tl;dr Shipping has to be delayed by at least one month.
While we are busy all week pushing things ahead, we have come to run behind our planned schedule. There is two main reasons for this. The first one is big changes in both our personal lifes that require urgent attention. The second one is that we are beginning to feel the accumulated sum of small friction losses in sourcing as well as more administrative outside interactions.
Thus we have to update the timeline and push back the expected date for beginning to ship by one month to end of October 2021.
We do have four major tickets open before we can do that, which are assembly, furs, software updates, and packaging. Right now we are actively working on the first three of them. Packaging is still in the back row because we first need the set of shipped items to consolidate before it makes sense to design a packaging.
assembly
Printing of parts has finished with this stack of tail pieces
The first ten energymodules successfully assembled and tested for basic function. This board goes into the tail piece shown above.
Starting with the stock motors, replacing dumb boards …
… with smart sensorimotors, our Supreme motor control IP.
First thirty motors fully assembled and ready for electro-mechanical testing.
fur
Washing test of flatcat fur, all three types of fur freshly washed at 40 degree C, which they all seem to have survived well, healthy, and in shape. The grey and the red fabric have arrived and we expect the first few furs from the production batch to be delivered to the lab tomorrow. Golden autumn supplies are expected sometime this or the next week.
flatcat UI
Here’s a first screenshot of how the update and configuration app could look like. Development is done in collaboration with Richard of mr. hide.
๐ cognition wear
All three base colors for the jetpack sweater successfully prototyped and ready to be made in batch and brought to the street.
Campaign duration extended to end on October 11, 2021 11:59pm PDT
Delivery option pick-up-at-lab which has been requested cannot be added to claimed perks – please pledge for delivery to Germany and we will refund you when you pick up your items.
Hi all, dumping a stack of updates from the last few days
flatcat PCBs in the house
The manufactured PCBs for sensorimotor & energymodule arrived at the lab yesterday. This lead to the first run of component placement and baking in the oven today, to obtain the fully assembled electronics boards required for making a flatcat. This seemed to have worked reasonably well and the first sensorimotor was put into operation successfully.
Plain PCB with reflow paste applied
Mask used for applying reflow paste
Close-up of paste pads
Manual placement of components on paste pads
16 piece mini-batch
Close-up of single baked board
flatcat furs
Another fur has arrived this week from the prototyping done by our collaborator Karen Ellmer. The amount of available fake fur materials is pretty stunning. Right now we are working with a selection from the samples we have, to find a minimal functional design that we can ship with. Something that feels amazing and allows the cat to move freely.
These are the three top current candidates that you will be able to choose from prior to shipping. The red one on the left and the stripy one on the right are finished furs, the golden one in the middle is a mockup where we just folded the cloth. We will be testing these and order the supplies for making five or so of each of them.
Bakiwi workshopSept 2021
The first Bakiwi workshop after lockdown took place on Saturday, quite successfully with nine (9) Bakiwis walking out the door on their own for nine teams of builders. It was great to have all of you and we hope you enjoyed as much as we did. To be done again, watch out for upcoming dates.
These are two examples of RTFM
Unsoldering reverse mount LEDs
Battery pack heat catastrophy
We had a baby rat (some say it was a mouse) coming in for a visit. It then had to be removed from the premises via this contraption.
Owald setting up the rat guide
Rat guide floorplan
jetpack cognition wear
Our apparel campaign is coming along quite well, and like all that we do, subject to heavy development on the go. We now have demonstration exemplars for all three base colors. This is the black one, the lilac one will be posted soon.
jetpack sweater base color black. Note another new random variation of the logo mutant pattern inset.
But then taste this full use case as a robot pet holder, observed recently outside our lab.
The ultimate use case. Robot pet people wear cognitive.
For those of you who having one of the shirts, here is the true samples for the shirt’s base color. The jetpack tee two there is all of them in sizes S, M, L (limited quantities). For the direct-to-garment corporate insignia prints, we will only do anthracite and white. Go check.
True color photo-samples of t-shirt base colors.
Random stuff
We installed open graph and Twitter card plugins for our wordpress so social sharing is much improved with nice automatic summary previews.
Thank you, that’s it for today. As always, feel free to be in touch about your questions and comments, we hear you.
Wearing it looks like this, in front of the lab, and inside.
Is available in three base colors dark blue, black, lilac. Size can be chosen from standard size table, see campaign page for a size chart.
In addition to the amazing sweater designed and manufactured in cooperation with Elle Janssen / hit-in.tv, two types of printed t-shirts are available, the jetpack tee two (2), and the jetpack tee one (1).
jetpack tee two
Comes with three different motifs to choose from and shown in the picture. Usage example photos are shown below too.
