Enclosure Samples

ICOMold has completed the mold and has created the initial set of samples. The samples should arrive in the mail this week, but they sent me this photo of the samples:

With a photo this low resolution it’s difficult to tell things like the quality of the surface finish, but there are a few important things I can see:

• The assembled PCB sample I gave them appears to fit well

in the enclosure.

• There is no significant gap between the two halves of the enclosure so they

were able to get a tight fit.

• The bottom snap latches completely which should hold the enclosure together

well in combination with the screw.

I will only be able to tell for sure when I get the parts in my hands later this week, but it’s looking likely that I should be able to approve the mold for production. I believe the parts will also be silkscreened, so I will share some high resolution photos of the production parts in a future update.

Reliability Problem

I’ve recently discovered that Signet devices can become unstable: I’ve noticed that, after spending some time in my pocket, the startup light will flicker upon insertion. Furthermore, in some cases, Signet would fail to recognize some button presses after having a startup problem. In all cases the device would recover over time while idle.

In the short term, it’s mostly an annoyance, but I’m concerned that the root cause may be damaging the device. I am committed to finding the exact cause of the problem and implementing a solution. There does not appear to be any shorts or damaged solder joints, so I’m looking at static discharge and power supply noise as possible causes. The solution may be as simple as swapping out a single capacitor on the board, in which case there should be no significant delay. I will write another update in about a week with updated findings.