PandoraPress

First of all, sorry about the recent downtimes, the WordPress set-up was getting old and unstable and needed a reset every now in a while. Admin atomicthumbs now upgraded to a new version (thanks!), so those problems are hopefully a thing of the past.

In the meantime we missed two blog posts by EvilDragon, which I will try to summarize in the following. You can find the full quotes after the break.
The preparation for the prototype run are full steam ahead, the parts being held back at CC’s finally passed customs and are on their way to a new destination: GC. Other parts needed for the mass production run are on their way, too and should arrive over Christmas and New Year. With them there should be enough for the first run of 1000 Pandoras.
He also got a sample of the new version of the case, which should prevent the cracks users have been reporting – another 4000 will be ordered of those, they will be used when he runs out of the remaining ones (Source).
Concerning TV-out cables he is still waiting for a quotation and a sample before New Year, so fingers crossed on that.

Sadly this was followed by some bad news, some less, but still bad news and some very bad news.
First of all the RAM did not arrive as ordered, so ED had to get a quick replacement, which will arrive Friday or Monday pushing the prototype run back to that date.
Loading the machines with the parts (minus RAM) was still done and during that GC noticed that the Pick and Place files (data telling the machine which parts got on on which position) were incompatible, MWeston is contacted to make some slight (and easy) changes to them.
This quick line of communication is also a nice change as EvilDragon is now in direct contact with all necessary people and information has not travel over multiple stations (like it did before).

Last there is the mentioned very bad news, which is not production related:
A member of the community, jonai, has been murdered a few weeks ago. He was active on the German and gp32x.com boards as well as in ICQ contact with EvilDragon.
His death was cruel and inhuman and sadly the police has no clue so far, in case you knew him closely and might have important information contact EvilDragon who is in contact with the police about this.
My sincere condolences to the family and friends of the victim. Let’s think about him for a minute.

Whew, finally.
The parts from CC have passed customs and will arrive tomorrow at Global Components.
All the other parts for the prototype run are already there, so we’re planning to do the prototype run on Thursday.
This will be an exciting day for me – hopefully, we’ll be able to produce working Pandora boards.

I will do some hardcore tests with some of the working PCBs then, like running N64 emulation overclocked with full brightness for 48 hours during the weekend, to see that everything works stable.
Once that has happened, it’s time to order the PCBs for the mass production run!

Speaking of the mass production:
With the parts that arrive from CC, we’ve got most of the TI parts for 2000 Pandoras ready.
4000 nubs (for 2000 Pandoras) will be ready on December 30th, 1000 WiFi modules will ship on January 10th.
The RAM will ship about christmas.
All other parts are already here.
So we’ve got everything needed for the mass production PCB run.

And the rest of the parts needed for Pandoras?
Well, I bought off the remaining cases, batteries, keymats, etc. from Craig, which should be enough for the first 1000 units (well, actually 4000 batteries are more than enough).
Hopefully, he’ll ship them within the next days so I’ve got them here on Friday.

I’ll also get a new sample of the revised case (which hopefully will prevent some annoying cracks from appearing) from DSW within the next days.
Then it’s time to order the next 4000 cases as well.

I still got 1200 LCD cables left, so it’s also time getting more LCD Cables for February / March.

I still have to buy some LCDs and AC Adaptors for the first run, but we’re working on that.
I don’t know how many LCDs Craig will include in the package to me, so I don’t know how many I need to buy for Batch 1.

And the TV Out Cables? Well, still waiting for a quotation and hopefully a sample before the end of the year.
Chinese New Year is in January, so we’ll hope we have done most of that before that.

I’ll keep you posted

Source

In another post in the thread ED also explains some simple (not entirely accurate) calculations about the money needed to start production runs. This also shows how Premium Pandoras actually help to get more unit of one batch out to regular customers waiting in line (granted the production is running smooth, which it did not in the past causing this idea to fail).

[...]Basically, it’s like this:

When the first 1000 have been produced, the goal is to gain enough money for the next 1000.
This money either comes from sales to new customers, premium upgrades, investors, etc.

However, there are some other aspects: Some parts cannot be bought in small quantities, so I need to buy 4000 at once. And there are some refunds as well.

So I have no idea how many need to be sold to new users and how many will go to old preorders from the first batch right now.
However, half of these remaining units will go to Craig, half of the remaining units to my customers.

BTW: If two customers upgrade to Premium, enough money is made to send one more unit to an early preorderer as well.

So here’s an example:

Let’s assume, producing the next 1000 Pandoras would cost 250,000 EUR.
With a sales price of 375 EUR, 667 of the first 1000 Pandoras would have to be sold to new customers to have the needed amount of money.
The remaining 300 would split up to old preorderes.

If there’s 30,000 EUR from investments left, we’d only need to sell 586 Pandoras to new customers.
And if 100 of the remaining preorders would go Premium, only 400 Pandoras would need to go to new customers, meaning that 600 would go to old customers.

It’s a pretty complex calculation I’ve got there… it’s more complex than I mentioned here, as USD / EUR conversion also needs to be included, etc.

Source

Whew – what a day.

Prototype production run
It started with some bad news: Micron didn’t deliver the samples of the RAM as promised (should’ve been delivered last week), and without the RAM, we couldn’t do the prototype run.
So both Global Components and me had our hands full to organize that RAM chip to be able to do the prototype run.
And we managed to get some.
Global Components found a distributor in US who had some parts left and ordered them express. They should arrive on Friday, latest Monday.
Well, and I contacted Nikolaus from the GTA04 team – they are using the same memory as we are and I know their production run starts early next week as well.
He has some spare RAM chips for us – so they’re being picked up tomorrow morning (the company where he is doing the production isn’t that far away, thankfully).
The parts from Texas have arrived at EBV / AVNet (the distributor) in the meantime and will be delivered tomorrow morning between 9 and 10 am at GC as well.
I think AVNet already checked the parts for completeness, so we should have all we need tomorrow.

As programming and loading the machines with parts takes quite a while (about 8 hours), the production run itself has been rescheduled for Friday, but preparing and loading will happen tomorrow.
My contact from Global Components will visit me tonight to grab some of the PCBs from GC, as that will speed up the programming and creating the solder profile.
(It’s 8pm here, and it’s a 1 hour drive, so I think it’s pretty awesome he does that!).

So, whew, this was one fast solution. It did cost us some nerves, but we managed to get it done so far.

Even more bad news

While this caused me quite some stress today, it wasn’t the worst message I received.
The worst message I received today was from an ICQ contact.
One of our fellow Pandora community members has been murdered a few weeks ago.
He already had a GP2X and was one of the very first preorderers from Germany.
He didn’t have an account at these boards, but he was known as jonai on the German boards and on GP32x.com.

The (german) article about his death can be found here.

So, why am I posting this?
Not just because it makes me very sad – but also because the police is currently looking for clues to find out who did it.
While I am supporting them as good as I can, I didn’t have much contact with him.

But maybe someone from the community was in close contact with him or has any other information where he can help out?
Please do contact me in case you might have some information, as I’m in contact with the police in Leipzig already to try to help them.

Thanks.

Let’s think about him for a minute. As far as I was in contact with him, he was a very nice and helpful person. And it’s always a loss seeing someone leave us early.
Especially if it was such a horryfing death like this.

Source

Well, as I’m now directly in contact with the production company, I can give you these details
Was a bit hard before, when information had to be passed from Michael to Craig and / or me, etc.

Had some more phonecalls and now know what the issue is:

There are different ways exporting Pick & Place files from your CAD program.
What MWeston exported is that the coordinates for each part defines where Pin 1 of that part is and it defines the orientation.
Usually, this is enough to define the exact location of each part.

HOWEVER: Not with the machine GC uses.
The reason is simple: The machine doesn’t pick up the part at Pin 1 and places it onto the PCB, it picks up the part in the CENTER and places it on the PCB.
It doesn’t know the size of the part, so it doesn’t know where Pin 1 is located.
(Some machines have databases with parts and sizes, but as there are so many custom parts nowadays, a lot of machines don’t have one).

The solution should be pretty simple:
MWeston needs to load up the PCB design file and export the Pick & Place file with the setting that the coordinates should be in the center of each part.
That’s it.
It’s not a big deal, but the timezone is our enemy

I don’t care about 2 – 3 days delay in the prototype run – however, the bare PCBs are being produced in China (like most PCBs worldwide), and Chinese New Year is approaching in January.
We need to get the PCBs before Chinese New Year, otherwise the production will start early February (and I WANT to have them out in January )

Global Components is in good contact with that company. Most (if not all) of their PCBs are being produced there. They know this is time critical and urgent, so they are discussing with them about this, telling them that they should reserve a production slot before CNY.

I’ll keep posting here whenever I get some news.
Right now, I’m both happy and sad at the same time… happy that all the parts from Texas arrived and the memory chips arrived (so everything needed is here) and sad that we are still missing two simple text files

Source