Component availability

Yep, we've been hit with the worldwide chip availability bug. Specifically, our Bluetooth Module provider is completely sold out of their modules, here in the US and overseas. 

For the last 5-6 weeks we've devoted our time to evaluating alternate components. Think of the Module as a car that needs to get us from A to B. Instead of buying a Ford, we're designing our trip with a Tesla. We still need 4 wheels, engine/motor, steering wheel, etc to get to our destination, but what we use will be different than originally designed.

PCB redesign 

As such, we've needed to redesign the circuit board schematic as well as the physical board layout.

In principle nothing has changed from our previous design however we need to make sure all the component pins and connections line up correctly electrically and physically.

There are also a handful of other smaller components we've had availability issues on, however we've been able to find alternates for these.

Although this has set us back a bit, it's difficult to know exactly how it will impact shipping moving forward. We'll keep you up to date on how thats looking through these communications.

Component purchase

In the past, components were readily available at the time of circuit board manufacture. Now, we're constantly chasing our suppliers to follow-up on chip availability and get in the queue for upcoming shipments.

To date we've already prepurchased several components including:

-Class D amp chips.

-Digital Signal Processing chips.

-charging chips.

We anticipate not having to make any more changes and feel we are ahead of component shortages.

In our next update we'll talk about code and programming, testing, and more!