Almond+ progress update and Forums - 2nd of August 2013

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pete
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Almond+ progress update and Forums - 2nd of August 2013

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Board development
By now we have our first Alpha test boards in house and by the end of this month we’re hoping to be able to share pictures with you of the early Beta boards that will feature the same board layout as what will be used in the final product.
Beyond this, our BOM (Bill of Materials) is nearly finalized, but we’ll bring you more details on this alongside the pictures of the Beta boards. The BOM will be finalized ahead of manufacturing the Beta boards and there shouldn’t be any major changes from that point onward.

Mechanical design
Due to the various hardware improvements mentioned in update #12, the height and width of the Almond+ has increased slightly, by about 15mm (about half an inch) per side, although we’re still working on refining this and the final size might be smaller. Part of the increase is size is due to antenna placement, as our aim to provide as good radio performance as possible without having to use external antennas. A lot of the final testing and tweaking will be doing of the Almond+ will involve antenna and radio performance, as this is one area where we don’t want to disappoint.

Forums
The big announcement in this update is that the Securifi forums are now officially open. We’d ask that all of our Kickstarter backers register with the same email address as the one you’re using for your Kickstarter account, as it’ll make it much easier for us to assign you your Kickstarter Backer status in the forums. However, this won’t be done immediately, as we expect the forums will be quite busy with people registering over the next week or so and we want to give everyone the chance to sign up first and then we’ll assign the Backer status once we see the registrations slowing down. We’ve already given the Developer and Beta testers early access to the forums, so you will find a few posts in the forums.

Note that our forums are monitored and moderated and we expect civil behaviour on the forums. Our support team will also be monitoring the forums and help answer your questions as needed. We hope that we can build a thriving community together where ideas can be shared both between community members, but also with us, as we’re more than happy to listen to your ideas and suggestions.

You can sign up for the forums by going to http://forum.securifi.com

A quick note about availability
We’ve had a few inquiries whether or not the Almond+ is still on schedule for September. This was covered in the backer only update #12 that we posted back in May. For those that missed that update, due to major hardware improvements of the Almond+, we were forced to delay shipment by about 3-4 months’ time and this still stands. If all goes smoothly, we’re expecting that the first part of the reward for the Beta and Developer level backers should be ready around September/October.

Cheers
The Almond+ Team
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/203 ... home/posts

I am on the Securifi forums as "Pete"; stop by and say hello eh?
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

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