Rheas will be available for ordering this Saturday (2022-04-30) at 20:00 CEST, just like last time.
DocBrowns will come next, I already have the PCBs but there’s still some final cleaning, programming and testing to be done – so most likely early to mid-May. As usual I will announce the ordering window at least a few days in advance.
UPDATE: Rhea orders are now accepted closed. I will process the orders and send out confirmation emails in a day or two.
I had plans for February and March. But there was the another COVID-19 wave and various shipping delays, and now ruskies decided to get genocidal again. No plan survives contact with the enemy as they say.
DocBrowns are still in production but I should have a batch ready in April/May, and then we are going to make some Wizards. Assuming I didn’t make a mistake (and none of the suppliers did either) and we have all the parts now. I might have a batch of Rheas in the meantime as well, these are mostly PCBs that originally failed testing due to soldering issues and have now been fixed.
I also have a small batch of Phoebes that I will most likely sell soon, not sure if this next Saturday or next the one after. Watch the blog I guess, I will announce it at least a few days prior. No GDEMUs yet though – I’m not sure if it’s Intel doing after they gobbled up Altera or what, but the FPGAs I’ve been using are unobtainium. I was considering a HW refresh, with more modern (and capable) parts that were actually cheaper, but it looks like these are gone now too. 50 – 80 weeks for delivery is not a time I’m prepared to wait. So there’s yet another idea, another redesign, but that one exists mostly in my head so far. I would like to try and make some more though, even if it takes another 6 months to finish and test the prototype.
Regarding ordering in general, I will no longer accept orders from or ship to Russia. Not sure if it’s even possible at the moment but I’m not going to hide behind temporary postal restrictions. That decision was mine. For now I’m also suspending shipping to China (including HK), this is due to various lockdowns that cause my packages to be badly delayed, damaged or even lost. I really don’t want to deal with that right now, especially considering already long shipping times and language barrier. So this suspension will stay in place until the situation gets better.
UK customers, be aware that there’s more customs checks taking place now for anything coming from EU, which means you might end up paying some duties or taxes – this should not happen with the declaration stickers I use but who knows. As far as I’m concerned there is no logic in brexit, it’s meant to be chaotic neutral, for better or worse.
Shipping inside EU will work as before, no issues, except it’ll take more time to process your payment (1-2 days or so) because of the changes to VAT rules. No next day shipping, not that I ever promised that but I did try in the past.
And lastly, this Phoebe batch should be unaffected but anything after might see new pricing. Everything is more expensive now – parts, PCBs, shipping costs. That hasn’t been decided yet but it is getting harder to find free time and motivation to keep this going. We’ll see I guess.
UPDATE: To clarify, because the way I wrote it was rather confusing and it’s not an April Fools joke, just me not realizing tomorrow is Saturday as well – Phoebes will be available either next week, or the week after that. I would not announce ordering window merely hours before it would be opening.
UPDATE 2: Phoebe orders will open this Saturday (2022-04-09) at 20:00 CEST to make it more USA friendly.
UPDATE 3: Orders are now accepted closed. Please give me a day or two to process the orders and then I’ll send out confirmation emails.
GDEMU 