Just a liiittle more time
over 3 years ago – Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 03:31:32 PM

Hey guys, I’m so sorry, I'm not going to make it in the Christmas chaos. I'm running myself a little ragged and it's affecting my time at home with my kids. I am going to resume post Christmas, so give me another couple weeks for this first batch! And thank you so much for your persistent patience.

If there are any of you who were thinking of using Bitties as Christmas gifts, I want to do this so you have something to show them - email me the details of who you are and your relationship, and I’ll make a personalized demo video.

[email protected]

Cheers everyone!

-Nick

Still alive
over 3 years ago – Tue, Dec 01, 2020 at 05:03:14 PM

Happy Monday everyone!

I’m sorry I disappeared there for a few weeks. Turns out having two kids is harder than I thought. One’s poopin and crying, the three year old trying to talk over the crying, it’s a silly madhouse. 

They go to sleep late, wake up early, meanwhile any energy I had left I’d spend doomscrolling about the election 🤦🏻‍♂️  (good thing that seems settled).

Anyway, bright side is we’ve had three days of daycare through all of covid (which amounts to about 15 hours of studio time per week, just enough for me to do some client work to stay afloat), BUT this is the first Monday in the history of this year that we now have an additional babysitter. Friday too! And next week. Whaaat, I just got like 60% more time.

So you first 200 people have no fear, you’ll have yours before Christmas. I have 50 already assembled, they all need to be programmed, put in boxes and shipped. Slow and steady.

If anyone wants to reach out and say hi, my door is always open - [email protected]

-Nick

PS. It’s been really nice getting to know the few people that ping me here and there. And thanks for all the words of encouragement.

Babies and Bitties
over 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 06, 2020 at 10:01:10 PM

Some of you may have guessed, a few days after my last update we went and had a baby. A girl named Maya. She's a little snuggly roll of cuteness. 

Assembly

Simon Chase is the man behind the Bitty desktop software. And after he saw that last update about the assembly fiddly, he emailed me out of the blue with a design for a jig to make that task easier! Idea is to drop the posts and speaker into a shape that holds all the pieces in the right place, making the screwing a lot easier. 

I'm going to hand off a few parts later today so he can test! Thank you Simon!

Shipping

My wife and I are getting a handle on having another baby in the house (everyone's pretty bleary eyed tbh), but I've started to manage to sneak an hour here and there of productive time. And I now have everything I need at home to make this happen, so slowly but surely, some of you (in order of backing) will start getting your Bitties within two weeks, my wife offered to help too :)

Assembly in Progress!
over 3 years ago – Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 01:03:36 AM

Hey friends!

I'm putting these Bitties together!!  Some behind the scenes below!

First order of business: put the speakers on the Bitties. The Bitties come to me as mostly assembled boards, but without the speakers, the button caps, and the knobs (and without the software). 

For most of the development, I just soldered the speaker straight into the board (there are two pins with pads to receive them). Since solder is strong, it felt sturdy. 

Then a friend dropped his Bitty a couple weeks ago and the speaker popped off. Fortunately, from the earliest prototypes, there have been additional holes on the board to accommodate extra mounting posts. Don't want anyone's speaking popping off, so posts it is!

Attaching the post to the speaker first proved the most reliable method. 

Putting the posts on the board first is fun and easy, but then aligning with speaker requires pushing stuff around.

Lessons

I could do this activity indefinitely. It's meditative and a labor of love. But it's slow as hell. The pics don't show the screwdriver slipping out and the tiny screws falling all over the place.

I got my wife to help, she did a couple, and then I don't think it was as fun for her as it is for me :)

Takeaway: it took me 3 hours to do 20 bitty speakers. Which is an unsustainable amount of time (like would take 30 hours to do 200, which would take a while even if I weren't a dad and didn't have a job). Unsustainable in the long run regardless - weeks to put a thousand speakers on? no way. 

I'm about to cut this time substantially. I ordered some phillips heads tiny screws which will be less slippy. And got a tiny powered screwdriver coming later today which should make this pretty fun. Will let you know how it goes.

Also a few friends have offered their help (thanks you guys!)

Baby Coming

My wife is due with our second child sometime at the end of the month, could be real soon, could be in a few weeks, but we've entered the statistical bell curve.

Obviously the goal is to ship some, or all of these 200 before that happens (and order the next batch).  Fingers crossed! 

Also, got a boatload of packaging stuff from Uline! Did not expect it to be such a mountain! (I'm using off the shelf white cardboard boxes and bubble mailers for these, combined in a way that I think turns out fairly stylish :) 

I'm glad to have left behind the custom packaging idea. More money for more trash is silly. I bet there's a way to reduce the amount of stuff even still. This has been an incredible mountain of learning.

That's all for today! More to come!

♥ Nick

A Big ol Box of Bitties!!
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 05, 2020 at 12:37:04 AM

Could it be!? That there is a giant box of 200 Bitties in existence!? Yes, it can!

I’m writing this from my phone so will keep it super brief, pictures below!

I assembled and programmed a single Bitty, it works perfectly!!

Will return after the weekend to this bundle of joy!

Pwaa pwaaa pwaa pwaaa! -Nick

PS I completely agree with the recent comments that packaging isn’t important right now, only speed and safety.