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Slightly back in stock 20190720 at tindie store

Posted: July 20 2019, 9:17 AM
by vputz
OK, sorry for the long long pause between batches; that whole baby thing takes a tremendous toll on any free time. We have five more (we make 8 at a time and some don't turn out or need more rework). A pity that the production is soooo slooooow; I'm proud to say that we were featured on Scott Hanselman's "Hanselminutes" podcast! https://hanselminutes.com/688/saving-th ... h-vic-putz

However, with the increase in privacy issues and my lack of time for maintaning and securing a server, I've moved the shop to https://www.tindie.com/stores/vputz/ ; most small makers that have dealt with them seem to like them, and it's a great relief having them handle the infrastructure. I'll be taking down the thingotron.com store (or just setting up a message and redirect) eventually as well as continuing to try and make the silly things. Slow going these days!

Anyway, many thanks for your patience. ALSO INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS: Tindie is a little more fussy on shipping information so right now it only allows US customers--it takes some effort for me to estimate international shipping, but please let me know! I'll be adding Australia and the UK first as that's where most of our international customers are from.

Cheers,
Vic

Re: Slightly back in stock 20190720 at tindie store

Posted: May 27 2020, 9:33 AM
by Das
Hey Vic, it seems I missed out on the last production run, any chance you're doing another? If not I'd be happy to put it all together myself, I'm fairly adept with my trusty JBC kit

Re: Slightly back in stock 20190720 at tindie store

Posted: June 28 2020, 20:02 PM
by vputz
Hey, Das-- sorry for the month-old reply but as you've noted this board doesn't move super fast. Will send you a PM so you get the note but replying here in case others want to see it.

Truth is, despite some incredible delays (toddler, wordwide pandemic, civil unrest as we live 1.5 miles from where George Floyd was killed, etc etc etc) the Orbotron is alive and well and we're doing our best to produce but no lie, this is pretty challenging!

The new version of the Orbotron is based around CircuitPython, so it's even easier to reprogram; we also have produced a little board that plugs into an Adafruit Feather M4 for real power users who want to, say, fly a drone with the SpaceOrb (I'm DYING for someone to do this but don't have the time). We just built about 9 of them and are trying to spin up production before we move, although bless us we're trying to take the soldering equipment in the first load (I love my wife, who honestly does much of the building these days).

Unfortunately, the "long pole in the tent" is the module we're basing the board around, the Seeeduino Xiao (Seeeduino made the very first OrbShield kits, for those who remember); they're good folks, and this module simplifies our production tremendously but we're still having some production issues.

Really sorry for the delays; this has been an incredibly challenging year and "self-sustaining hobby projects" (I can't seriously call this a business :) ) often get pushed to the background.