Kickstarter Project: REMOTE 3

[brubacca]

My Logitech 880 died yesterday! Guess I had better start reading the thread.. Thanks for all the info.
Make that my Harmony One from 2010!

[leonski]

Thank you Mucho. Jury still out for me, but my reply from Unfolded about NO Parasound was more than a little offputting. The 'snarky' answer is to teach your Remote3 each command on a Ala Carte basis....

[LCSeminole]

Project Update #12: Unfolded Circle Remote 3


Production:

The production is underway and our suppliers are manufacturing various parts. There is nothing more exciting to it than this. We expect to start receiving parts from mid October.

Fortunately there has not been any significant delays. One part of our packaging got delayed by 10 days, but that should not have a cascading effect on the rest.

One important thing about our packaging is that we use only paper. Even the tray that holds the remote is made from paper pulp. We do not use any plastic wrapping, but a thicker sheet of paper to seal the boxes. This makes it easy to recycle and in general better for the environment.

We have even designed our own shipping boxes, that protects the products and are exactly the right size to make sure we’re not shipping air.

Another thing I’d like to share about the packaging - as I find it interesting - is that we’re making so many remotes and docks that all our packaging material fills a full 20 feet container. And most of our packaging is shipped as a flat sheet. So you can imagine the scale of our operations this time around

Product certification is also ongoing. Our samples are in the lab and being tested.

While we’re waiting for parts to arrive, we’re verifying the assembly process. This means that we’re putting together and taking apart products many times next to a stopwatch and trying to find ways to improve the process by using different jigs or changing the order of operations.


Let’s talk about software:

In the past 6 months, we have been working on our biggest update yet. We have updated our whole build and embedded Linux operating system using the latest mainline kernel. This was part of the preparation to create a common platform for Remote Two and Remote 3.

We have added thousands of lines of code to the wireless driver to enable a big quality of life enhancement. This work required the closed-source manufacturer provided firmware, but also the kernel and system to be updated, so everything works together flawlessly.

In our latest 2.0 beta release - that is already available for Remote Two, and of course will be there for Remote 3 at launch - there is a new option to keep WiFi connected even when the device is in deep sleep. This means when you pick up the remote, the WiFi connection is already there, significantly improving the reconnect speed of integrations.

Combined with the low power consumption of deep sleep, this new feature only uses a bit more of the battery.

Thanks to this new addition, the remote can now be woken up by a magic packet, opening up even more possibilities.

Our community is amazing and we’re so happy to see all the new integrations popping up for the remote, adding support for more and more devices. Thank you!

We have been working with Damien and Jack from our community on streamlining the Home Assistant component, making it even easier to set up. We’re also adding new features, including the aforementioned wake on wlan capability. Thank you guys!

All the other integrations are also getting a well deserved look over. We’re reviewing every single one to make sure they work as intended. After that we’ll be releasing more of them as open source.

Web configurator 2.0 is getting the final touches and getting ready for a release. We’ll be sharing more information about this very soon!

We’re working full speed on all fronts to get everything ready by the time Remote 3 starts shipping.


Now let’s talk about shipping:

We’re currently summarising the data and sorting the rewards so we can assign shipping queue numbers to everyone. We’ll let you know once this is done.

As you could read above, thousands of products are being made. Production and shipping takes time. Our plan is still to start shipping in December.

We don’t want anything more than getting our products into your hands. We’ll do what we can to ship out as many remotes as possible in the shortest amount of time.


Q&A on Discord:

I’m sure you have questions and we’d like to answer them. We’re doing a live Q&A on our chat, Saturday the 12th of October between 18.00 - 20.00 CET. We’ve made a channel for this Q&A, where you can already post your questions. We’ll be there on Saturday, hope to see most of you there!

Until next time!

[leonski]

While we’re waiting for parts to arrive, we’re verifying the assembly process. This means that we’re putting together and taking apart products many times next to a stopwatch and trying to find ways to improve the process by using different jigs or changing the order of operations.

Above, from Unfolded.......and makes me laugh.

When I started in processing, we had an internal class called SMED.....Single Minute Exchange of Dies. It was all smoke and mirrors, even down to the misleading title.
The object was to pare an operation down to the minimal steps needed. We were given a sample operation and went to work. Time Counted!

What Unfolded is up to is nothing new. They may not even be going about it the BEST way. I'd start with a flow chart, maybe....What are Value Added steps and which are NOT?
I'd need to know how automated the process actually is to assemble.....Once you have all the 'parts' in hand? Rate at each process and find Slowest process to either improve or
duplicate. In the process to which I'm most familiar? A very quick process may require a single machine and operator. A slow process step may require hours.....in which case
you do the math and find out IF you may want additional capacity at That particular step. What you may want to avod is what is called a 'single point of failure'......in which the
availabilty of a certain machine or NOT will stop your production......

It'd be fun to see what these guys are up to.....

[LCSeminole]

OCTOBER Update:


For backers only
Time flies! So many things happened in the past month and we have been so busy that we hardly noticed a month has already passed since the last update. Here’s what happened.

We are basically making three products: the remote, the dock and the IR blaster. Each of these products consists of multiple parts. Various manufacturers and suppliers are producing the parts and we have to make sure everything ends up in the right place at the right time. Let’s look at these products one by one and their status in production.

IR Blaster:

This one is the simplest of all, as it contains only a few parts. The PCB is in production, the first batch of aluminium housing, silicone pads and custom cables are ready. The IR transparent plastic cover is also in production and expected to be ready by the time the PCBs are out of assembly in approximately 2-3 weeks.

Dock:

Moving on to the next product. The dock is more complex than the IR blaster. It has 2 PCBs sandwiched together with way more components than the blaster. The PCB component procurement has started and the PCBs are ready to be manufactured. The first batch of aluminium housing and the silicone pads are ready. Small parts like magnets and screws are also there, ready for assembly.

During the production of the top plastic part, we have encountered an issue, where you could see sink marks on the top surface. This is now being fixed and we expect to see good parts in the next 2 weeks. Once production is up to speed, the plastic parts should be ready at the same time as the PCBs in 4-6 weeks.

Remote:

We arrived at the most complex of all the products. The displays and batteries have been manufactured and are on the way to us. The first batch of aluminium housing is also ready. The Gorilla glass part on the back is being finished as we’re writing this update.

Image Glasses being cut
The first batch of buttons are already here, the button backlight layer is also ready and the bottom plastic piece is being manufactured now and expected to be done in 2-3 weeks.

Image Buttons are ready to be pressed
Our custom wireless coil has also been manufactured. The procurement of PCB components has already started and we’re ready to start the PCB manufacturing. The speakers are about to be done with manufacturing and then they’ll be on the way to us. Small parts like magnets, screws, charging pins, spacers, adhesives are all done and ready for assembly. If everything goes well, we’ll have parts for assembly in about 4-5 weeks.

Packaging:

All our packaging materials - except the safety booklets - have been made. We’re waiting for final data from the certification to be included in the safety booklets, then we’ll print those as well. Printing the booklets won’t take long. They are also small and light, easy to ship, so this won’t cause any delay.

Unfortunately the paper trays caused an issue. This was something that we have not expected, that one part of the packaging will put a delay into our carefully considered and calculated schedule.

We put a lot of effort into creating a packaging using only paper. Including also the custom shaped tray that sits in the box, to hold and protect the remote in transit.

Image Paper pulp tray
The trays are made from paper pulp and formed with high pressure. Even though we went through multiple rounds of samples (as we did with everything), the manufacturer made a mistake and produced thousands of trays that are 3 mm higher than specified. This meant that the trays would still fit in the box, but you would not be able to close the box to the designed height. This would have caused a cascading effect for all other packaging parts not fitting together.

Image The source of the issue, thickness was out of spec
We have immediately notified the manufacturer and shipped back all the trays. Since then we have been working hard to find a solution that would cause the least amount of delay. Earlier this week we found a way to cut the trays down to the correct height without the need of manufacturing everything again.

We’re still waiting to hear back from the manufacturer on the estimated completion date. Unfortunately this means that even though all other parts of our production is on time, this will introduce a delay on when we can start shipping.

I know you’d like to know how big the delay is. Right now - without anything concrete - we estimate a delay of 1 month. But please don’t take this as a definitive answer yet, as we’re still waiting a response from the manufacturer. We’ll give you an update once we know more.

We are not happy about this delay and we’re looking into ways how we could transport some of the packaging materials faster. If you remember we mentioned in our previous update that due to the volume of operations our packaging material takes up a whole 20 feet container. So it’s not an easy feat to figure out a way to get these things here fast, but we do what we can so we can begin shipping as soon as the trays have been fixed.

Now some good news!

Certification:

The dock has passed all the tests and the remote testing starts next week. As the remote hardware architecture is very similar to Remote Two, we don’t expect anything extraordinary here. There will be still paperwork to be done, but that won’t hold anything back.

Team:

We have been expanding our team on the software side, so we can pick up a faster pace. A new member of our team has been working on polishing our API wrapper libraries and has already started going through the integrations to fix bugs and add features. First integration that is getting an update is Roon, soon to be followed by the rest.

Soon a new developer will join our forces to speed up the development of the new remote UI application, so it’s ready when Remote 3 starts shipping.

We’re getting help on other fronts as well. A new member of our team will help us manage all the messages we get, so we can react faster to your requests. She will also help with testing our software.

Getting new people on board takes some of our time, but it is necessary for us to get up to faster speeds. Once our new team members settled in, we’ll have bit more time again to focus on software releases.

Web configurator 2.0:

The saying that the last 10% of a product takes as much effort to finish as the 90% before is very true. The Web configurator is in a really good state, we could maybe even release it as is, but we’d really like to tune a few small details to make sure you’ll get the best initial impression. We’re working around the clock to add these finishing touches.

Q&A:

We got great questions for the last Q&A and a lot of positive feedback for the event. We’ll do another one in the coming weeks and will share an update here once we locked the date in.

Our days are getting more and more busy as we’re getting closer to having the first units assembled. We appreciate your support and patience. We don’t want anything more than to ship the remotes (and docks) to you

[leonski]

If I read correctly? Remote 3 does NOT have the OLED display.