New battery surround
almost 9 years ago – Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 12:43:14 AM

Hey all,

The 3D printed sample of the new battery surround parts has just turned up from the lovely folks at CamdenBoss.

We just wanted to share some pictures of it with you (it looks a lot nicer than the laser cut version and should be more durable too!):

As you can see, it is now 3 pieces and has moulded mounting posts in the parts to keep the battery even more safe and secure! This sample fits perfectly on the PiJuice board, and we have now approved it for manufacture of the injection moulds. The final versions will be transparent though, so will look even better. 

They are also available on our GitHub page as .STEP files in case you want to get a head start and start printing some replacements - https://github.com/PiSupply/PiJuice/tree/master/Surround

More soon :-)

Thanks,
Aaron and the PiJuice team

Progress, battery connector, Raspberry Pint and Pi Party...
about 9 years ago – Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 04:26:03 PM

Hi all,

To start with - just wanted to apologise for the delay in updating. Things have been pretty hectic at Pi Supply HQ the last month with preparations for a number of events (more on that below) as well as a fair bit going on behind the scenes with PiJuice and beyond.

We have a fair bit to share, so we will jump straight in...

Production Progress

Things have been a lot slower in getting production underway than we thought and this is mostly due to the sourcing side of things. Same as before, there are some long lead time components which are causing problems but we are moving forward slowly but surely.

We hope to soon be able to share a production date soon - we are conscious of the fact that this is what *all* of you are waiting to hear - we just want to make sure it is a reliable one.

We are being very careful, and verifying everything at every stage - at this point, we would rather delay by a small amount more and have the best possible product rather than cut corners and have you end up with a delay AND a sub-par product. We hope most of you would agree with that outlook.

And most of all - we thank you for your continued patience.

Here are some shots of the PiJuice working beautifully with the PaPiRus HAT and by itself:

Battery connector issue

Whilst testing some of the initial production samples more thoroughly alongside getting manufacture up and running, we also noticed that on the larger 2300mAh battery we were seeing an issue with a small portion of the batteries and board where the battery was not making good contact. After investigating this thoroughly, we found that the issue was the battery connector itself - the pins of the connector are 1.4mm above the PCB, and unfortunately this was on the limit of tolerances of the battery. It seems that when both the battery and the battery connector were at the higher end of their mechanical tolerances, they did not properly mate. 

This was OK on some of the batteries, but not on others. As you can see in the above picture, the battery on the right has battery contacts that are flat, have a larger and flatter surface area, and go all the way to the bottom edge. Unfortunately, some of the batteries (as the two left ones in the picture) have got more rounded connectors with less surface area that do not go completely to the edge.

This was not an issue in the original phones the batteries were meant for. As you can see in the above photo, they had a PCB with a connector on the edge where the battery contacts were hanging down vertically from the edge and therefore made good contact across the entire length with both of the same ones. With the PiJuice, this original orientation is not possible to achieve.

Fortunately there is a part with an identical PCB footprint from the same manufacturer, AVX, where the contacts are 2.1mm above the board (instead of 1.4mm - there is not much in it but it but that 0.7mm makes all the difference) and after testing with this connector we have established that it works correctly with all battery combinations.

We also, in the interim, devised two other ways to still use the old connector, should we have needed to either now or in the future. You can see pictures of these below:

They both use a small piece of 1.6mm PCB, which is designed to be just big enough to fit the 1.4mm battery connector. The first one shows a version which is screwed to the existing PiJuice PCB and the second shows a version which is soldered to the existing PiJuice PCB. Both work equally well functionally, so if there are shortages of connectors in the future this could be an alternative way around it, whilst still using the 1.4mm one. We are unlikely to need to use it - but always good to have a backup plan!

These ones in the pictures look pretty awful - because they were quick and dirty prototypes. A production version would look far nicer :-)

Raspberry Pint and Pi Party events

Our fantastic team member Francesco, is one of the founders of the Raspberry Pint meetup in London. We originally were supposed to go to one on the 24th Jan (as mentioned in our latest update) but unfortunately this was cancelled due to a train derailment in Lewisham which meant the organisers and a lot of others coming from Kent/Essex weren't able to get there.

In any case, there was another event on the 28th Feb, which Aaron and John attended and Aaron did a speech and show and tell at the event. There is a video of this event, but unfortunately the sound isn't great:

https://www.periscope.tv/w/1MYxNLBoaWyGw

We also went to the Raspberry Pi Birthday Event (otherwise known as Pi Party) in Cambridge over the last weekend to celebrate 5 years of Raspberry Pi:

We met at least a dozen PiJuice backers at the event and showed the PiJuice / PaPiRus demo pictured above to all of them. We are even more excited to get these shipping now, than ever before. It was great to get so much positive feedback on the design and the newly added features.

Battery Surround and cases etc

As you will know from previous updates, we have been working with the lovely people at CamdenBoss for the new injection moulded battery holder/surround. We hope to have a 3D printed sample of that very soon to show you in the flesh and test on the board. Will post pictures once it is done.

Since that work on the surround has been completed we have subsequently had discussions with them about creating a PiJuice case specifically designed for portable and mobile projects and allowing easy but protected access to the GPIO pins for more HATs etc. 

We have also been talking to them about the potential for an IP rated / weatherproof case for all of your outdoor projects.

These discussions have gone very well, and CamdenBoss are already hard at work with concepts for these. As soon as we have anything we will share it with you. This is by no means a priority, but most of the work on this front will be done by CamdenBoss so it will not effect the timelines or production of the PiJuice module itself.

Back with more soon...

All the best,
The PiJuice team

Final surround design, Raspberry Pint PiJuice demo tomorrow (24th Jan)
about 9 years ago – Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 12:08:52 AM

Hi all,

Just a quick one to show you the final surround design by our lovely friends at CamdenBoss.

 This surround will work with the 1400mAh, 1820mAh and 2300mAh batteries and provides both vertical and horizontal support in a single package! We will likely also be producing a "top plate" to give extra vertical support for more extreme usage scenarios but this one pictured should be sufficient for most peoples needs. This will be injection moulded so the tolerances will be much better than laser cut.

Raspberry Pint - PiJuice on show

Do you live in/near London? Want to see the final PiJuice design?

If you answered yes to both of those questions, you should make your way over to the Raspberry Pint meetup in London tomorrow (at The Miller pub next to Guy's Hospital / London Bridge) as we will be demoing it there! It is a free event so you can just turn up!

More info on the event page here - https://www.meetup.com/Raspberry-Pint-London/

Thanks,
Aaron and the Pi Supply team

Status Update January
about 9 years ago – Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 07:44:39 PM

Hi all,

Hope you all had a great holiday period! Just a quick update for you, but want to keep you in the loop.

Since our last update we have just been doing final design reviews, updates to silkscreens, battery surround design work (as we are now injection moulding this with our partner CamdenBoss), packaging and guide design checks etc.

We finished those just after the holiday period, and have submitted all these details to the manufacturer, Embest, for them to update us with the revised quote (should be pretty much identical to before based on our BOM etc) as well as a revised timeline for production.

We are still waiting to receive these details, and unfortunately, as Embest are based in China, we have the Chinese New Year holiday to contend with now as well (they are leaving this week and back around 7th Feb) so we have a little delay whilst we wait for that. But that gives us time to work on some other stuff in the background - such as putting the finishing touches on the Firmware and Software side of the project. Once these are complete we will be putting them on Github for you all to look at.

We are also exploring some different ways to ship out the modules to you that may speed up the shipping process - such as getting Embest/Farnell to ship directly to backers or using a Chinese "fulfillment house" to ship them direct from China to backers. This should take a couple weeks out of the process (as we do not have to ship to us first, and then to you) and since these types of fulfillment facilities have much larger workforces than we do it should mean all of the pledges can be shipped out in a much shorter time than if we do it ourselves. Worst case scenario we will ship them ourselves, but hopefully we can save some time by doing it one of these alternative ways (and save ourselves some time too!).

Sorry there is nothing more "meaty" to share with you - pictures etc - but it is now just a case of tying up loose ends and getting manufacture started so it is mainly information and emails flowing back and forth at the moment rather than anything tangible.

Hope to have more to share with you shortly!

Thanks,
Aaron and the PiJuice team

Update video, legal issues, happy holidays!
over 9 years ago – Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 05:57:29 PM

Hey backers,

As mentioned in the video below, I am typing this reply from a Pi3 that is being powered by a PiJuice! It has been a very long time coming - but we are pretty confident now that we are about ready to start the manufacture process. The video should save me typing too much (apologies in advance for the portrait video!):

The next steps will be to finish the testing process (nearly done) and compile the files and data needed to send to the manufacturer. Since we have been through this process with them before, it should not take too long, although we do have the Christmas holidays to contend with.

Once that is done, we should have a really good idea of ongoing timelines for production and will share these with you in due course. We are getting extremely excited to be so close to the finish line!

Add on shipping

As you will remember from previous updates we have been shipping out add ons to people who ordered them - including solar panels, Pi3s, SD cards, power supplies and more (the only things we are not shipping are the maker kits, additional batteries, project guides, stickers and PiJuice modules). We have completely shipped all EU and UK add ons, and are about 75% of the way through the rest of the world add on shipping. Since this is an extremely busy time of year for mail delivery companies, they may take a little longer than normal to get to you but if you haven't already received your add ons you should keep your eye on the postman!

If you need to update your address at all (we have had a number of requests for this) you can do that from http://pijuice.backerkit.com 

Legal issues

We have mentioned throughout a number of updates some legal issues we have been facing in the background behind all of this that we could not really talk about - we had ongoing proceedings in the UK IPO (Intellectual Property Office) and so did not want to publicly say anything that could effect that case. 

Power Integrations were trying to stop us from registering a UK trademark for the words PI SUPPLY. They were claiming that their shapes logo is equivalent to the word PI and therefore that they could stop anyone from using the word PI in the relevant trademark classes - they are using or have used similar arguments against Pirelli, The Pi Hut, and even the Raspberry Pi Foundation themselves, among others, over the last few years.

We won our UK case against them back in June this year (see here if you are interested in legal paperwork) however they decided to appeal the decision which drew the process out even further (we currently also have three cases against them in the EU IPO including one where they are trying to register a trademark for the word PI). We had an appeal hearing in London on the 28th November and were waiting, quietly confident, to hear back from the Appointed Person. We are delighted to say that we had a call from our lawyers, the lovely people at Trademark Wizards (they really are wizards) yesterday and it turns out that the appeal was declined and we therefore won the case and our Pi Supply trademark will proceed to registration!

This saga has lasted over 2 years in total now, and is not finished yet (it actually started before we launched the PiJuice Kickstarter - so some things are slower than that after all!). But we have passed a major hurdle and this decision will strengthen our company now and in the future. It should also benefit the entire Raspberry Pi community who, naturally, want to use the word PI in their product and company names.

We know that not everyone is particularly enthused by legalese, so we will not go into any more detail here but we will be blogging and writing about the subject and everything we have learnt throughout this process to hopefully help others in the future, if they find themselves in a similar position. We will be posting links to these on our website and social media profiles so keep an eye out there if you are interested to find out more about this!

Happy holidays!

Merry Christmas to you all (if you celebrate) and have a wonderful New Year. Thanks for your patience and support throughout 2016 - and here's to a PiJuice filled 2017!

Love to you all and your families and hope you all have some time off scheduled!

Holiday wishes,
Aaron and the Pi Supply team