Hello Qi Aerista Supporters!

Here's our regular bi-weekly update to our wonderful backers.

After several weeks of meticulous work and close collaboration with our design partner Innozen, we are glad that we have finalized our new ID (industrial design). We are currently working closely with their design team on the mechanical and structural design, in which we aim to finish in about 2 weeks. Afterwards comes prototyping and testing, and if things go well, we will finally enter manufacturing phase. 

Several days ago we made a special visit to Innozen's Shenzhen office along with our manufacturing partners to review our latest design. During the meeting (in which we also enjoyed tea made by Qi Aerista), we discussed a list of topics to improve the new ID details and ensure a smooth transition to manufacturing phase. We will work hard with our partners to make sure our new design falls within our size & weight and unit cost targets.

Objectively speaking, the new design really generates a big WOW over our past designs. But again due to intellectual property and confidentiality reasons, we are not able to share with you the real looks of the new ID. The following is a summary of the key changes as compared with our current design:

One of the key changes regarding electronics is the switch to touch sensing buttons. To facilitate, we need to redesign the PCBA based on our current PCBA design. To expedite the work, we are in negotiation with several PCBA firms to perform the PCBA and firmware redesign work. This will run in parallel to our mechanical and prototyping work and should be finished within 1 month after we give the go ahead.

One common thing about these PCBA firms on our shortlist is that they are all experienced with developing IoT solutions based on our preferred IoT cloud platform. So we expect our IoT cloud integration work to run smoothly with our new PCBA once it's ready.  

In the next 2 weeks we will see:  

- Working with Innozen and our manufacturing partners on the mechanical and structural design details of our new ID  

- Preparation for our new prototype based on our new ID

- Discussions with PCBA manufacturers on new PCBA & firmware design for our new ID  

Together we are making Qi Aerista a reality!     

____________________  

Cheers,  

Rick @ Qi Aerista