Posts Tagged ‘mweston’
March 3, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Silkscreening looks to be off the table for the first batch. Over to MWeston, who doesn’t mince words:
These cases will not have a silkscreen as that would push delivery out into April and even then Craig worried they would screw it up and stiff us with the cases. The problem is the mold company outsources the work and so they all have to be packaged up carefully, sent to this other company, printed, repackaged carefully and sent back to the mold company to be shipped to Craig with everything else. It could cause as much as another month of delays with the way we should trust them.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged labels, mweston, silkscreening | 98 Comments »
March 1, 2010
Posted by: gruso
It’s set to be Panarchy in the UK in the coming month, as team Pandora descends on a sleepy village in the north of England to finish what they started in Texas. This change of plan has come about following an exorbitant quote from the factory in Texas (think six figures) to case up the first batch of Pandoras. It seems that MWeston’s stringent assembly procedures were a little daunting for the Texans, who expressed their concern with zeroes. So MWeston sent the procedures to Craig instead, who just happens to own suitable premises for the job.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged assembly, craigix, evildragon, fatih, mweston, Shipping | 91 Comments »
February 17, 2010
Posted by: atomicthumbs
MWeston’s Photobucket account has revealed a new picture: the Rev 5a Pandora board. This includes some new solder pads (serial pads near the EXT port, and I2C pads near the wireless chip), and various other thingies.
Update: Never content to leave a question unanswered, pandoratoday.de blogger Screeny dropped Michael Weston a line to ask what this 5th board revision is all about. The reply:
Hi,
There is not much to say. We made 105 rev4 boards. I tweaked a couple things and added a lot more test points, then called it rev5. 
Rev5 is the paying customer’s board, rev4 [was] for testing and for devs to work with.
Michael
In other words, the thousand(s) we know to be in production already are the same revision that we see here.
Source
Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged Board, Boards, mweston, pcb | 54 Comments »
February 11, 2010
Posted by: BackAssward
EvilDragon has taken the time to list the great contributions that people have made to the project and some history of it’s birth. Frankly, I can’t say more or add more than what ED has already said:
A big thanks to all of you!
Well, it has been a wild rollercoaster ride. It was fun. It was annoying. It was amazing. It was frightening. It was unique.
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Posted in Official, Pandora | Tagged craigix, djwillis, fatih, mweston, notaz, pickle, skeezix, Squidge, vimacs | 66 Comments »
February 9, 2010
Posted by: gruso
The green light shone. The roar went up. The blog went down. And here we sit, pensive in the afterglow. So what happens next? Let’s take a look at what the coming weeks have in store.
We are pushing them to ship us 500 on friday. [...] The factory have already been instructed to get on with it, we should hear something today. We don’t know if they will manage it, but we hope they will. They have told us pretty much every customer makes this week hell for them.
(craigix)
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Posted in Hardware, Software | Tagged cases, Cpasjuste, craigix, evildragon, mweston, notaz, pickle, Shipping | 67 Comments »
February 7, 2010
Posted by: gruso
[EDITORIAL]
It’s been a fun weekend, hasn’t it? Ok, perhaps showing us case samples on a Friday, giving us a whole weekend to wait for answers from the factory, didn’t work out all that well. But information has surfaced in the last two days that gives us cause not to freak out. To fully understand what happened here, you need to fully understand injection moulding – which most of us don’t. That means it’s time for a ludicrous cake analogy. The chef has been asked to do some quick tasters. He knows the recipe, and he’s got a totally sweet oven. But in his rush to please us, the cupcakes came out a little sloppy. And although we asked for icing, he didn’t want to mix up a metric ton of the stuff for a handful of cakes.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged cases, evildragon, moulds, mweston | 40 Comments »
February 6, 2010
Posted by: gruso
The case photos we’ve been waiting for have appeared in MWeston’s album. As you will have gleaned from the various tweets and forum posts in the last 24 hours, there are once again some imperfections that have left Michael and the rest of the team vexed to say the least. Before we get ourselves in a twist about further mould “tweaks” though (hands up if you now hate that word), it has been pointed out that the cases are structurally, and functionally, perfect. The source of vexation here is that the finishing on the cases appears to be no improvement over the revision 2 sample.
It would only be natural at this point to ask what in tarnation the case factory has actually been doing since rev2, if not improving the finish (and ask it MWeston did). But the answer to that is not necessarily nothing, and a couple of possible explanations are being explored. Production cases go through a finishing process after they’ve been moulded, to give them that nice, even matte sheen. It’s likely that the case factory doesn’t deem a small sample batch worthy of this extra effort (even if it’s been asked for). Another likelihood, and not a mutually exclusive one, is that recycled plastic pellets have been used to make the samples; a cost saving measure which can result in uneven colour. If both of these scenarios turn out to be the case, we can pretty well say that they won’t be issues when the factory makes a “real” batch. But they are questions that still need to be answered. Fatih and his trusty translator will no doubt be doing some overtime on this one. (Update: They will be seeking answers on Monday.)
Read on for photos and all the words from MWeston. And just a little bit of advice when you’re looking at the photos – be careful how you judge them in super high resolution. Not many moulded plastic cases will stand up to scrutiny at this level, not even from the big guys. Check out the details by all means, but zoom them back out to “normal” size for a more realistic indication of where the issues are.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged cases, mweston | 117 Comments »
February 5, 2010
Posted by: gruso
From the bucket of Weston.
Update: EvilDragon elaborates on the official blog. A little.
Wow. Actually, there’s something that happened earlier than expected: The cases did arrive, including the final keymats.
Here’s a picture of the final keymat. Now please give Michael some time to thoroughly test everything out.
Update 2: Mr Weston will be putting together some photos (and hopefully a video) later today, detailing what went right and what went not-so-right with this batch of cases. At the time of writing this, it’s some time before dawn in his neck of the woods, so the next few hours will probably a waste of your F5 miles. Sit tight.
Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged keymat, mweston | 53 Comments »
February 5, 2010
Posted by: Butterman
Fresh from the twitter of Craigix:
The cases have arrived early, wow, some good luck for once!
When I say early I actually mean weeks late I suppose.
Well, not perfect, but I guess we will have to go with them.
Sit tight, grab some popcorn, we’ll bring you updates as quickly as we can.
Posted in Hardware, Official, Pandora | Tagged awesom-o, cases, craigix, mweston | 60 Comments »
February 4, 2010
Posted by: Butterman
From ze Twitter:
Status: In Transit – Rescheduled Rescheduled Delivery Date: 08/02/2010 Would’ve been nice before the weekend, but won’t happen sadly.
But it’s not all bad news, as MWeston has kindly informed us:
It might bounce back to Friday once it hits the US border (Alaska). These China shipments change the delivery date once or twice along the route every time. Sometimes they change back to the original delivery date, sometimes they don’t. We’ll know by tonight.
Tense?
Update: There’s a new post from ED on the official blog. It covers stuff you already know, but here’s the link anyway.
Posted in Hardware, Official, Pandora | Tagged evildragon, joyless, mweston | 45 Comments »
February 3, 2010
Posted by: Butterman
Update: Image courtesy of Screeny
Just a quick update on the cases.
Your package is on time with a scheduled delivery date of 05/02/2010.
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Posted in Hardware, Official, Pandora | Tagged cases, evildragon, joy, mweston | 65 Comments »
February 2, 2010
Posted by: gruso
If you needed a reminder that China isn’t the only player in this saga, this is a nice way to get one. MWeston has informed us that 1,000 boards are being populated with components this week in Texas. Also interesting is the impact certain software developers are having on the hardware production process. What, you thought they just sat around porting Quake? (No offence to those who sat around porting Quake. You’re all doing a bang up job.)
It’s worth saying again that Notaz’s work on the kernel is clearly the reason the device is as advanced as it is today. Sure the hardware may have come along fine with minimal testing as the assembler learned how to solder the boards better but Notaz has helped me develop a comprehensive suite of test software that has helped the assembler perfect their process. So good in fact that they have started building a batch of 1000 this week after tweaking their pilot runs.
(MWeston)
Source
Posted in Hardware, Official, Software | Tagged Boards, mweston, notaz | 22 Comments »
January 17, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Keen case followers will recall that China named Friday the 15th as the completion date for the latest round of fixes. Friday passed without fanfare, but it seems the deadline was quietly met. Craig gives us a suitably cautious status update:
Yes we have heard from the factory, and yes the cases should arrive this week with Michael, yes they are supposed to be final with all the tweaks complete, but until we see them and check them, we don’t want to say anymore.
Source
Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged cases, craigix, mweston | 17 Comments »
January 13, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Hardware hackers, crazed peripheral inventors, quiet fans of pins: MWeston has posted the pic you’ve been waiting for. Some of these details have done the rounds already, but never before in such pleasing diagrammatic form. Click to enlarge, save a copy, profit.
Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged ext port, mweston, pinout | 35 Comments »
January 6, 2010
Posted by: gruso
Note: Not a new image
If you were on the ball a few days back, you might have seen an unofficial blog post go up announcing mass production had commenced – a post which disappeared just as quickly. If you didn’t catch the explanation, it was a false alarm. Someone had spotted “Mass Production of 3895 Pandoras / MP has started” on the official status page after one too many Shirley Temples, and took it as the news we’ve been waiting for. When in fact, it had been there for several months. Retractions and apologies were made, but the spotlight remained on that dusty old status page entry. What was going on with the boards? Enter MWeston, with a detailed account of where it’s all at and how the assembly process will roll. If your hat has a propeller on top, remove it now lest you launch into the ceiling.
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Posted in Hardware, Official | Tagged assembly, Boards, mweston | 69 Comments »
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