Back to China!

After a 12 day break in Thailand (first mini-vacation in over a year of product development, as we wait for mold CNC, EDM and polishing) we're back in China to finish up the last pending items.

We have already received the new PCBs which include circuitry to neutralize electrostatic discharges (necessary for regulatory compliance).

In the next few days/couple of weeks we must:

- assemble the new PCBs and have 3 samples ready for the final day at the EMC testing lab

- keep working on the motor overmolding - we're still having a few issues but there were some breakthroughs and we may be able to ship with this part included in the product.

- wait a few more days until the mold has been refined and polished, and start making MOLDED plastic enclosures. This allows us to do a final, 100% size, tolerance and waterproofing test. You will also see the real, final product look as opposed to machined plastic parts.

- one set of molded parts will be sent to the people now producing the overlays. The overlays must be a little bit smaller than the recess on the plastic (about 0.2mm) in order to fit. It's not an exact science and we don't want to get into arguments when the overlays don't fit; so to avoid any problems we're sending them plastic parts and letting them adjust the tooling to have a perfect match.

- the molded enclosures will be produced in transparent polycarbonate but we will try to add 3 colors to the plastic material (we were given this limit by the mold manufacturer, because every time the color changes they have to wash the mold which involves moving it with the crane). Presently it seems best results may be given by adding some black, grey or purple tint to the polycarbonate.

- other than mixing dyes to the plastic itself we will again try to spray paint the remote and the DL2K-LINK to find the best looking combination

- we may want to add texture to some of the parts; this requires additional mold post-processing so it would require more time, but hopefully we'll be happy with the results without needing any texture

- the last step is to bring the final product to the EMC lab and do the testing; the hardware cannot be changed after this step so we're keeping it for last. It will take only one day.

We also have a few pending to-dos, such as finding a box to ship the product in and finding some custom elastic waist bands - but these are low priority because they're components that we can add to the product later, as we know everyone's anxious to get it as soon as possible.

As we move forward we're having the usual problems/misunderstandings and unforeseen expenses! For instance, the bank refused to accept some of our documents to open the account and we need to do more certifications. People are changing prices on us (as always).

But we're getting these issues solved so at this point it would not be very surprising if we were shipping products within a month or so.

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