Project Updates - May 1st

Hey everybody!

Before I share anything new, I'd like to take a moment and apologize for the lack of communication within the past few weeks. There's been a ton going on behind the scenes - both good and bad - and I wanted to ensure I had everything taken care of before I announced anything new.

General Updates

To start with, I have some general news. Chances are you're currently reading this on my temporary website, and while I know it's nothing special, I wanted to make sure I had an accurate and up to date source of information while I finish developing the fancier website. For now, you can expect to receive weekly status updates on this site, but I'm hoping to be able to move to the new site sometime over the summer.

KBD2600 News

The Boardsource Situation

For any of you who may not know, the KBD2600 began as a collaboration with Boardsource.xyz, around September of last year. I had shared a render of a board I was making for personal use, and they liked it enough to reach out about working on the project together. So, as a relative newcomer to the world of keyboard design, I accepted.

For the first few months, everything went great. I made a ton of progress on the board and they handled any quotes and manufacturing concerns I had. Then, the new year rolled around and things slowed to a crawl. I'd been done with my portion of the project for a good two months at that point and I had no other choice but to wait for Boardsource to get things taken care of on their end so we could order a prototype and proceed with the groupbuy. Unfortunately, they were handling fulfillment of their previous board, the Mark 65, and didn't have as much time to dedicate to the KBD2600 as was needed in order to wrap everything up.

So, about a month ago we made the decision to part ways. To be clear, there are no hard feelings between Quinn, Cole and I, I'm still a huge fan of their work, have always been impressed with how professional they are, and I'll continue to be a regular Boardsource customer.

The New Vendor

After Boardsource and I agreed to part ways, I decided to reach out to a vendor about taking the project on and I'm happy to announce that they said yes. For now, they've asked to remain anonymous, however I can confidently say they're an EXTREMELY reputable vendor and very well known with the community.

The PCB

Initially, the plan was to have Boardsource design the PCB and deal with all the PCB manufacturing. But, after we parted ways that option was off the table, so I contacted Wilba (The PCB designer for Keycult and Rama Works) and he agreed to supply PCBs for the KBD2600. For anyone who may be unfamiliar with Wilba's work, his PCBs are considered some of the nicest and most reliable PCBs in the hobby. Having a Wilba Tech PCB included with the board all but guarantees there won't be any PCB problems.

The Status of The Board Itself

As of Wednesday, I'm completely finished with all of the CAD work for the board and the files are now ready for manufacturing. I plan on spending the next few weeks getting quotes from various manufacturers with the goal of ordering the prototype within the next two weeks. In other words, WE'RE GETTING REALLY CLOSE TO THE END FOLKS. With Boardsource gone I've been able to work on the project rather than being forced to sit around and wait, and I've been putting in 40+ hour weeks for the past few weeks with no plan to stop until the board is in your hands.

So hopefully that sums everything up, at this point I'm super happy with the state of the project, the outlook has never been better and I'm very confident this group buy will be successful.

Parcel News

For now, Parcel is taking a backseat to the KBD2600, however I'm hoping to post an IC to Geekhack by June 1st.

The Plan For Future Updates

I'm of the philosophy that if someone as a consumer plans to give me their money with the expectation of receiving a product, the least I can do is keep them updated on the status of the product. Therefore, I'll be releasing weekly updates every Saturday @ 5:00PM PST, even if I have absolutely nothing to report.

And that's about it for this week, stay tuned for next week's update.

Carson