Thumby Color

Thumby Color Production / Shipping Update - May
9 months ago – Wed, May 28, 2025 at 03:11:56 PM

Thank you all again for your support and I want to apologize to those of you who have not yet received your Thumby Colors, we're almost through all of the shipping, but this has taken much longer than originally estimated.

As of today, we have shipped 1813 orders and have less than 200 orders left to ship out.

Production Update

We've been producing Thumby Colors at a steady pace during March and April, building 1000 at time.  Our most recent delay was due to the glass overlay that attaches to the screen.  We ran into a number of sub-par ones, so we had to order another 1000 sets of glass overlays to get the final units out.  These are in now and orders are again going out.  

Shipping & Schedule

Even though we have shipped over 1800 orders, quite a few backers with numbers under 1800 have not shipped yet - this is typically due to us not having all of the items necessary for the order at that particular time.  But we do expect to have all of these orders out over the next several weeks.  We have also locked down all of the remaining orders in Backerkit and moved these to our shipping system, please contact me directly if you need to make a change (such as an address update).  

I want to apologize again for the delays and to those of you who haven't gotten your Thumby Colors yet, we really want to get these out to you as soon as possible and can't wait for you to get your hands on them!

Thanks!

Ken and the TinyCircuits Team

Thumby Color Production / Shipping Update - March
about 1 year ago – Wed, Mar 05, 2025 at 01:28:25 PM

Thank you all again for your support and I want to apologize to those of you who have not yet received your Thumby Colors - we've had several setbacks that have slowed down production much more than anticipated.

As of today, we have shipped 807 orders (about 1500 Thumby Colors) out and have recently started to get Special Edition Thumby Colors out as well.  We also have around another 150 orders shipping this week.

Production Update

We have definitely run into some production issues that have caused the delays since the last update, though this should be behind us now.  On the last batch of Thumby Color PCBs through the SMT process, we had issues with a part on the board not soldering well (a PTC, a resettable fuse), which led us to have to manually solder this on every board which added quite a bit of time to build up each Thumby Color unit.  

We've modified this particular component to a new part from a different supplier and it is soldering reliably now.  We've just run a small batch of 200 more Thumby Color boards through the process, and they are all coming out correctly, so we'll be building a new batch of 1000 boards next.

Shipping & Schedule

Even though we have shipped over 800 orders, quite a few backers with numbers under 800 have not shipped yet - this is typically due to us not having all of the items necessary for the order at that particular time.  There are also backers with backer numbers over 800 that have shipped.  However we are getting all of the items together and will be catching up on these early backers first and try to ship in order of backer numbers as much as we can.

At our current pace, we expect to ship 150 more orders this week.  The next two weeks we'll be building another 1000 Thumby Colors, which will let us get out another 400 - 600 orders out before the end of the month.   

I want to apologize again for the delays and to those of you who haven't gotten your Thumby Colors yet, we really want to get these out to you as soon as possible and can't wait for you to get your hands on them!

Thanks!

Ken and the TinyCircuits Team

Thumby Color Production / Shipping Update - January
about 1 year ago – Wed, Jan 22, 2025 at 04:44:52 PM

I hope everyone is doing well and Thumby Colors are starting to get out to more people - though it is still going slower than we hoped earlier this month.

As of today, we have shipped 421 orders (about 800 Thumby Colors) out - this is starting to ramp up and we have the next batch of 2000+ Thumby Colors being made now. 

Production Update

Injection Molded Plastic - All of the plastic for all of the different Thumby Color options have been molded and have been received, however we did have some issues during inspection and had to make a change and get more plastic molded up, which has caused some delays.  

Electronic Production - We are currently in the process of building our next batch of Thumby Color PCBs through our SMT process - the first batch was 500 boards, this next batch is around 2000 boards.

Shipping & Schedule

Everyone should have received a survey email from Backerkit - if not, please contact me via a private message here on Kickstarter and we can get this to you.  We are locking down orders when we a close to shipping your order out.

We are shipping by backer number - assuming we have all the items required at the time to ship your order. 

We are shipping out 20 - 30 Thumby Colors per day, but do hope to get this ramped up to 50 - 100 Thumby Colors per day very soon, which will really start to get out a lot of the orders.  

Thanks again everyone for your support and patience - I know it's been frustrating for some of you to keep waiting but we really look forward to getting these out to everyone very soon!

Thanks!

Ken and the TinyCircuits Team

Thumby Color Production / Shipping Update - December
about 1 year ago – Thu, Dec 26, 2024 at 11:50:53 AM

Happy Holidays to everyone!  I want to first apologize for the lack of updates for Thumby Color and the delays in getting these out.  I know many people wanted these in time for the holidays, and unfortunately we are behind our original schedule by over a month at this point.

I do thank you all for your patience, and if anyone wants a refund because we didn't get these out to you in time, please contact me and we'll refund you in full.

As of today, we have shipped 271 orders (about 400 Thumby Colors) out during our initial production as we ironed out the production process.  Now that we have most of the production issues resolved, we'll be able to ramp up production volume to get orders out much quicker.

Production Update

Injection Molded Plastic - All of the plastic for all of the different Thumby Color options have been molded and have been received.  

Electronic Production - We are now building the next batch of Thumby Color PCBs through our SMT process - the first batch was 500 boards, this next batch is around 2000 boards.

Final Testing / Software Load

To load the final software and games onto a Thumby Color, we have a Linux PC with a several PCI USB expansion cards so we can load a whole batch of Thumby Colors at once over USB. Then, each Thumby color is tested prior to packaging.

Shipping & Schedule

Everyone should have received a survey email from Backerkit - if not, please contact me via a private message here on Kickstarter and we can get this to you.  We are locking down orders when we a close to shipping your order out.

Starting early January, we should be shipping 50 - 100 Thumby Colors per day, which will really start to get out a lot of the orders.  

Canada Delays

Due to the Canadian Postal strike, all USPS packages to Canada have been delayed and we're currently unable to ship to Canada.  With the strike concluding, these packages should begin moving again in early January and we'll be able to ship new Canada orders around then as well.

Thumby Color Review

Linus from Linus Tech Tipsreviews the Thumby Color

Thanks again everyone for your support and patience - I know it's been frustrating for some of you to keep waiting but we really look forward to getting these out to everyone very soon!

Thanks!

Ken and the TinyCircuits Team

Thumby Color Production / Shipping Update
over 1 year 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

Injection Molded Plastic - 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.  

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.

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.  

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