As you know if you've watched the video two posts below, we're back from the PCB assembly factory with pristine, immaculate, wonderful boards. ESD resistant, gold plated, oven-baked, pick-and-placed, in other words, just about perfect.
The story of how we managed to obtain results like these at a Chinese assembly plant where underpaid workers living and eating on site work with a massive sleep debt and terrible hand soldering equipment, is not for the weak of heart. We had to work day and night with the engineers. We had to sleep near the factory for two nights. We risked going home with nothing - no boards, and wasted components. We even had an emotional breakdown after two sleepless nights.
We are now home and feel like we've come back from the depths of hell.
Apologies for delays to comments and e-mails...
We are happy to report that yesterday after two days of extensive pre-processing and overmolding for our first batch, during which we actually became part of the Chinese assembly chain (trying to lower costs and avoid screw ups...) we achieved 100% success rate in manufacturing the arousal inducers. The motors are no longer damaged by the molding process even at higher pressures. The cable and overmolded silicone now stick perfectly.
Tomorrow it's assembly day. First time ever doing automated assembly, possible problems include moisture inside the components, programming mistakes, cooking times... hopefully all will go smoothly.
The user guide turned out to be 50 A6 pages long using very small fonts (essentially it's 50 A4 pages scaled down in size). It covers everything from ESD protection, how to plug and unplug the batteries, waterproofing tests, mounting, a quick-start guide, a comprehensive safety guide, and a guide to all features and DL Uplink screens; plus, the web functions.
We're trying to find a local supplier to produce the manual which involves cutting, stapling and machine folding, and to print and duplicate the driver disk. We also have labels we need to produce.
PACKAGING
There is a surprise coming up for the packaging. Pictures will likely be posted before the weekend.
NEW MINI-FEATURE
We've added a "safe mode" to the remote control. A key sequence allows you to disable the tools key (previously the beta key) which is used to enter advanced modes (leash, canine etc). The remote control ships in safe mode and you can disable it when you've become familiar with turning it on and off and so forth. You can also restore safe mode if you are going to lend the remote to a beginning user.
MANUFACTURING BEGINS
Tomorrow is a big day, we're on the spot to aid the manufacturer with the first real production run of arousal inducers. Other plastic and rubber parts are very easy to produce in comparison and will be handled by the manufacturer independently. The inducers are tricky to put together - it's a multi-step process. So we have to make absolutely sure the guys here learn how to do it right and without too much waste.
There are lots of features, lots of modes, and lots of explanations are required... 38 A-4 pages and counting... we may have to print only a subset of this help file and package the CHM and PDF with the CD-ROM.
