Dear snickerdoodlers,

Sorry to leave you all hanging – the last few weeks have absolutely flown by. Here’s a quick update on where things stand:

First off, after ironing out some supply chain “issues” (see: having your distributor increase your key component pricing 25-60% with no notice and for no apparent reason while pushing your lead times out 11 weeks…), our ‘test’ snickerdoodle batch is * finally * on the assembly line. These units are scheduled be ready next week and will (hopefully) provide us with some much-needed insight into what’s causing the production yield issues we’ve been seeing.

Shipments are still making their way out Crowd Supply’s door as new components arrive, so please be sure to keep your shipping address up-to-date. As mentioned in the past, we have extremely limited insight into which orders are going out when and we realize some of the messages you’ve received in your account regarding ship dates, the accessory delivery dates on the campaign page, and other information has been a bit confusing and frustrating. All we can do is work with what we’ve got and keep Crowd Supply “fed” with as much product as possible.

Along those lines, brace yourself for some GOOD news:

For those who missed it, we’re pleased to announce the highly anticipated arrival of…piSmasher!

Yes, at long last, the piSmasher is here. You might notice some differences compared to the previous renderings and specs, so here’s the breakdown (more subpar pics at the end).

piSmasher (4.0) has:

• 2.5 mm x 5.5 mm DC power jack
• one standard HDMI Type A receptacle supporting 1080p60 3D video output
• one standard HDMI Type A receptacle supporting 1080p60 3D video input
• two RJ45 1000Base-T gigabit Ethernet jacks (routed through programmable logic)
• four USB 2.0 hi-speed standard-A host receptacles
• one 3.5 mm stereo audio line-in
• one 3.5 mm stereo audio line-out
• one 3.5 mm headset jack (stereo audio, mono microphone)
• one male 40-pin TFM header for access to 25 snickerdoodle JC1 reconfigurable I/O with supply (1.8 V / 3.3 V / 5 V) and I/O (1.8 V / 3.3 V) voltage selection jumpers
• one male 16-pin "expansion" I/O header
• one 2-cell LiPo battery charging circuit
• one 14-pin 2mm Xilinx JTAG header
• I2C Identification and configuration EEPROM
• includes: four adhesive-base locking PCB supports
• dimensions: 3.5" x 5.663” (88.9 mm x 143.8 mm)
• MSRP: $195

piSmasher has certainly come a long way since its conception and we’re extremely excited to have these finally rolling off the production line. We’re running through bringing up the board, which consists primarily of the following:

• Test/verify power rail functionality [DONE]
• Test/verify batter charging circuit, operation [IN PROGRESS]
• Bring up USB/USB hub [DONE]
• Bring up Gigabit Ethernet [IN PROGRESS]
• Bring up HDMI in/out [NEXT]
• Bring up audio in/out/headset [IN QUEUE]

Once everything is verified and any necessary tweaks are complete, we’ll get these cranking. Look for another update in a couple weeks to see how we’re progressing. We’ll be posting status updates on Twitter as well, so be sure to follow us.

That should cover it for now. Thanks for hanging in there everybody. We’re as eager as you are to get snickerdoodle & friends in your hands and if all goes well (which, admittedly, it rarely does), it won’t be much longer…

Sincerely,

the krtkl crew