For me, uConsole is so nice, the design, all metal case and the 4G capabilitie…
But I am really worried about the lead time of the first batch. I live in China and as a manager of a small OEM company, I know the COV19 and supply chain issue is really the problem.
My personal suggestion for the ClockworkPi team is focusing on the layout, the metal case, the main and 4G board. Don’t put too much effort to the A04, A06, at least within this period… Even the raspberry pi is still under shortage, I think fighting with the PCBA OEM supplier for the customized A04, A06 core board and maintaining the rom for them will take much effort than that.
I don’t know how many mambers in the ClockworkPi team at 2022. I hope my suggestion is helpful and the uConsole can be delivered quicker.
Meanwhile. I just noticed the main board, the battery board seems the same as for the DevTerm. If so there is really not so much work to do about the PCBA thing for this new device. Good news.
For the metal case, our company have about 100 vertical CNC machines, sand blasting machines and aluminum anodizing production line, located in Suzhou. We product the metal case of laptops for years. So if the metal case is the delivery bottleneck, I’m really glad to cooperate with the ClockworkPI team
Just to add if DevTerm is any indication ClockworkPI is one of the few companies, maybe along with Pine64, I’ve dealt with within the last 3 years that delivered their product on time. That was a year ago when the global situation was arguably worse than it is today. I don’t know how they do it but I was pleasantly surprised with how fast I received my DevTerm (though this is based more on my feeling than measuring the time).
Other companies which I backed/pre-ordered from had their products delayed to some extent - Pocket Popcorn Computer, Purism (Librem 5 delay is getting ridiculous in all fairness…).
Here’s hoping the same will be true for uConsole.
I also preordered the A-06 version, but my thought is if the CM4 in high demand, then the CM4 console could possibly be delayed. Maybe ClockworkPi has a large supply of them.
It’ll do voice but you can’t use it really in a software defined mode , basically if you want voice , you gotta use a headset off of the audio jack on the expansion board.
After a long time discussing with my mind about killing my credit card on a devterm -discussion that would never end btw- as soon as I received the news about the preorder of the uConsole, I just read the email and preordered the 04 without cell comm module.
I was almost there into the RiscV due to slightly cheaper price, but specs are far from extraordinary (only the architecture calls my attention, a lot) so at the end, I went the “better safe than sorry” way. The A04 should be ok for now.
So, I haven’t done a clockworkpi pre-order before, and I got my order in early enough that it said 60 days instead of 90 days on the order screen and confirmation email.
Does Clockwork typically provide any updates in the pre-order period? Or do they just start shipping when it is ready?
Trying to figure out whether I should keep an eye out somewhere, or forget it until I get the shipping notification
For Gameshell and Devterm, all I got was a shipping notification. And by the time I got it, it arrived pretty quickly afterward (west coast US).
I’m guessing we’ll all be very lucky to get a Uconsole by end of January. Not a complaint, just an expectation based on experience. I wouldn’t really start worrying unless I heard nothing by end of February. Although I’ve never dealt with them, it sounds like the support email for ClockworkPi is responsive and helpful, but they rarely ever communicate on the forum unless it’s to make a product announcement, software release, or sometimes answer specific technical questions. The old saying “no news is good news” tends to apply here, I think.