Thumby is Shipping!
about 4 years ago – Fri, Jan 07, 2022 at 11:22:24 PM

Happy New Year!!

We're excited to announce that Thumby is now SHIPPING!  And a bit earlier than expected!  We originally forecasted shipping in February, but we've been able to accelerate production on the first batch and will be shipping the group of Light Gray colored Thumbys over the next two weeks (approximately 1000 Thumbys).   

Early Bird Units

Most Early Bird backer units shipped the last two weeks of December.  However if you are an Early Bird backer, and added additional items to your order (such as another Thumby in a different color, or a special edition), your order will ship when these are available as one package.

Colors / Special Edition Units

We've order all of the various colored plastic cases from our plastic supplier and anticipate having them in by the end of January.  After this point, we'll start producing Thumbys in all of the colors and start shipping out orders that include them. 

When will my order ship??

We're shipping based on when your pledge came in, and if we have the items necessary to ship it (such as the colors and extras you chose).

Over the next two weeks, early backers that had gray Thumbys will be shipping, however we expect to be shipping other colors shortly there after, with the intent to have all orders shipped out by the end of February.

Procurement Update

Plastic - we received in the first 1000 of the plastic enclosures in mid December in the classic light gray color and they look great!   We also received in all of the red buttons (20,000 pieces) and black d-pads (10,000 pieces).  The remaining plastics in all of the various colors have all been ordered and will be produced over the next few weeks.  

Electronic Components - We're really excited to announce we have been able to get all of the electronic components in house to make 10,000 Thumbys!  Quite a feat given the semiconductor shortage going on, but Raspberry Pi shipped us over 10,000 RP2040s last month which was the last major thing we needed, and we have everything in house.

OLED Screens - Our final shipment of OLEDs came in last month as well, so now we have over 10,000 of these,   

Batteries - We have a great relationship with our battery manufacturing partners (we sell a number of different batteries through our website and through Mouser and Digi-key).  For the Thumby battery, we've received in a shipment at the end of Dec for 10,000 more pieces, so we have all of the batteries we need in house.  

USB Multiplayer Cable - The USB cable for linking two Thumbys together is a custom order and we've received them last week.  

Production Update

Plastic - All of the plastic pieces that come in need to be separated from each other prior to assembling Thumby.  We've customized a press to let us quickly trim the red buttons and d-pads.  Here is Matt trimming some of the red buttons for Thumby.

PCBs - Through our SMT machinery, we're able build 500 - 1000 Thumby PCBs a day.  

Manual Assembly - Some of the steps in making a Thumby include manually soldering on the battery and piezo speaker under a microscope. Thanks, Austin!

Throughput

We're still getting up to speed on final assembly of Thumbys, but the goal by the end of Jan is to be making 100 - 200 per day.  

New Games / Discord

We are new to Discord!  We tested out some things with a few of the early Thumby game makers from the TinyCircuits forum, and we're to share it with everyone now! If you notice any issues or have feedback on how to make the Discord server better, let us know! Link to join: https://discord.gg/vzf3wQXVvm

With the use of the emulator in the Thumby IDE and a few having early prototypes of Thumby, we already have more than 10 new games in the works! You can play some of the new games like Thumby Smash by Void777, and 3D_Maze by 3DSage:

To play them early while waiting on your Thumby to arrive, go to the Thumby IDE and click on the "Arcade" button to see all of the games. Open the game you want to play in the code window, press "Emulate",  and use the emulator to play! Use the 'w' 'a' 's' 'd' for the d-pad and ',' '.' keys for the AB buttons.

https://tinycircuits.github.io/

Thank you all again.  We have been blown away by the support of everyone out there around Thumby, and we can't wait to get these out to you.

Ken and the entire TinyCircuits Team

Thumby BackerKit surveys are coming!
over 4 years ago – Sun, Dec 19, 2021 at 04:52:10 AM

Thumby production is moving along, and we're ready to send out Backertkit surveys to start collecting your information.  We still on target to be shipping early bird Thumbys this month, and the remainder of Thumby rewards to be shipping by Feb 2022.  

Soon, you’ll receive an email from us with a special link to your BackerKit survey. It’s important to respond to your survey as quickly as you can since we need this information to fulfill your rewards.

You don’t need to create a BackerKit account to fill out your survey. When you receive the email with the survey, click the survey link to respond. Answer the questions about your reward preferences, provide shipping information, and purchase add-on items if you like. You don’t have access to this survey link yet, but it will be available soon via email!

After you respond to your survey, you can go back later and change your responses at any time before we close the surveys and get our final counts.

If you need to review your information or pledge status, you can return to your survey by clicking the link in your survey email or requesting your survey link under "Lost your survey?" on our BackerKit project page at https://thumby.backerkit.com.

If you used your Facebook credentials to log in to your Kickstarter account, the BackerKit survey is sent to the email address you use for your Facebook account. If you have another email address that you prefer to use, please contact support at https://thumby.backerkit.com/faq.

Thanks!

Ken and the TinyCircuits Team

Thumby In Production!
over 4 years ago – Fri, Dec 03, 2021 at 12:40:39 AM

It's been a month since the end of the Thumby campaign here on Kickstarter and we're excited to share that things are moving along great!  We received the Kickstarter funds in mid November, and since then have been hard at work procuring all the materials and prepping for making a crazy amount of Thumbys.  

Earlier this week we started production of the first set of Thumby units!

Procurement Update

Plastic - we finalized the injection mold design in early November, and did some trials with some different types of plastic.   We chose a polycarbonate as the final material - this is a a bit harder than the prototype plastic we used and resists scratches and has a nice finish.  

We'll be receiving the first run of 1000 pieces of the plastic enclosure next week in the classic light gray color, and after doing our final check to make sure these are completely perfect, we will be ordering all of the remaining plastic in the various colors.  

Electronic Components - As many people are aware, there is a global supply chain shortage that is effecting pretty much everything - but in particular integrated circuits (ICs) which are used in electronic devices. We've been pretty diligent on getting our components in as early as we could and are actually in very good shape with regards to Thumby. We currently have raw components to make over six thousand Thumbys PCBs, with the exception of the Raspberry Pi RP2040 processor. We currently have 2500 of the RP2040 processor in house, and we are due to get 3400 of these shipped to us later this week.  Our goal is to have all of the raw components in our factory in Ohio by the end of Dec 2021 in order to make ten thousand Thumbys.

OLED Screens- Another item that we were concerned about was the 0.42" OLED screen that Thumby uses, since screens also have been hit hard by supply chain problems.  Luckily, we were able to secure these early, and now have 6000 of these in our factory, with more on order to ship to use by the end of this year.  

Batteries - We have a great relationship with our battery manufacturing partners (we sell a number of different batteries through our website and through Mouser and Digi-key).  For the Thumby battery, we have 1000 of these now, with ten thousand more being made to be shipped before the end of Dec 2021.  

USB Multiplayer Cable - The USB cable for linking two Thumbys together is a custom order, we currently have 2500 of these being made now, due to ship to us in early Jan 2022.  

Production Update

Earlier this week we ran the first set of Thumby production panels through our SMT line,  we made enough for production testing, and also for the 50 early birds which will be shipping soon.  

We'll be sharing more updates on the production process, but I took a few quick pics of what we have done, including some custom fixtures to make up units, and some of the first units off the line.  

Hot Bar for OLED soldering

To solder the OLED screens on, we created a custom fixture for holding the Thumby PCB in place and aligning the OLED screen to the pads on the board.   The fixture holds two sets of PCBs and OLEDs, and can spin between the two positions.  

The hot bar is automated to press down on the connection and reflow the solder using a programmed heat profile.  While one is soldering, we can place another board and OLED screen in place to minimized down time while waiting for the screen to solder.

Production Next Steps

We'll be sharing some more details on how we're producing these, and we will be putting the very first units into plastic cases when they come in next week!

Shipping & Schedule

As of today, we're on schedule to be shipping the 50 early bird units by mid December, and to ship the other units by Feb 2022.  We really hope to be shipping more units early, and will keep you up to date as things progress.  

Surveys

Everyone will be receiving a survey email from Backerkit in the very near future (within the next week) - this will collect your shipping address, let you choose options (like case color) and allow you to enter in the text you would like shown for your name if you chose the Special Edition level.  

Thank you all again!  We'll be sharing more in the very near future as we ramp up production, and also will be sharing some new games and tutorials that will be out very soon.

Ken and the entire TinyCircuits Team

Kickstarter Over - Thank You All!
over 4 years ago – Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 08:11:01 AM

Thank you all for backing Thumby!  This day has been so exciting, seeing the amount get over 200K was pretty crazy right there at the end - thank you all for your pledges and support during this campaign!

We're already getting things lined up for mass production of Thumby, and look forward to sharing more updates very soon.  People are already creating games for their Thumbys, and it will be so cool to see these out being used by everyone!  We can't wait to start shipping them out.  

We also excited to announce that we are continuing Thumby preorders via Indiegogo InDemand here, so if you missed out on the original Kickstarter campaign you can still get in on getting a Thumby.  However, the Kickstarter exclusive content won't be available via Indiegogo and is now closed out - Special Edition Thumbys are exclusive to people that backed us on Kickstarter only. 

Next Steps

So what's next?  Well, Kickstarter will sendus the funds in about two weeks from now, and then we'll start producing Thumbys in volume here in our Akron, Ohio factory.  Our hope is still to get these out on our schedule and everything is still looking like that is the case -  we do have components lined up to do this, and assuming our suppliers ship on schedule we expect to meet our goal.  

We will be using Backerkit to send out surveys in the near future, where we will request your address, and allow you to choose options (such as the color case for your Thumby if your level includes that), and also allow you to add on additional items if you wish.  We'll let you know ahead of time when we'll be sending these out.

Shipments will be done based on the order on when we received your pledge and also based on stock for your particular reward level.

Thank you all again.  We have been blown away by the support of everyone out there around Thumby, and we can't wait to get these out to you.  

Ken and the entire TinyCircuits Team

One week to the finish line
over 4 years ago – Sat, Nov 13, 2021 at 10:26:47 PM

Only one week remains on the Thumby Kickstarter campaign and the response continues to be great - over 3900 backers and 175K raised, thanks so much!

New Color Vote results

Thank you to everyone who voted on the new Thumby color options, there were 720 votes on the Google form and via comments, and are excited to announce the two winners!

With 23.9% of the vote, Teal is by the far the most popular choice.

And in second place with 18.5% of the vote, Green is the second choice.

Note: These pictures are renderings, the actual color plastic may look slightly different. 

Other results:

• White: 13.8%
• Yellow: 12.5%
• Lavender: 11.8%
• Purple: 11.2%
• Orange: 8.3%

Color selection will be open to anyone backing the $24 level or higher, and you'll have the option to select your colors at the end of the campaign.  

Clear Case Samples

As mentioned in our last update, we have some early samples of the clear and gold plastics from our plastic injection molder, and they look great! The clear case is an option at the $24 level and up, here are some closer up pictures of these:

Gold Case Samples

The gold case is only available at the Special Edition Level (which also gets your name in the credits, along with collectible packaging). Also, if you backed at the Special Edition Level, you will be able to choose from other case colors as well if you do not want the gold, but still want your names in the credits and the collectible packaging. Here are some pictures of samples of these:

New Thumby Reviews 

LGR (Lazy Game Reviews) checks out the Thumby on their Youtube channel, and asks, "Is this the Tiniest Video Game System... Ever?". 

John Riggs checks out the Thumby on his YouTube channel... and it might wind up in his mouth during this video.  We advise against eating your Thumby.  

Keep spreading the word about Thumby to grow it into something amazing.  Share Thumby on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.

Thanks again for all your support!

Ken and the entire TinyCircuits Team