SPIDriver shipping

Apologies for the brief update this week. SPIDriver is nearly shipping, so there quite a lot going on.

This is the fourth crowdfunding campaign I've done, and it's the biggest both in number of backers and complexity. The assembly and testing of the SPIDrivers is a big part of this of course, and it's tempting to ignore everything else. But there are the other reward items, and boxes, and packing, and the mailout itself. At the end of the day, they all have to get done.

Here's me and my kid doing some through-hole assembly. I'm loading components into a jig and the kid's doing the soldering. After a few dozen we establish a rhythm and our throughput increases. At peak we can finish about 1000 pins per hour.

The packing supplies are from ULine. The total cost is about 60 cents per backer. Most of the cost is the sturdy boxes - which seems like a wise investment. What's good about ULine is that they have reliable next-day shipping. As the deadline approaches, this becomes much more important.

The actual mailout is handled by Endicia. Their desktop software so buggy I really can't recommend it, but they have a XML-to-mail system that seems to work OK. The Python module PyDicia provides an easy way to generate the XML file that Endicia then consumes. It's all quite straightforward, apart from the utter awfulness of dealing with international mailing addresses. Dymo label printers are reliable and well-documented, the 4XL is capable of printing these labels for international shipping.

By this time next week the shipping will all be completed, and people will be starting to receive their SPIDrivers. I'll be talking about a new project.