Whew! After many late nights of assembly, testing, re-testing and putting the modules together, they are now on their way to Crowd Supply to be distributed to you!

I can’t wait to see you lighting these up!

What’s it like to make few hundred of these

After the PCBs were all assembled and tested, I set out to put the PCBs and the plastic pieces together. The 3D printed pieces needed some minor cleanup. The diffuser sheets needed to be cut into small rectangles to be fit into the 3D printed shells. Thankfully one of my cousins and an uncle was in town and they were able to help me out with some of these steps in exchange for a tour of Seattle. Here’s what it looked like when we were ready to put the modules together:

We made a production line consisting of the following stations:

• Cutting the diffuser sheets
• Laying the plastic shells all facing the same direction and inserting the diffusers
• Putting in the plastic inserts into the shells
• Putting the PCBs on the assembly and screwing it in with two screws

This job is very well suited for multiple people but even after a few hours of working together, I had some more to do by myself:

The next day I was assembling more modules and filling a big box with them:

I performed a final test on every module to make sure they are all working, and laid them out to see if they all look ok. This turned into a little photosession because it’s not every day I can take pictures of 233 modules that were ready to be shipped!

I then packaged up all modules into a tightly fitting box, wrapped some bubblewrap around the box and put the box inside of a bigger box. It is impressive that all 233 modules fit into a small box that I had left over from 3D printer filament.

After the modules were all ready to go, I have soldered enough connectors so that every customer would have a convenient way to play with Neosegment. You can use these connectors to plug the Neosegment modules into a breadboard via female/male jumper cables or solder your own wires to them without damaging the connector on the modules.

Top pin: +5V, Middle pin: Data, Bottom pin: GND

Now, the modules are in transit and should be at Crowd Supply tomorrow!

When will I receive my modules?

It takes Crowd Supply a few days, up to a week, to start shipping the modules to the customers in the US and all around the world. Domestic backers should start receiving your modules late next week and international backers after that. If you need to update your address, you can do so on your account page. Additionally, you will be notified via email when your order ships.

If you placed a pre-order, those orders will be filled by October 15 and likely much sooner as I solder up more boards next week.

What’s next?

It looks like Neosegment is picking up some steam. As I’m writing this, a few hundred Neosegment PCBs are being made and assembled by PCBWay to fulfill the larger demand. I am still going to be doing the 3D printing of the shells and inserts until I find a better way of producing the plastic part on this scale.

Crowd Supply will have these modules in stock for a while and I’ll be looking for other distributors when I have some considerable stock of the modules.

The Neosegment website, schematics and documentation will be going live this weekend and during the next week so that you can get started right when you get your modules.

A word of Thanks

I owe a lot of thanks to my supporting wife who’s been really great help during the assembly and quality control of the modules. My uncle and cousin who happened to be in Washington State also had essential amount of work put into the assembly process. I wouldn’t be able to pull this off without the help of my family and friends so they all deserve my gratitude.