Pandora News - The calm before the storm

July 22nd, 2009, 21:43 Posted By: wraggster

Hiya folks!
It's been a bit calm around here in the blog, right?
Well, that's for one good reason: Everything is going smoothly right now.
The first check of the case data is finished, the company started creating the moulds. As soon as the first rough mould is finished (which will surely take a while, the case is a pretty complicated mesh), they are gonna do a first rough case and check that everything fits (with a final board, so that nothing can go wrong here!)
In the meantime, the PCBs are still in production. It will take them a few days longer, as they optimized the machines a bit more in the beginning. This does mean, that the boards will probably ship 10 days later (beginning of August). But it does also mean, that the build quality will be better and the failure rate is way lower. No time lost, as the case company won't need the board before August. And if the failure rate is lower in the beginning, mass production itself will be faster. So when the cases are ready, we can go full speed ahead!
So everything is going pretty well at the moment. Seems like Murphy is on holidays - which is something, we're really glad of

Of course, we used the waiting time for other stuff.
The first prototype of the TV Out cable is working, we are now designing that thing and optimizing it (i.e. put IN and OUT on the connectors, decide for the colors, etc.)

Another thing we're working at is CE / FCC. You might have seen the discussion on the gp32x.com boards. One guy said, that you need a final PROTOTYPE for FCC. The company I did ask said, the final UNIT is needed. I'm going to find out, if a prototype is enough - as that would mean, we can do FCC and CE at the same time and do have all the needed certificates when the Pandora is ready for shipping!
That should speed up everything
Michael also did some quick checks already, the Pandora doesn't do any bad things, radiation seems to be within the allowed areas. It's just a rough test, but if there was something really wrong, we could certainly find it out that way.
The only really critical part for radiation might be the WiFi antenna. But that is something that can be fixed within a few days, so we're positive CE / FCC will go smoothly.

That's it for todays posting. I'll make sure to keep you informed!

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