Approximative Date?

Any idea about an approximative date about :

1 - clock integration for the pokitto ? (very very cool feature, we need it, we can wait for it :p)
2 - after (1) the date when we could choose color (color avaible ?) ?
3 - and after (2) (and all) the approx date for a sending (and well for a receveid) to play with this little piece of fun? :wink:

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  1. RTC: I will check the latest status from Daniel
  2. Shipping: there is 1 critical component that is determining the schedule for shipping. It is the Lithium-Polymer battery. It is custom made for us, but our order is only 1000 pcs. For the factory, we are a very small customer. They have promised to deliver 20th of July. I hope they keep that schedule.
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Nice :slight_smile:

no problem for the battery if it’s only after the 20 July.
this will let you the time to add the RTC to the pokitto Main Board (i’ve a lot of idea with it :))

It’s too bad an “off the shelf” standard battery wasn’t used. This may make obtaining replacements difficult.

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Two reasons:

  1. there is no such thing as off-the-shelf batteries, unless you are using AAA. You will not find a cell in this size and capacity from any store
  2. these are tested and made to spec by a big battery supplier also for safety reasons. I will not dump whatever Li-Pos in the hands of my users
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But there are fairly common popular sizes available from multiple sources, which will likely remain available for a long time. For example:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lipo+3.7v+600mah+x5c&_sacat=0

A popular size 500mAh battery is available from Adafruit and I can also buy it “off-the-shelf” from Sayal, a retail store a 15 minute drive away from me.

So you still could have chosen a “standard/popular” size and had them custom made and tested “for safety reasons”. That way users could easily source a replacement (at their own risk) when the original wears out.

These are not in the same league as the cell we are using. Not the price, quality or capacity. And they are all too thick.

I appreciate the feedback. But believe me when I say we went through all of this stuff. Early versions did run on ebay batteries. And one of the prototypes ballooned and cracked the case.

If that’s the case, it sounds like it’s going to be quite expensive to replace a Pokitto’s battery when it wears out, if they’re even available at the time.

This is the 99% reason why we use this battery. Does it need to be this thin? Yes. There is not even 0.5 mm to spare. Even though Pokitto is bigger than Arduboy, it is extremely tightly packed in some areas. This is one of them.

Edit: and this is the other reason

This is an engineering sample from the factory that we got when we started negociations. If you look at the body of the cell, you will see it is a thick metallic folded structure. This is not glass-reinforced tape wrapped around into a bundle. This amazing <4mm thick cell has 800 mAh capacity.

As for the cost, that’s our trade secret. Lets just say I am not as worried about the cost as you.

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Will you be making them available for sale separately, or do I just toss out the whole Pokitto when the battery fails?

Available separately. At a reasonable cost.

Don’t worry, we intend to keep you all as happy as is humanly possible.

Edit:

And you could use smaller capacity cells that are available in 4 mm thickness. You will just have a shorter battery life.

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Personally, I’m confident that the proper research has been done and that the end product will be of great quality.
As for timeline about delivery of the final product, I’m not too bothered about that either, a month or two would be what I was guessing. As long as you stay active here in the forum I think we can all be sure you’re working hard getting Pokitto into production.

Ugh. While the quality may well be fine and there may not have been another timely option, that doesn’t make it suck any less.

I’ve been flying lipo-powered aircraft for over a decade now. Custom batteries inevitably turn into a PITA - either hard to find, incredibly overpriced or underpowered or both, or a problem to charge on a standard charger, or some other of a variety of issues. I no longer buy aircraft unless there are at least two sources for the batteries.

This may not have kept me from ordering the pokito, as it’s not nearly as likely to fly poorly if I rework the case to take some easily available hobby battery. But it certainly would have been a consideration.

Personatly i prefer wait a bit more week and have an great prokitto with RTC + Nice battery (long life and hours of play) that will be better for the community and the pokitto than a worst/first try machine with lot of default that make you feel sad. :wink:

I hear you. Pokitto will ship with the battery we have chosen but we will solve this worry for you. Either we will set up a deal with some distributor in EU&US or recommend a suitable lower capacity replacement

Here is a replacement battery for you.

You will be able to get replacements from us and you can find thin batteries online. I think we should stop worrying about this now.

Edit: and I am still dead serious about wanting to buy a battery in bulk directly from manufacturer with a signed spec sheet. One of the early prototypes with an ebay battery nearly exploded at Maker Faire when we were charging it. I take these kind of liabilities seriously. When you manufacture your own product, you are free to ship any kind of battery you see fit.

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I, for one, am not concerned about the replacement battery availability. Not only we can get some cheapo ones off ebay, but you can always put a thicker battery in after modifying and 3d printing a new back cover. There are solutions, even if they would require a bit more work.

…and I would much rather get a higher end battery that has been tested left and right, than off the shelf one.

@ThunderZ News on RTC: the design is ready, and we are just now ordering one more round of prototypes to check it works as intended

RTC is not completely simple to add. While the RTC itself only needs a crystal to work, we need to provide some power even when the device is turned off

In old Nintendo Game&Watch this is done by the coincell battery. We can not easily add a coincell to the design at this stage anymore (physical space).

So a new energy-efficient LDO regulator had to be added just to supply the RTC from the main battery. And this design needs to be verified before spinning production PCBs

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I assumed you would just leave the unit on for programs that needed the RTC, then have the program itself power down or sleep everything but the RTC. The program would then be woken up by a button press interrupt.

However, providing a separate supply for the RTC is a nice addition.

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Very very nice news :slight_smile:

Yes i understand the LDO regulator (the coincell is simple to add but use lot of space)

thanks for the news