Got a shorter update than usual as we’ve mostly been waiting and managing logistics, which I’ve written enough about to bore even myself to tears.

Manufacturing

Picture from the other side of the world: box filled with the gear to test and program Pickup and cart boards

The factory test/programming rig got to the assembler pic along with some “golden master” boards that they can use as a working baseline. We probably have some bugs and clarification to work out with them, but the test system is fairly self-explanatory, and we’ll be able to push changes to it from here. The next step is to run another small batch of boards with the complete production process. We need to test a few mechanical changes since the last prototype boards anyway. Then we should be good to push the button on full board production.

The button mold has been adjusted, and I got samples of the tweaked buttons an hour ago. That took longer than I expected, but on first test, I got a nice click with stiff but low action. Think we’re ready to produce a few thousand of those.

Almost all the case parts are final. I’ve tweaked the fit of the main Pickup case and waiting for printed parts to come back—hopefully the last prototypes. Along the way, I eliminated several components and assembly steps thanks to additive printing, things like threaded inserts, adhesives, and distinct printed parts. I’m still skeptical that additive printing is the future, but for our resources and volume, it can offset some of the otherwise higher cost.

Logistics

Lot of trouble for this small bag.

We got the ambient light diffusers for the spectrometer cartridge. This was the part that the vendor wouldn’t let me buy or even view any more from the US. Seems that they were figuring out what the new rules were and what costs they’d have to add to the shipping charges. Fortunately, it only took time, and not enough of a cost difference to worry about.

I guess the base tariff rate the US has been imposing on Chinese goods has dropped from 20% to 10%. That would take the typical tariff down to 40something%. As usual, I’m not going to try to predict what it’s going to be — our assembler is helping us figure the most cost-effective way to get the boards to us, and the rest of the imported parts are not expensive enough that it’s going to change our plans.

Code

We’re in the thick of getting our production environment in place. We should’ve gotten our respective chunks of code in the same place earlier, but paying a little technical debt to do so now.

Jeremy’s got the firmware pretty solid, and now I need to break it to find him bugs to fix. We’re also adding polish, like a vocabulary of LED blinks.

Pickup wakes up

By next update we expect to confirm that the current electronics and case designs are ready to produce. And unless something even more drastic than the current ups and downs of tariffs happens with global trade (hope I didn’t just jinx it), I think we’ll be pushing the production button from there.

—John

*Crossposted from *Pickup Kickstarter update #20

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