#podolabs

Hi All,

We visited the factory again and proceeded with the DVT build of about 100 units. We haven't run into any major problems and expect to take the next 10 days to thoroughly test all the units, to see where we can optimize assembly or reduce risk. The damaged accelerometers are functioning enough for us to evaluate the assembly process, but we will not risk shipping finished units with their longevity unknown. Though the DVT is going well, our situation right now is that we cannot expect to ship consumer units before the Chinese New Year, meaning all backers will receive theirs in two shipments, when the factories resume operation (end of Feb or first week of March) and shortly after in March. Thanks to the hard work of the factory staff and PCH engineers however, our project is moving forward and we are on the cusp of finishing up and shipping! We know you can't wait and we can't either.

Some more pictures we were allowed to take of the factory:

On the top tray, you can see Podos assembled with all the internal components, including camera sensor, battery, and LED rings, awaiting their front covers and back flaps. Each one is temporarily taped together en route to the final front cover assembly machine, and their unique Bluetooth device names (4 characters) are written onto the tape to identify it. This is the name of the Podo you will see when connecting to it with the app (don't worry, you can name your own Podo and it's Bluetooth paring name later through the app!)

Here is where the assembly happens. The SMT of the PCBs (refer to prior post for acronyms and explanations) occurs on a different floor, and the completed boards are brought here to be joined with the LED board, battery, and assembled into the housing. We've seen some lines comprise dozens of technicians on along the line; we tried to make assembly very efficient and thus hopefully allow less opportunities for mistakes!

Hey Podo fans!

As you know, Podo is in the pre-order stage with an expected delivery date of early 2016. We’ve been lucky enough to have a platform like Kickstarter where we could raise support from backers and have easy tools to keep them informed with updates, but we realized we needed a way to keep podolabs.com pre-order members in the loop as well.

We’ll be transcribing the contents of these backer updates onto our blog so pre-order members can follow along as well. Thank you for your patience and support thus far!

October 14 Update - Kickstarter

Hi Backers,

We hope everyone is having a good week!

The news on the schedule is the same; we are waiting on the factory to set up our lines and start our first test run, the EVT. We've finished things on our end and expect this to happen very soon. Our PCBs were also recently completed so we're very nearly there!

Sam and Fitz came back from China last week, and Sam is returning at the end of this week in time for the EVT. There's a lot of work that goes on behind every seemingly innocuous milestone, a lot of tedious and careful work just to make sure things stay on track, and Sam is the man keeping things on track. He's doing the most and sleeping the least he can to expedite delivery, and we wish him safe travels (again).

pictured: Jackson (left) and Sam (right) working through some code.

Pictured: A common sight—Fitz wielding a soldering iron

Pictured: One of our custom fixtures for testing

Most of the engineering team has been focused on bug-hunting and improving stability in the firmware, which can be a never ending process.

In other news, we've grown our team by one more member! Kevin will be helping us with software development, particularly on iOS development. We're still recruiting for Android developers, so if you know anyone let us know!

We've also received our certification from the Bluetooth governing body so we're really ready to go. The EVT date can't come soon enough! We will keep everyone posted. Thank you for your support and patience.

The team at Podo Labs is very excited to start our blog.  We are striving to make this blog a team effort and everyone will be contributing on a regular basis.  On our blog, you can expect to read about the status of Podo, get to know the team (Q&A), tutorials, and what goes on behind the scenes of a hardware startup in San Francisco!