Quick update: mmWave Smart Switch with Presence Sensing Radar | Indiegogo
I’ll copy the text here for reference:
July 7th Overall Project Update
Hey everyone!
I wanted to give an update as it’s been a little bit. There’s been a lot going on behind the scenes that I’d like to share.
- Manufacturer Selection
- Contract Negotiation
- Firmware Development
These three things have been taking up a lot of time and while they’re not, “sexy” per se, they are important in setting the foundation for the project.
Manufacturer Selection
We’ve decided to go with a different manufacturer for this project they manufacturer have mmWave experts that have been working on the technology for a couple years now and presented us with the best design to overcome a lot of the obstacles we brought up. They also seemed more knowledgeable than our current manufacturer and had better ties to Silicon Labs, which is nice as there are lots of eyes on this project.
What gave us even more confidence is that they have created smart switches for 5+ years now and are very familiar with our design (I’m not sure if that was a good or bad thing – good in that they are fimiliar with it which means less obstacles – bad in that it may mean someone is trying to copy it). They’ve created switches for a couple of the largest IoT companies and are confident they can create ours, especially since most of the R&D has already been done as they’re using the current 2-1 as a reference point.
Finally, ironically, their firmware engineers have worked on our projects in the past as they used to work for a different manufacturer that we used for our Gen 2’s.
Contract Negotiation
Since this is a new manufacturer, we had to make sure we have the proper MSA (manufacturer service agreement) in place as well as the other various important contracts. This takes a long time and what has consumed a lot of our time. We don’t want to rush into anything before the contract is signed as we’d lose our leverage.
Firmware Development
The last piece of the puzzle was firmware development and what can/cannot be used for the mmWave switches. We managed to get the source code for our current 2-1 switches and while negotiating with the new manufacturer, we were able to determine that almost all of the firmware used on our current switches can be used on the new switches, so we’re way ahead of the firmware development schedule. The only new portion is the mmWave parameters.
This is a huge win for us because we had some growing pains on the 2-1 switches that we didn’t want to have to experience over again, which was another risk involved with moving to a new manufacturer.
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So where does that leave us on timeline? Well, where we delayed on negotiations, we made up for on firmware development timeline and at this time we believe we’re still on track for the end of December. But of course, I will keep everyone posted.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
Eric
Founder | Inovelli