It has been a few months since I have updated our hackaday.io project log. Here is what has happened over the past couple of months.

The power boost stretch goal was a bit more difficult than anticipated, and also resulted in several unexpected problems: ground loops, noise, and I2C bus capacitance tolerances! It has been a wild ride, but we finally resolved these in February.

We ordered PCBs (about 1500) and delivered them to our manufacturer near Seattle in early March. The production run has started, and we tested the first panel off the line. It worked great! We authorized construction of the rest of the panels.

This means we should have HamShield shipping by early next month! Our first shipments will go to Kickstarter backers and then off to our pre-orders. After this is all done, we will be able to fulfill orders in real time until we work out some sort of distribution agreement. Our HamShield team is small, and we would rather focus on improving HamShield and making new related products than work with shipping logistics.

We learned a lot about Kickstarter, RF hardware, and other aspects of the project that I hope to talk about in a future update.

Take care,

Casey