|
2010-04-09 11:05:17 (3083 views) They guarantee they can oversee import/export procedures, and we have copies of their import/export certification documents. The company name is different so we did some background checks. Their address and the owner's name are identical, so they should be legit.
Seems they are qualified to do this process for sure, the only thing is that the "old guy" (so they call him) who used to do this process is no longer with them - so they're trying to figure out what the process is. They haven't given us a price for the assembly work, either - the issue here more than bargaining on the price is to convince them to program the machines to do a small run... we absolutely need to start selling some units to get bootstrapped.
The main aggravation right now is that lots of stuff is on hold...
2010-04-08 07:44:44 (3582 views) EU/FCC
Two days ago everything was going wrong. Cable problems, processing problems, certification problems. Then yesterday everything miraculously got solved, by being on the phone with lots and lots of testing labs (especially in the EU), PCB houses, and sending 200 emails for the cables. Things were looking real good yesterday, and a little celebration was carried out in the evening!
Looks like we may be able to do something for the European market sooner rather than later, and get both CE marking and FCC compliance marking. These cost almost as much as the production tooling and frankly the perceived value on our side is preeeetty low... and... the cruelty of having to sacrifice two of our babies in the testing process with cruel ESD sparks, and high temperature ovens!! But we negotiated some great terms that may (may) allow us to launch synchronously in US/EU.
It even looks like these tests may not be a total formality after all. Aside from electromagnetic radiation testing which is totally pointless for our low speed circuit, and ESD testing which is marginally useful, they will bombard the receiver with all sorts of RF interference to see if it activates unduly (electromagnetic immunity) - that's quite cool. Say you're driving with the unit on near some factory on the highway or a radio station... it helps to know the unit won't start punishing you at random. This is a near theoretical impossibility anyway since the RF chip we're using has at least 4 ways of calculating CRC and avoiding bad signals even from identical receivers with different transmission keys - but it's the one test we're eager to see the results of. At least we're getting some value out of what is for the most part a total ripoff.
PCBs
Today: more trouble. ...
2010-04-06 09:25:13 (4243 views) CABLE TROUBLE
The day started out not so well with Sonia saying that even the second cable sample wasn't good enough (without testing it) and authorizing the cable maker to create tooling to make our sample for a hefty fee. Took half an hour to rectify the situation, another half to convince the rubber master Mr Tang to give it a shot, and the whole afternoon to email 190 (kid you not - 38 * 5 pages) manufacturers on the web. Finally after a day of emails, filling out captchas, cut and pasting the email, re-cut and pasting it when the vendors replied with their own cut and paste stuff and catalogues, phone calls and what not - we got two people to send samples. It ...
2010-04-05 01:52:59 (4765 views) The technology in these samples is impressive. They have very low conductivity, almost metal-like. Silver nanoparticles are used. This material is utilized in airplanes and rockets. It's also very expensive. You can connect a battery on one side of the two strips and light an LED 25 cm away through the rubber. You could probably do that meters away if the sample strips were that long.
Now, though the material's great, there are many problems with these samples.
- The wire comes off easily (he didn't use conductive glue as promised)
...
2010-04-03 17:16:13 (6250 views)  Ladies and gentlemen, you are looking at a prototype of the most compact, most advanced rubber electrode ever created (to our knowledge).
Three high tech materials are being used here: low resistivity conductive rubber, a strong type of conductive glue, and high grade neodymium magnets...
2010-04-03 00:22:31 (10798 views) Phoenix Chastity, makers of the Phoenix Sapphire and Guardian chastity devices, have announced compatibility with the DreamLover 2000 through a custom produced attachment part developed internally at Phoenix Chastity!
  ...
|
