our conclusion?

Well, we personally aren’t pleased with how CC handled the situation. We were given false promises, they didn’t keep any deadlines, the number of boards with issues that need to be fixed before
we can ship them is way too high and communication was really lacking.
This caused our reputation to shrink as well, as we couldn’t keep any deadlines either and it seemed we were telling lies and delaying things.

This is what we experienced, maybe we were just unlucky and other companies have no such issues with CC?
Maybe the Pandora was too complicated to build after all?
Who knows?
Some guy on the BeagleBoard mailing list also wrote he’s been waiting three weeks for a reply from CC, so it at least seems we’re not the only ones.

On thing that is without excuse for us is the lack of communication, the missing status updates as well as the non-kept promises and deadlines.
Issues can ALWAYS occur, but we’d love to know about them, so we can fix them together asap.

As you probably know, the iControlPad is also produced by us. We chose a company in Germany. They didn’t miss a single deadline and each time there was an issue or a question, they contacted us right away.
This was a very pleasant experience.

This does mean that Batch 2 will NOT be produced by CircuitCo. We are now looking into various companies within Europe and should have some quotations within a few weeks.
If you know of any company who can do PoP (Package on Package population) and is reliable (some of you might be involved with some electronics company as well), feel free to contact me.
The more quotations we get, the better

This is a HUGE task we’re doing here. I’ve personally taken the task to work on that. It will cost me a lot of time, energy and sleep – but I’m sure, with your help and support, I can do that!

Next blog post (with some more updates Batch 2 production) coming later today.

Source

The mentioned second blog post:

As promised, here is another blog entry, this time mainly focussing on Batch 2 and the future production.

Yesterday evening, I had a meeting with the guys behind the OpenMoko GTA04.
They have nothing to do with the previous OpenMoko hardware development, they basically built an OMAP3-PCB which fits into the OpenMoko shell.
Their PCB has similar production specs (same SoC, 8 layers, etc.) as ours, they basically live round the corner and they offered to help me (thanks a lot!)
They already have some prototype boards running (looks like a nice Linux-geek-phone to me, if you want to check it out, go to their website), which means they already found a company that can handle the production.

The meeting I had with them yesterday was a very promising one. Nikolaus, the main guy behind the GTA04, knows a lot more about PCB production than we do and therefore gave me some
contacts to some companies as well as some insider tips.

We also chatted about our experiences with CircuitCo and Nikolaus had some ideas why we had so many different issues with boards.
Additionally, he told me, that normally a proper production run should have a failure rate of about 3%. And from those 3%, some PCBs are fixable.
So far, CC had a failure rate of about 20% (even some more, if I count the ones I fixed because some parts like the volume wheel simply weren’t properly soldered).
Not very impressive, so I’m even more eager now to found suitable partners.

Michael Weston sent me the latest gerber files and BoM (Bill of Materials, basically a big list of all needed components) last week.

So I’m now prepared to approach some companies and get the thing rolling properly!
If, however, you know some companies who are reliable and can do such productions as well (and which are at least located in Europe, Germany would be even better), feel free to contact me!
The more quotations I get, the more choices I have and the more I can discuss about the prices with some companies.

Let’s get this thing going!

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You're all waiting for some more news, and yes, I can give you some.

It seems like CircuitCo is finally moving forward. They seem to come along well with my new tester and had success in fixing the boards that have issues.
Should finally be time to expect a new shipment from them, huzzah!

I also got a few positive responses from various companies in Germany.
Two from Munich, which is what I prefer, since I can easily visit them there (not far away).
They are all interested in producing the Pandora PCB and are now working on a quotation.

I will probably visit them next week.
The quotation will take a while (about 3 weeks, as the Pandora is no easy board), but we rather spend our time before production and have a rocking fast and stable production later than experiencing the same problems we had with CC...

As usual, I'll keep you informed. When I visit them, I'll try to make some pictures as well

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Op dinsdag 26 juli 2011 19:09 schreef The_Tankgirl het volgende:
Hey BB
Oehh.. android Heb een maandje geleden een tablet met android gekregen, wat is dat toch een super OS
Ik heb mijn pandora een paar maanden geleden als back-up gebruikt bij het instellen van een netwerk/laptop. Laptop was in het pools dus dan is het wel handig om even een vertaling te googlen
En de pandora past in mijn handtas
Mypaint werkt trouwens super erop

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If you followed the recent threads you knew that I was visiting a company today which would be a good candidate to produce Batch 2 (and hopefully many more later batches) of the Pandora.

Doing something like this is always exciting.

Can the company produce the boards?
Do they want to do the job?
Can they do it for a good price?
Will they help you with your project? Or simply do what you tell them to do?
Are they friendly, open and honest?

There's so many stuff swirling around in your head before visiting a company... the future of the Pandora depends on finding the right partner.

Well, I'm pretty sure you all want to know how it went today, right?

Right.

The company I paid a visit today is called Global Components and is located in Oberhaching, near Munich. It's about 90km away from me, so it's not too far and I can easily visit them whenever I need.
I arrived at about 11:10am.
Do you know the rare feeling when you enter a building and just know you've come to the right place?

Well, I had that feeling today. I had a real nice meeting and was greeted heartily.
Everyone I've seen there was motivated, they have a great working atmosphere in there.
For me, this is a very good and important sign. It's always a sign of high quality.

The meeting was very assuring.
First I was given a nice company tour. They got high-quality machines in every room, it looks very organized and tidy. I also saw some boards from current production runs and they use even smaller SMD parts than the Pandora.
From what I've seen, I'm pretty sure they can easily produce our boards, and that's one of the most important things!
I brought some pictures with me. Just a little insight into the whole company. I'm happy that i'm allowed to make a movie of the birth of a Pandora board as soon as production starts.

As I had a Pandora PCB with me, their main technician took a look at it. He explained me some things I always wanted to know (like how PoP is being done and how the full population process works, etc.).
He also suggested a solution to place the shoulder buttons way better so we won't have manually fix the plastic with some buttons.

All in all, things looked pretty good for me. They agreed that they want to produce the PCBs
I'm now awaiting a quotation from them (this will take a few weeks), then we'll need to check on the leadtime of the parts and while waiting for those, the production will be set up.
This surely will all take a while. There's no company that can just get the gerber files and start with the production the next day.
The PCBs will take a few weeks to produce, the parts have a certain leadtime and the machine also needs to be setup and programmed.
However, once this is done, PCBs will be finished very fast. I'll get the amount of Pandora PCBs they can produce per week within the next weeks.

Oh, on a side note they mentioned that they would try to help us fix boards with issues as well, in case CC doesn't really move forward here.
I'll send them a few ones of them over, so that they can check if a repair is possible and much it would cost. So if CC doesn't do much, we might move the repairs of the remaining boards of Batch 1 to Germany as well.

Parts, setup, etc. need to be paid upfront, so this is another issue we need to take care of. CC did cost us a lot of money, and we still don't know how fast they'll send us more boards - there still are 1000 missing!
The iControlPad helps us earning money as well, which is great, but the faster we have the total amount of needed money available, the faster the production can start.
That's why I'm also checking for additional solutions to raise money faster. I'll keep you informed on that!
If anyone knows someone who'd like to support us, get in contact with me! I'm sure we can make some good deal here.

Well, anyways, it seems we found a new company that can do the production!
I'm very happy about that, as you never can be sure before visiting them.

The next steps for now are:

* Get a quotation from them, check what parts are needed and how fast
* Make a proper new business plan (including total costs, estimated times, etc.)
* Make sure to have money ready when payments are due
* Try to squeeze as many working boards out of CC as possible

Oh, and of course (as soon as got the top priority things done):

* Continue to work on HotFix 6
* Update the website (REAAAALLY needed!)
* Fix the remaining RMAs
* Check the remaining PCBs I got here

I'll let you know any further steps that happen, as usual

If you want to see the pictures I took at the company, click here.

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Op vrijdag 29 juli 2011 12:17 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Samenvatting?

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Op vrijdag 29 juli 2011 12:33 schreef Notorious_Roy het volgende:
Okay, dus ik kan nog steeds geen Pandora zomaar bestellen via impulsaankoop. Zonde

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Firstly, I apologize to everyone who is waiting for eMail replies, repaired Pandoras or similar from me.
The business plan and the planning of the production in Germany did eat most of my time, so I'm way behind with emails and Pandora repairs!
It's the most important thing right now. Once the business plan is finished (probably early next week), it's time to find investors to get all the money needed and then it's time to sign the offer with Global Components.

Once that's done, the move to a german production company will finally have started and take a while. That's when I will have a lot more time to work on mails, Hotfix 6 and repairing Pandoras.

Even if some won't believe it: I'm only human. Yes, really

Now, time for some news, isn't it?

1. Quotation from Global Components

I got the final quotation yesterday. As expected, it's more expensive than CircuitCo (Germany is ALWAYS more expensive), but I'm pretty content with it.
As the price is calculated on the time that is needed for production, I also got a first estimation of how fast the production can happen.

Basically, calculating the estimated time is simple:

The main population is being done by a machine.
It is known, how many parts per minute the machine can place on the boards. So based on the amount of parts that are on a Pandora board, the time can be calculated.

First you load all the needed reels with the parts into the machine. Depending on how many different parts you have, this takes a while.
For the Pandora, this actually takes a full working day (8 hours!).

Then the machine automatically populates the PCBs. This happens in three steps for the Pandora: Both sides need to be populated and the RAM needs to be put PoP (package on package) on the OMAP.
It takes 22 hours to populate 1000 PCBs (approx. every 1,5 minutes one PCB is fully populated).
After that, they go into the oven so that the parts are baked onto the PCB. And that's it.

So SMD population of 1000 boards takes about 30 hours. That is about a week. Nice

After that, there's manual soldering to be done. Nubs, Volume wheels. And testing. Each test takes 4 minutes.
Since they have multiple people working on this, it will be another 30 hours.
However, that can be done while the population goes on.

So basically, they could theoretically produce 1000 boards within two weeks.

Right now, I'm planning with 1000 boards each month for a start. That should be realistic. And better be safe than sorry... something we learnt the hard way.

So, while production speed actually seems to be pretty fast, this does not mean that we'll have thousands of Pandoras soon.
The machine needs to be programmed, bare PCBs need to be prepared and a prototype testing run needs to be done (though if that one goes without issues, the real production can start right away).
And: It won't happen before the order is signed - and therefore, money is needed.

Which leads us to the next point...


2. Investors for OpenPandora GmbH welcome

To move the production to Germany, money is needed.
There were quite a few refunds lately and CircuitCo delivering boards at a crawling speed is not helping much either.
And we need to make sure there's also money there when more people want to get a refund before the Pandoras are finished!

Of course, we could try to fund it with iControlPad sales at some time - but who knows how long that would need.
Aditionally, we don't just want to deliver all remaining preorders but have the Pandora produced at a regular basis so future users can buy them without having to wait.
Production needs to become reliable and steady.

That's the reason I've been working on a business plan for the last weeks: It actually is a pretty accurate calculation of the costs and time needed.
Once all preorders are fullfilled, there can be made some money from it. I discussed this with my tax counsellor (who is experienced with stuff like this) and she thinks it should certainly be possible to get some big investor.

I prefer trusted community members and known Pandora users. You can be sure notch will be one of the very first to receive a copy of the business plan!
Of course, anyone here from the boards can also help us out with some investments.
We need to set a minimum amount though, otherwise it will be way too much paperwork. The minimum amount should be something like 10.000 EUR.

If everything goes according to the plan, the invested money would be fully refinanced next year May and from then on, it's time to make money with the Pandora.

This should be a very interesting opportunity for every investor. You can be sure my main goal in September will be to find an investor and sign the order for the production as soon as possible.

If you are seriously interested in investing money or do know someone who would be interested, get in touch with me (via PM or eMail). I'll send you a copy of the business plan as well as soon as it's finished.

One thing is sure: I'll only accept silent investors. That is: Investors who get their share of profit each year, but are not involved in any decisions. We all want to keep the Pandora the way it is!

I'm happy to share the success of the Pandora with anyone, who helps to make the Pandora successful


3. Preorder time!

What? Again?
Are you kidding me?
You want more money from us before you even delivered the units?

Well... no.
Yes, there will be another time to place a preorder soon.
But no: You won't need to pay any money upfront.

As said, we really NEED to move away from paid preorders.
So what's the reason we want more preorders then?

Easy. Basically, there are two reasons:

1. I get so many eMails from people who want to order the Pandora. A preorder makes sense
2. The more preorders we get, the more easy it is to find an investor! Just imagine you can tell an investor "Hey, I already got way more customers than I need!"... this will certainly help a lot.

I will start taking preorders probably the end of next week.
If you are interested in a second unit or know anyone who would love to get a Pandora: Let them know!
The more orders we get, the better. And there is no risk involved - well, except for that you will have to buy a Pandora once it's finished.


4. What about CircuitCo?

They are still repairing the remaining boards. That takes some time.
They shipped another 50 boards last week.
So there will be some more Pandoras shipped soon, but I personally don't expect them to be able to repair much faster.
That's why I'm currently concentrating on the future Pandora production.


5. Conclusion

In my opinion, things are looking good.
Yes, it surely will take a while until the "German Pandoras" will be finished. I'm happy if we get the first units until November / December, but I can't guarantee anything.
Well, I can guarantee to keep you informed about every step that happens.

First step is to gather enough money to make this happen. But this certainly seems possible. The Pandora will keep alive. I'm sure of that, because as a community, we can achieve everything if we just try to do so

So for everyone who walked with us the long way: Thanks a lot! You really rock!
And to newcomers: The Pandora rocks. That's what so many people who got one tell you. And that's why you can be sure we will do EVERYTHING we're capable of to continue the production!

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Well, just some quick news to tell you that I finished the business plan this weekend and sent it out to interested investors.

Over 40 community members have sent me mails that they are interested in investing - guys, you rock!

I also sent a copy to notch - he was one of the first people to order a Pandora (and waited until he got it), so he might be a potential candidate as well.

I will let you know more details and informations about it soon, as well as the preordering that should start soo