Production Update

Production of the of DATA is coming along, albeit slowly. A friend who is a veteran embedded systems designer once told us that everything in the world of electronics takes about 5 times longer than expected; I would now have to agree.

We received the faceplates from our manufacturing partner a few weeks ago. We QA’d each faceplate at the factory and ended up pulling about 35% of them, mostly due to issues with the application of the black graphics (smudging in the DATA lettering at the top and bubbles in the black around the display window). The pulled plates are now being sanded down, re-powder coated and silk screened; we were told they will be ready for pickup next Tuesday. Despite the high rate of error in the order, the faceplates that did pass QA are excellent, improving upon the original test plates. Specifically, the new plates use a more contrasting grey color in the rings around the buffered through outputs, and the alignment of the Mordax logo green and black graphics at the bottom is much improved.

The main hold up though, is PCBs. We couldn’t help ourselves and did a bit of feature creeping back in January, which after the Chinese New Year PCB factory issue in February (noted in our last update), cascaded into a significant delay. After that we ended up needing to do another revision, which we’re hopeful will be the last. We’ll have these boards back soon, then we can test them, and if they are good, move forward with assembly.

We’re a month and a half passed our initial target date now, and while such delays are a fairly common scenario in the tech world (I’m looking at you Elon Musk!), it’s frustrating for everyone involved, especially our supporters. We want to get these out as soon as possible, but even more pressing is our commitment to deliver the best product possible and get it done right. We really appreciate everyone’s patience during our “extended” production period. Thank you!