Today only good news all around!

Despite many Yellows on their way already, the last few weeks have been a busy time for us still: The update of the PoE version, smaller production improvements and lining up the next production runs have been the main focus.

Wrong update

Due to a mishap at Crowd Supply an update with the title "Setting Up Battery Alerts in Home Assistant" was sent out. This update wasn’t meant for Home Assistant Yellow backers, but for the WiCAN backers. We are not affiliated with the WiCAN project, and this wasn’t meant to be a cross promotion. We do of course wish WiCAN success, especially since Home Assistant support seems to be included :).

PoE version

As posted in our update in July, the PoE version has gone through a redesign round to make sure it adheres to all electromagnetic emission standards. The testing and redesign did took as a bit longer than expected. But it was worth the effort: Meanwhile, a pre-pilot run of 30 pieces have been produced and sent out for approval. We already got a confirmation that the radiated emissions are indeed within limits with this new version! The full approval will still take a few days, but the new Yellow PCBs have already been ordered, so we can start the production run soon.

Improved Layout of Yellow v1.3 with additional filtering stage

Shipping

Today we have good news: The first batch of the Home Assistant Yellow and Yellow Kit variants arrived at the Mouser warehouse! The units have started shipping as of today, and the remaining orders from this batch will ship through the rest of this week! You’ll receive a shipping confirmation email once your order ships. Please make sure your shipping address is up-to-date!

When we from the Nabu Casa team wrote our last update, we expected a fast delivery to our backers, similar how to we receive prototypes from our factory. Unfortunately, that did not materialize. Shipping goods in large quantities is quite complex. We didn’t realize that at the time, as we rely on Crowd Supply (which in turn relies on Mouser) for the transfer of the Yellows from Hong Kong to the Mouser warehouse in the U.S.

What makes the transfer take so much longer than we expected? For one, air fright is prohibitively expensive. The fact that we include a CR2032 Lithium/Manganese battery adds cost when shipped via air freight, and requires additional paper work as well. Finally, transferring large amounts of goods across borders needs lots of paper work and can take quite some time as well. All in all, we are not a logistics company, and we are glad we can rely on Crowd Supply and Mouser to take on these tasks.

With the insights we got to the shipment process of the Home Assistant Yellow and Yellow Kit variants, we have to adjust the expected shipment date of the Yellow PoE variant as well. We are still planning to manufacture the Yellow PoE variants in October. However, with the transfer timing in mind combined with holiday-related delays, we expect the delivery to our backers in January 2023.