Hello everybody! Today is the last day of our crowdfunding campaign to bring Pocket Integrator to life. Than you again for your continued support! Our current funding goal is just enough to get the first batch of 100 Integrators manufactured and out into the world. If we can find backers for half of that batch, Crowd Supply will stock the other half in their online store for future sales. So we’re actually very close to success! If you haven’t backed us yet, now is the time to help push us over the top.

Once the campaign completes, my next little to-do item is to resolve, once again, a few more part-supply issues that have cropped up just since the beginning of this campaign six weeks ago! Don’t worry, it’s just one capacitor and one regulator, and there are lots of potential replacements, so it’s no big deal. In 2022, this sort of thing is considered normal.

A much more satisfying moment, at least for me, will come once all payments are processed and we can finally order all the components to populate those first 100 boards. Once those components are purchased, they can no longer suddenly vanish! So I won’t have to do any more redesigning around unavailable parts, and I can finally put on my "I Survived The 2022 Chip Shortage!" T-shirt. That’s going to be very relaxing! Recently I had a funny dream where I couldn’t get into my house because the doorknobs had all vanished, so I went to the doorknob store to buy new ones, but the store guy said "Sorry, you’ll have to wait three years for a doorknob. Supply chain issues." I’m looking forward to not having those dreams any more. =)

After one more round of testing with the final board and its final set of parts, I’ll order the PCBs from our manufacturer, send those and the components to our board assembler, and wait to receive back the assembled boards. While waiting for that, I’ll be finishing the instruction manual and setting up the support forums. When the beautiful new boards finally arrive and pass QA testing, we’ll package them for shipment and send them off to Mouser, Crowd Supply’s fulfillment partner. I will post regular updates here to let you know how all of that is going.

Then, at last, Mouser will start shipping Pocket Integrators to all our backers! And that’s where the fun starts. Because for one side of my brain the design/electronics/programming part of this project has been very gratifying, but the other side of my brain is really itching to see and hear the rhythm and music that people will make with their Pocket Integrators! So I’ll be producing some dorky-yet-instructional videos to help you get started, while making myself available on the support forums to answer your questions and assist however I can. I look forward to seeing and hearing you there.

MEANWHILE: if you’re a hacker with some cool ideas for how you could reprogram a Pocket Operator, then I’d really like to get in touch with you ASAP! I have a limited number of pre-release PI boards that are ready to be used for flashing and debugging. I’d like to send you one to try out. Please drop me a line if you’re interested! Use the Ask A Technical Question link, below.

Cheers! And thanks again for supporting Pocket Integrator!

-mykle-