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In this instalment of the Tingbot Times we’re talking project updates, Maker Faire and the launch of our Slack group for Tide developers. Let’s get to it!
First port of call - manufacturing.
We’re really happy with how things are going across the board. A lot of the main components have been ordered and received. Button caps, WiFi dongles, SD cards, case plastic and rubber feet are all slowly filling up Ken’s bedroom!
Much of our effort is focused on the injection moulded side caps of Tingbot. The toolmaker in Yorkshire has completed his work and produced some samples which we hope to receive early next week. Our next steps are to test these samples with our hardware to ensure we get a snug fit. Once we’re happy we will push the button and off we go!
We’re super excited about being able to produce these in the UK and we’ll be writing a longer update documenting the injection moulding process in detail when we visit our manufacturer in Newcastle in person.
We have also received a sample of the packaging that we have been busy designing. We’re looking forward to seeing it inked up and packed with your bots :)
Meeting the Makers
Last weekend we took Tingbot north to Maker Faire UK in Newcastle. We have been very fortunate to show at the Maker Faire over the last couple of years and they are always a fantastic experience. The Tingbot stall was buzzing with interest over the two days, with interesting questions and ideas from other makers keen to experiment with Tingbot.
A lot of our focus was on demonstrating just how easy it is to get coding and making apps for Tingbot, so Joe ran some mini-workshops which were great fun. Coders of all ages and levels were making demo apps in no-time! One 9 year old surpassed all expectations over the 2 days and built Hangman for Tingbot - he’ll be putting it up soon on the Tingbot Ocean. We were so impressed that we made him an honorary Tingbot team member and we look forward to seeing what he comes up with next…
Delivery Timelines
When the Pi 3 was announced we wanted to make sure that the Tingbot case fits the new model. Making these tweaks has pushed our production timelines back a wee bit. This shouldn’t impact delivery too much but we’d recommend bracing for a slight delay. We think that the added support for Pi 3 will be worth it!
The Community Corkboard
We are really keen to invite more of you to get involved with our development team. There is a lot happening on our GitHub already and based on feedback from Maker Faire we have launched a new Tingbot Slack channel.
The idea is that this will make it easier for the Tingbot development community to work on various parts of the project together such as improved unicode support for the Python libraries (emoji, anyone?), or improving the functionality of the tide-electron sidebar.
If you want to chat to us about developing for Tingbot visit our sign-up page and join the discussion!
See y’all there :)
- The Tingbot Team
