Misc status

So many things going on that it's hard to stay on top of everything:

- Screws with new screw heads being custom-made (will fit into the brass inserts)

- Phosphorescent silicone parts being created (the pigments look amazing, purple needs sunlight or UV to charge but it's out of this world groovy)

- New rubber stars being created... we'll explain when we get them.

- Band received and it was bad, eyelets came off right away, we'll go back to Zhongda market and bring a camera and show you this amazing place (and show them they screwed up and beg them to do it right next time)

- Mold changes done, waiting for new parts to come out to commit to polishing and texturing

- Too busy to get to the software part, still need to fix some firmware stuff (wireless reprogramming reliability, reintroducing all features like dog mode, virtual leash mode etc)

- Box: we are getting samples! Not good enough for pictures yet, actually the standard for boxes is pretty low in China, but we're teaching them... we may have something cool soon to show you

- Waiting to receive papers so we can use our brand new corporate bank account

- EMC testing on Tuesday (maybe)

- Battery guy trying to flake on our order quantity, he's being contained for the time being

Rough ride, but we're almost there...

Overlays arrived - mixed feelings

But... but... there are no pictures. Why? Read on...

First of all: we should tell you that having applied these overlays to the remotes, we finally "more or less" know what the final look of this device will be like, and it's amazing. Surprisingly, the clear remotes (no dyes, no paint) ended up looking the best. The LEDs makes the whole enclosure shine when it's dark - a much better than expected result.

Looking at these parts from a distance, we can really see our dream becoming a reality! We have both the remote control overlay and the DL2K-LINK overlay.

HOWEVER. There were several problems with these overlays - problems that are only evident if you look at them closely. If we posted pictures here you would probably not see anything wrong, unless we posted close-ups which look a lot worse than the situation really is. So we'll wait to post until we've rectified the situation.

But to give it to you straight:
...

EMC testing tentatively scheduled for next Tuesday

Three DL2000s will be subjected to great adversities: overheating, shorting, interference, electromagnetic discharges. Their emissions will be tested and the new overmolded motors will be checked to see if we can dispense with the ferrite beads.

The ferrite beads are a protection of last resort for electromagnetic emissions. Last time we were able to stay within emission limits only by adding these things due to the fact that the Arousal Inducer's cable acts as an antenna.

This time we're trying a much better strategy which should allow us to avoid using the beads, and will not result in extra thickness. However, it may fail. In that case we will need to add the beads in order to pass the test.

Tuesday *should* be the big day. Unless the guys at the lab say can't find any ferrite beads, in which case we'll have to postpone testing until we can find some. Getting this right the first time is too important in terms of budget to leave things up to chance.

The lab guys really have no interest in providing what we need. Their answer to our inquiries about the beads was "oh, just come over on the test date and we'll see/talk" - oblivious to the fact that our pass/fail may depend on those things. Of course they're more than happy to see us fail because ... another test, more money for them.

Up to this point they tried anything they could to get an advance payment (which they didn't get - it would just give them some leverage to increase the price).

No worries - we know all their strategies and are countering effectively. Still Tuesday will be difficult because we added the USB plug and if they don't remember it wasn't there in the previous version they will surely claim that makes things a lot more difficult.

Lastly, a bad omen: the bus that will take us to the lab more than 3 hours away is number 666.

This is a very important step in taking our product from fantasy to reality. Wish us well!

Phosphorescent pigments

Rubber parts (o-ring, grommets) are being created with "new generation" phosphorescent pigments based on rare earth oxides. The idea is to keep the receiver clear so that the glow in the dark rubber parts can shine through and give it a unique look.

For now we can only show you some bags of pigment (very hard to take these pictures, relative brightnesses can't be seen, the purple color doesn't look nearly as deep and good as it does with the naked eye).











- The usual yellow-green color is the brightest, fastest to recharge and longer lasting (hours of phosphorescence).

- The aqua color is second brightest, almost as bright as yellow-green. It has similar recharge time and hours of glow.

- The violet color is the best looking, it's spectacular really - however it doesn't shine nearly as bright as yellow-green, and it fades faster (minutes not hours). Also it seems it also can't be recharged with normal household lights! It needs UV light, we've tried with direct sunlight and it was great, purple LEDs that have a UV component don't work very well at all, a black light should work perfectly but we don't have one.

- The orange color (salmon red?) is also spectacular when just charged but it fades faster than all of the other colors. 2-3 minutes max useful time.

- The pink color was created by merging orange and violet. The manufacturer says you can't do this. But it works quite well. Perhaps the pigments will interfere at molding temperatures and become inactive.

We'll experiment more with brightnesses when we get the molded silicone parts. We'd really like to go with violet but it would have limited utility (it's rare to go from bright daylight into total darkness). In an "event/club" sort of setting, with UV lights, this would likely not be a problem.

Again don't trust the pictures. When we get the real parts we'll photoshop some shots to try to get a result as close as possible to what the naked eye sees.

More to follow...

Body band vendor located

Today we visited the famous Zhongda textile market in Guangzhou city. This is a Canton fair on steroids for textiles and accessories. It deserves a real report but we didn't have our camera with us. It's really a huge indoors and outdoors market with tens of thousands of vendors and booths selling anything and everything: textiles, straps, bands, eyelets, belt buckles, plastic jewelry, shiny thingies, fake Prada badges, and more.

Creating the body bands will require two different companies. One to make the band, one to add the eyelets. We're getting samples sent to us in 3 days. The first sample will have the thunder printed on the nylon stretchable band. The second is from the eyelet guys, we'll verify eyelet quality and positioning (to allow different wear styles AND account for different waist sizes).

Bank account cleared.

After much pain, more than a fair share of documents being signed and couriered back and forth, a price increase and misc nonsense, finally HSBC has opened our corporate bank account!

As of today we're operational as a corporate entity.

This was one of the big non-technical milestones.

Next stage is unlocked: we can now apply for credit card processing.