Next Generation of the Playable Programmable Keychain
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Thumby Color Production / Shipping Update
16 days ago
– Wed, Nov 06, 2024 at 01:52:22 PM
It's been about two months since the end of the Thumby Color campaign and production is moving along on close to schedule and we're close to start shipping!
Production Update
InjectionMoldedPlastic - the injection mold design is complete, and the plastic for all the Thumby Colors in the different color options are being molded now. All the plastic parts for all Kickstarter units are on schedule to be molded and delivered next week.
Injection Molding machine - molding the Thumby Color clear shells
Electronic Production - We have the production version of the Thumby Color PCBs in house now and are building our first batch of boards. Below are some pictures of the SMT process of the panelized Thumby Color PCBs.
Thumby Color Panel in the Pick and Place machine
Every panel gets visually inspected before entering the reflow oven
Panels fresh out of the oven
Screen Assembly - the screens used for Thumby Color attach to the main board via a flex connector, and a glass bezel (with the Thumby Color logo) gets attached to the screen prior to putting this into the plastic shell.
Lots of Thumby Color Displays
Thumby Color Glass Bezels
Final Assembly - the board, screen with bezel, battery and plastic are then put together and secured with screws. We'll get some pictures of this process when we get the plastic in and start assembling these!
Shipping & Schedule
Everyone will be receiving a survey email from Backerkit in the very near future (hopefully by the end of this week / early next week) - this will collect your shipping address, let you choose options (like case color) and allow you to enter in the text you would like shown for your name if you chose the Special Edition level.
We're on target to start shipping the early bird units next week, followed quickly by the rest of the units.
Software Update
We've been hard at work creating a browser emulator for the Thumby Color, and now you can access it and poke around! https://color.thumby.us/code This is a very early alpha version, please visit the Discord server for the latest on this.
Thank you all again! We'll be sharing more as we ramp up production and start shipping.
Ken and the entire TinyCircuits Team
Thumby Color Kickstarter Over - Thank You All!
2 months ago
– Wed, Sep 11, 2024 at 12:18:21 PM
Thank you all for backing the Thumby Color! It was a huge success and we thank you all for your pledges and support during this campaign!
We're already getting things lined up for mass production of the Thumby Color - the injection molds for the plastic cases are already being manufactured, and people are already creating games for their Thumby Colors using the dev kits. We can't wait to start shipping them out!
We also excited to announce that we are continuing Thumby Color preorders here on Kickstarter via late pledges, so if you missed out on the original Kickstarter campaign you can still get in on getting a Thumby Color.
Next Steps
So what's next? Well, Kickstarter will send us the funds in about two weeks from now, and then we'll get all of the components order and start producing Thumby Colors in volume here in our Akron, Ohio factory in the next 1 - 2 months, with the plan to shipping out in Oct (for the early birds) and start getting the rest shipped out starting in November.
We will be using Backerkit to send out surveys in the near future, where we will request your address, and allow you to choose options and also allow you to add on additional items if you wish. We'll let you know ahead of time when we'll be sending these out.
Shipments will be done based on the order on when we received your pledge and also based on stock for your particular reward level.
Thank you all again! We can't wait to get these out to you.
Ken and the entire TinyCircuits Team
One week to the finish line!
3 months ago
– Tue, Sep 03, 2024 at 01:24:11 PM
Only one week remains on the Thumby Color Kickstarter campaign and the response continues to be great - over 1400 backers and 130K raised, thanks so much!
Thumby Transparent Purple Plastic Production
We took a trip to our plastic partners (David Wolfe Design) injection molding facility to watch the original Thumby case being molded in the new transparent purple color option, first available as an add-on via this Kickstarter campaign.
Watch the behind the scenes process of how we make the Thumby plastic cases, which is the same process we'll be doing soon for the Thumby Color.
