<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">
I’ve been doing electronics production (printed circuit board
assembly/soldering/programming/quality checks) since the beginning
of
the month. All other parts are in hand and ready to be sent out.
In
parallel, I’ve been doing test-builds and quality checking along
the way. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">Okaaaaaay. So.</p>
<b><br>
The rotary dials
aren’t dialing consistently. </b>I thought (was sure) I had this
problem worked out, but now about 10% of the time, when I use the
dial, it returns a wrong number. At times its very reliable (owing
to
software improvements, which I previously thought made good dialing
the rule rather than the exception), but on the two kits I’ve
assembled from production parts so far, the reliability is, frankly,
terrible. It’s unusable for real-world use. I can’t send these
out.
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">This is a a
knots-in-my-stomach-oh-my-god-what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-do type
of
situation, considering that with both old and recent pre-orders,
about 770 kits are promised to be sent out this month (or at least
by
Christmas TBH).</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">After more
tweaking,
both mechanically and in software, I’ve resigned myself that a
hardware design change is the only solution, meaning all the phone
motherboards I’ve produced so far need to be scrapped. As of two
days ago (Nov. 12<sup>th</sup>) I redesigned the motherboards and
will not be using any that I have on hand. The daughterboards are
also affected, and those too are being scrapped for a fixed
version.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">TECHNICAL
PARAGRAPH,
OK TO SKIP. The way the I made the rotary mechanism, pulses
(numbers)
are counted both as the dial is wound and on the return, so the
final
count is divided by 2 to get the intended number. This allowed a
significant mechanical simplification, but, on the windup, those
pulses often go too fast to get counted accurately. The software
fix
I had in place used the fact that the total number of pulses
always
needs to be even to be valid, as well as incorporating timing for
debounce detection, but this just isn’t good enough. My fix is to
add a hall sensor to detect when the finger stop is pushed to its
limit (while dialing), so that the software knows only to count
pulses after the finger stop is released. </p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">I’m trying to
figure out if I can still get 700+ <span style="font-weight:
normal">*working*
kits in the mail in time to arrive (let’s say) by December 18</span><sup><span
style="font-weight: normal">th</span></sup><span
style="font-weight: normal">.
If I overnight them and take the loss on shipping, which I will
absolutely do, then that gives me about 31 days </span><span
style="font-weight: normal">from
now</span><span style="font-weight: normal"> to finish the
electronics for all orders accepted until I moved the promised
ship-by date on the website </span><span style="font-weight:
normal">(which
was Sept. 14 at 6:15PM EDT)</span><span style="font-weight:
normal">.</span><span style="font-weight: normal">
Producing the new boards should take 18 d</span><span
style="font-weight: normal">ays
</span><span style="font-weight: normal">end to end</span><span
style="font-weight: normal">.
A few days will be needed for </span><span style="font-weight:
normal">programming,
</span><span style="font-weight: normal">kitting and mailing of
course, so if I have all new blank PCBs </span><span
style="font-weight: normal">from
my fabrication house </span><span style="font-weight: normal">in
hand
by November 28</span><sup><span style="font-weight: normal">th</span></sup><span
style="font-weight: normal">,
this can still work.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%">
To air the rest of the rest of the dirty laundry, there are a
couple
other (less critical) problems I’d like to make public:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%"><span
style="font-weight: normal">-</span><span style="font-weight:
normal">The
headset jack: </span><span style="font-weight: normal">T</span><span
style="font-weight: normal">he
auxiliary </span><span style="font-weight: normal">TRRS </span><span
style="font-weight: normal">jack
only work to hear, not </span><span style="font-weight: normal">to
sp</span><span style="font-weight: normal">eak through a headset
microphone. </span><span style="font-weight: normal">The
microphone
built into the phone works as a speakerphone mic, so this could
be
used with headphones in that sense, but proper “talk/listen”
headset functionality isn’t working on this version. </span><span
style="font-weight: normal">This
will NOT be fixed until a future production batch. </span>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">-Battery life: It
seems that right now the real-world battery life is only about 12
hours. The issue isn’t the battery running out. It’s that the
system browns out when the cellular modem goes into call-receive
mode
while other call-alert features are also working. My temporary
workaround is to have it consider itself out of battery when the
battery is down to about 50% capacity. The battery capacity is
there
but the instantaneous current draw is too high. I may be able to
figure out a software fix for this before any units ship.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%">
<span style="font-style: normal">I</span><span style="font-style:
normal">F</span><span style="font-style: normal">
you’re done with all this and would like a refund, please email
<a href="mailto:info@skysedge.com" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">info@skysedge.com</a>
with
“refund” in the subject.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%">
IF you don’t particularly care if your order arrives for the
holidays, please email <a href="mailto:info@skysedge.com"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">info@skysedge.com</a>
with “no rush” in the subject to let me know. This would help me
meet the holiday demand.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: normal; line-height:
100%">
IF you <i>absolutely</i><span style="font-style: normal"> need it
for
the holidays, please email <a href="mailto:info@skysedge.com"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">info@skysedge.com</a>
with “RUSH” in the subject. </span><span style="font-style:
normal">Please
don’t hesitate to let me know if this is your situation. </span>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">
<b>A
paragraph I was on the fence about including:</b><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">Lastly, I just want
to say to anyone who might start to feel like I’ve taken all these
pre-orders (many from about 2 years ago now!) on anything but
honest
pretenses, I want to say that this hasn’t been a process I’ve
taken lightly or that has gone without impact to my personal life,
or
my family’s. I’ve wanted to have a stable and successful company
for some time and in that sense this is a dream come true.
However,
to make it work I’ve had to reduce my time at a career I was
previously passionate about as much as they would let me without
losing health insurance, while also balancing caring for an
ongoing
critical health issue for a close family member that arose last
year.
And then there’s the chip shortage, which is still not resolved
for
many of my parts. I’m not one to lean on excuses, but, it hasn’t
been cake a walk. No one, <i>no one</i><span style="font-style:
normal">,
wants to have phones in customers hands more than me. The idea
that
we’ll be at the point in the next couple months where every
single
day isn’t overwhelmingly stressful </span><span
style="font-style: normal">for
me</span><span style="font-style: normal">… it almost sounds to
nice to be real. </span><span style="font-style: normal">But
I’m
confident about it.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%"><br>
</p>
<style type="text/css">p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 115%; background: transparent }a:link { color: #000080; so-language: zxx; text-decoration: underline }</style>
</body>
</html>