The Factory Isn't Always Perfect

On Monday, I received a second batch of 12 early production units from the factory. These had some problems with them. Firstly, they wouldn't turn on or do anything. That's a big problem, eh? I went through and checked every component on the board by hand and found that three of the resistors had the wrong values from what I had spec'ed in the BOM (Bill of Materials). 

One resistor was kind of close (well, 30% off, so not so close), and it was a crucial resistor for the functioning of the DSP chip. It won't boot without this value being right. The other two resistors are used to set the bias-voltage for the microphone, and the values for those were crazy high (should have been 4.7k-ohm, they were 470k-ohm). This won't prevent the board from working, but was causing the bias-voltage to the mic to be very low, and subsequently the volume of the mic to be very low.

I was also unhappy with the brightness of the power LED, so I adjusted the resistor here for that one. Much brighter now, and I'm having the factory update the units with that change too.

Pro Tip: The factory is far from perfect. Test every unit.

New EEPROM Programmer!

The engineer I've been working with at the DSP manufacturer actually was cool enough to send me his personal programmer board to see if it will work for me. It did! It's perfect! Of course, I'll probably have to send that back to him at some point, but for now I've got a working EEPROM programmer and development of the Thumper software is continuing (and sounds great!).

Timeline Update

So where are we now? The factory has to order the replacement resistors and then finish all the boards. My guess is that this should be complete by the end of next week (June 25). A ship date of around June 1st seems likely, right now.

Thanks again for sticking with me!

          --> freddie

(below: Le Dork)

So May 1st has come and gone…where are we? 

The Waiting Continues

Last week, we worked out the regulator issues pretty quickly and I got the new information about changes and fixes back to the factory. Although, I have not heard anything back from them as to when the new parts will be in and when the boards will be completed. I have contacted them a couple times, so I'm just waiting on them…not fun.

The EEPROM Programmer

The manufacturer of the EEPROM programmer board sent me another unit last week to try out and that one also did not work (although different problem this time). I then sent both programmers back to Analog Devices so they can see what is going on with them. Again, no word back from them yet. Waiting, waiting...

New T-Shirt Design

I had been waiting for a couple months on final pricing for the T-shirts. The shirts are now being redesigned by our partner, Understood Clothing NYC, after we found out they would cost me $20/each to make. That's way over budget and I'm already out of money as it is…so back to the drawing board. [Please no suggestions that I go with your T-shirt company or CafePress or whatever. Thanks.]

New Office Space

Earlier this week, I secured some new temporary office space in the office right down the hall from my recording studio (in the "Historic Bronx Building"). This extra space will allow me to get all the Thumper mics, parts, enclosures, bags, shirts, boards, programmers, testing rigs, prototypes, failed prototypes (sadness), tools, etc all laid out and organized well. Some assembly is required by me for each unit before it goes out, so there's workspace for that too. I had been keeping all of this stuff in the studio and then stashing it in the closet or storage when clients came by, but that's not a great way to have to work. Hopefully, once the mics are shipping, I'll no longer neeeeeed this extra space. I will tell you, it is nice to have the office for working on new designs and a couple new products I've got in the works. Lots of dry erase boards! I'm in heaven!

Testing The Mics

I asked this on Facebook a couple weeks ago, but it's probably good to ask here too: Does anyone have a gig in the next week or two in the Chicago area? I would like to have someone beta test at least the programming on my prototype unit in a live performance situation. You'll be a guinea pig, so I can't promise it will be flawless. Please let me know if anyone's got anything coming up soon in the midwest (can probably go up as far as Milwaukee or even downstate IL).

Thanks everyone!! Love to all of you.

    --> freddie

First Units Are In…Just Not Right

The first dozen units (out of 100) arrived yesterday from the factory. There are a few things wrong with them, which is why it's a good idea to get a few units first before they go ahead and make all 100. Not sure why they chose to make 12 of them...I would've done like 4, personally. The problems with these units were pretty small, though, so that's pretty cool. They had one capacitor on each board flipped the wrong direction and the solder mask was the wrong color (was supposed to be red, not green). Below is a shot of those boards ("The Dirty Dozen"), assembled but missing the DSP chips and a couple other components that I will solder on by hand. 

The factory is currently waiting on me for an answer about the voltage regulator. The one they have used on these board is rated at a maximum input voltage of 6V, but the Thumper uses a 9V battery for power…not going to work. I've got a message in to my PCB engineer about what to do. I've already spec'ed out a new regulator, but I'm awaiting his response to know whether it will work for sure. I'm also not thrilled with the brightness of the Power LED, it's pretty dim right now, even though on the prototype it's very bright. I'm looking into that.

Dead EEPROM Programmer

Each Thumper has a little memory chip (EEPROM) inside that stores the "program" for the DSP. This chip is programmed by me here using a special USB chip programmer board. A couple days ago, that programmer stopped working properly. I've been in communications with the manufacturer about getting a replacement but not sure when that will arrive (you can't just buy one of these things at Radio Shack). 

Coming Into Focus

We're getting so close to shipping the Thumpers, I can taste it!! The throat mics, ear-mics, DSP chips, memory chips, carrier boards, enclosures, carrying cases, and even the stickers are all here waiting to fulfill their destinies. Once the corrected, assembled boards arrive, I just have to put all the large pieces together, program the chips, and get things shipped out. Right now, the plan is to replace the programmer and get the rest of the corrected boards from the factory this week. Then I should be able to assemble the packages for everyone and ship close to May 1st. 

Thanks for being so patient, everyone! I know there are a lot of people waiting on these, including many who have not yet placed their orders officially because they're waiting for the TH100 to be shipping. I actually got an order from Disney World last week, an artist has put a requirement of 2 Thumpers in the rider of their contract! Pretty sweet. Once these babies are shipping, expect to see some new promo/demo videos, endorsements, and we'll be sponsoring a big event coming up too.

Strap It On and Keep On Thumpin'!

    --> freddie

I had a great weekend at the SingStrong a cappella festival this weekend in Reston, VA. I did get a chance to meet up with several of the Kickstarter backers and also some existing Thumper owners. Marty Gasper did an amazing job performing with Blue Jupiter, wearing his Thumper as always. 

When I returned to the studio this morning, I found some packages that had been quietly waiting for me over the weekend. Check out this video to see what arrived!

    --> freddie

I had an older Thumper TH75 in here this week for repair, which is actually a pretty rare occurrence. Marty Gasper is the beatboxer for the NYC a cappella band Blue Jupiter and had broken the input jack on his TH75 belt-pack. While I had the unit opened up for repair, it was sitting on my desk next to the TH100 prototype. The two of them looked so cool next to each other, I had to take a picture! Looking at the pic, I started thinking about all the improvements in the new TH100, so I listed the changes beneath the photo…and here it is!

I also worked a lot with the belt-pack enclosure manufacturer this past week to finalize the custom modifications they're machining for the TH100. I've attached a mechanical drawing of the enclosure, which also shows the logo that will be silkscreened on the side. I got a lot done on the programming-side of things too, making sure the DIP switches properly control some of the settings, adjusting the signal-flow within the DSP, and trying to optimize things in memory even more to be sure we have room to do everything we want.

Everything else is still moving along fairly smoothly! Almost there!

     --> freddie