Production tracking: a new (unofficial) source to watch
June 15, 2010
Snapshot only, obviously.
A source, a source, my kingdom for a source. You might have noticed the lack of activity on the Pandorapress roadmap of late; time & sanity constraints mean that it’s probably going to stay at the current “everything is in progress” status, and updated with major production milestones. Thankfully some more community help has stepped up to the plate; namely a mysterious forum signup called “pandoraproduction”. He/she has thrown together a little site which collates all known information into a neat graphic like the one above.
Note that it is not an official source, merely the best effort of the community to paint a picture (literally) based on OP Team posts. Updates, tips and fact corrections can be sent to the provided email address.
pandoraproduction.comze.com | Discussion
(Note: The free web hosting provider manually reviews all updates before they go live, so you will occasionally a “review pending” type message.)
Thanks for that, it’s mostly stuff we’d already know. I do appreciate the insight that the GBAX is only at 300 units of its own count. I’m still hoping to be before 500 with them. Fingers crossed for this week or next then…
Hey, Gruso. Maybe you can explain this to me; I don’t feel like opening the can of worms on the forums.
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?/topic/54366-ive-canceled/page__st__60__p__874912&#entry874912
Specifically, ED writes “We have 1000 cases and (so far) 800 boards. That’s something we know, since we always know the amount of how many boards they ship us.”
Where did this 800 come from? They had 700 before the cases, and (many) of those were built and assembled. There were supposed to have another 800 (or so) boards delivered some time last week (or possibly even the week before), which we never got notice about (so possibly didn’t happen).
Now there’s a magical 800 somewhere. What gives? Thanks.
probably the 105 initial test run before mass-production plus the 700 in the 1st official mass-produced board batch. 105+700 = 805 = ~800. Where did I get the 105? Here –> http://openpandora.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98&Itemid=13&lang=en . *sigh*
Ahh, that’s a good guess; I’d forgotten about those 105, though thought they’d been included in the initial 700 that needed the resistor mod. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t answer the question of the missing board shipment, but I doubt anyone here knows the answer to that.
Maybe they let the Texas company delay sending the boards to try out some more things (or save on shipping) since the case company is taking so long. Sound familiar to anyone? *cough*
Are we talking about those previous’ revision 105 boards which were stress tested…
I wonder what he would say this year
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uts_7iQGpo
I honestly don’t know, and this is why I stopped trying to give regular updates. The “700″ figure is one we’ve based a lot of assumptions on. We were told MWeston had to do the wifi mod on 700 boards, but were we specifically told that only 700 turned up in the first shipment? I don’t even remember. Maybe there were 800. Or maybe ED is referring to an additional 800 that have turned up from Texas. (In which case, there would be 200 boards of the original 700 supposedly unaccounted for, if only 500 Pandoras have shipped. Spare stock? A few DOAs? None of our business? A bit of each maybe).
I’m not suggesting there’s any misinformation on OPT’s part, I’ve just grown weary of trying to extrapolate numbers, reporting them, then retracting them again. So I stopped. And I’m very grateful that someone else has stepped in to do it!
[edit] Good point on the 105.
Ahh, that explains why there have been less posts from you about such things lately (not implying blame, just the observation). A completely understandable decision. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I at least greatly appreciated them when they came, even with potential mistakes (everything in this project has to be taken with a grain of salt).
I, however, will go so far as to suggest willful misinformation (or at least intentional lack thereof) from OPT. I don’t blame ED for not knowing all of the details, though he should at least know how many he’s shipped, or how many he’s been sent.
On the other hand, I cannot believe that Craig doesn’t have this information. Saved for repairs, maybe not, but I can’t believe that they’re not keeping track of how many are broken, only have one nub working, have been RMAed, or at the very least send out to customers (Jaqueline should at be able to find this trivially by searching through email).
If things were going well, I think they’d be all over telling us this information. Which leaves us with the obvious alternative. My personal theory is that there are a lot more members of the one-nub club, or possibly even that more one-nub models exist than people willing to take one. That could explain why there seem to be fewer shipped than there should be, and could also be reason for silence. But time will tell.
They must have performed an autopsy on a few of the (non-centering, grinding) nubs that failed. I’d be curious (or more specifically, reassured) to hear whether a cause has been identified.
Well I should have two in the mail… I have not received an email yet but couldn’t stand it and asked and was told I am in the 400 to 500, so the complete first 500 are not shipped, I hope.
The catch here is that there is more than one “queue”. Most people getting their queue positions (which are very approximate) are getting them from GBAX (openpandorasales@gmail). But GBAX is only handling about 75% of Pandoras – the others go to ED and Fatih’s stores which have their own much smaller queue. So it’s easily possible that they have shipped 500 in total, yet people 400-500 in the GBAX queue have not received theirs yet.
For the record Craig said he was shipping another 100 yesterday.
Ah, so that means I’m last in line in the “GBAX” queue, not last in line in the “other” queue.
*sigh*
I used GBAX so would that mean good things?
I am going to have it a long time. I hope OpenPandora continues this product line. I’ll keep buying them.
>> I used GBAX so would that mean good things?
No. Looking at the percentages, it means that the smaller non-GBAX queues will be completely shipped by the time they’re halfway through the GBAX queue.
Of course, that only applies if they keep dividing the finished units by the ratios seen so far. To make them finish dead-even, 75% of the production run should be dedicated to the GBAX queue. The graph implies that it’s only getting 60%.
Just wanted to point out: The ratios may still be totally “fair” to the GBAX customers, if the majority of customers in the other queues ordered early.
If they’re trying to be fair about the wait, then I would expect to see the ratios change as they finish delivering to the guys in the other queues that have been in it for the long haul.
Yeah, I know, I am in the second part of the first batch… fuk.
A Donkey! My Kingdom for… a Donkey? =) Thanks!!
the progress. as static as this picture.
So when is mine shi…….. Oh yeah I got it. Had it for a week. Still not use to saying that. Don’t worry guys you will get it before Duke Nukem Forever comes out.
It’s great that someone is trying to make some sense out of all this (miss) information that’s milling about. I feel however that this may be just adding to the general confusion.
I reckon I’ve more chance of seeing Big Foot than my Pandora any time soon………What was that?
I’ve been wondering the last two years how it’s possible that no one from the Pandora team could spend 10 mins a week posting a quick official update in the project’s website.
Delays are understandable (especially in a project where pretty much everything has had a problem or two), but they should show a bit of respect for one thousand people who believed in the project enough to blindly INVEST £200 on the project. I think asking for 10 mins a week isn’t much is it?
I know this is an open project, they aren’t making money of this batch, but they are perfecting the project and learning from the mistakes (thanks to us), so then a second (profitable) batch can be created. I really hope they do, and become famous and all that but please don’t forget about the people who where keen on supporting this project from the very beggining.
Sorry for ranting but sick of begging of a bit of info for more than two years…
Ps. pandorapress, thank you guys for keeping us up to date! You super-rock!
I’m really sorry for ranting but after two years I’m now feeling really mistreated and felt I had to say something. Kind of sad ’cause I’ve been really excited and patient to get the Pandora and to start creating some cool stuff for it…
lol im currently helping myself with a dingoo to kill time.
Hope my pando arrives soon
The lack of decent status from this train wreck is ass.
Looks like more are shipping today, I’ve just got my Dispatch email
Congratulations, hope it’s one of the good ones.
So do I!
Woe to you, oh Earth and Sea.
For Devil sends the Beast with wrath,
because he knows the time is short.
Let him, who hath understanding, reckon the number of the Beast.
For it is a human number.
It’s number is 800… er, 700, er 5- no, wait, I can get this…
Jesus, I LOLed at this.
But seriously, I would be extremely worried if they didn’t have something as simple as a spreadsheet for tracking all pre-orders. And assuming, for the sake of all that is good and tasty, that they did, surely they are checking off the ones they’ve sent to and could therefor filter them out to tell us how many are left.
I’m with Carlos. It’s hard to keep the faith when after this long, you still can’t get a straight answer about something as “xxx people served. Now serving number xxxx …”
Amen.
I am happy that OP is giving info on how many units are built.
This is fair to the people who preordered 18 months ago. I personally don’t need more info than this. Just show us your progress, and leave the excuses and the rest of the debate for the dustbin.
But the point is that OP is *not* giving this information. It’s only the other people in the community who are compiling this from scraps of uncertain information.
And the saga continues… I love the idea of the Pandora – and the nature of its development – but I am seriously glad that my order was canceled over a year ago. Now hearing about the latest stick-in-the-mud – production quality problems – only affirms my decision. I don’t think I’d even touch the 2nd batch with a 10-foot clown pole now.
Perhaps by the time the 3rd batch is ready, it’ll be consumer product quality?!? Of course, by then the new generation of hand-helds will be runing rings around it…
Sigh…
Most people are afraid of hardware being outdated, gamepark has announced a new sucessor of the wiz.
What’s actually keeping pando alive is the keyboard.
Yeah, to me the hardware inside is easier to replace than the periphials like the touch screen, the knobs and the keyboard. Perhaps in a few months Pandora will offer a new, higher power board for the same case at low cost…
damn it, damn it; damn it, damn it;
no email today,
no email tomorrow
I am feeling sorrow.
joe
I am watching world cup like the doods making our pandoras.
On June 16, 1976, 15,000-20,000 students in school uniforms marched in Soweto. Police formed a blockade in front of the students and ordered them to disperse, and when they refused the police released dogs and fired tear gas.
Thank you for mentioning the site on here.
I hope the information I gather will cool temperatures a little on the forums, and hopefully temper expectations.
I have posted updates today: http://www.pandoraproduction.comze.com
So is the current estimate that they won’t even complete the first batch this year ? thats what it is starting to look like
If you look at the production rates of the components, and the build rate, we are looking at about 1000 every 2 months, which means end of first batch is after xmas. That aint so good … I was hoping that once the cases were sorted, they would do, like, 4000 in a month. Seems less and less likely that will happen.
I have added a guesstimate to the PANDORA PRODUCTION PROGRESS bar chart.
If they keep going at the current rate, then unit #4000 will ship on 2nd November 2010.
They may speed up, they may slow down, there may be delays in components.
This calculation is based on average figures, so it’s as fair as it can be with the information to hand.
http://www.pandoraproduction.comze.com
Funny thing is, http://whenisthepandoracoming.wut.bz/ is still correct for many Pandy customers. November is 2 months after August (atm)
I use to read your articleq and that’s grea !!!