Compute Blade: Your rack-mountable ARM cluster

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
almost 3 years ago – Sat, Jun 24, 2023 at 02:36:10 AM

Dear Bladers,

We're waiting for around 250 backers to complete their surveys and approve shipping details. Simultaneously, we're actively working on finalizing all add-ons. Our latest accomplishment is the successful development of the AI module, which has undergone multiple reviews, received approval for prototype manufacturing, and passed pre-certification tests. Creating the PCIe x1 -- 2x USB3 -- PCIe nvme solution posed significant challenges. However, we persevered to find a solution that satisfies the requirements of all involved parties for worldwide shipping, certification, and mass manufacturing. 

Product certification for all components, excluding the AI module, is in its final stages and is almost complete, with progress exceeding 90%. We encountered a setback in the past weeks regarding the shipping of the V1.0 blade prototypes due to tax issues with Uptime Industries (US) and various private and commercial recipients of the V1.0 blade prototype. Consequently, we had to establish a triangle agreement between Partners, Uptime Industries and all other parties involved to ensure smooth handling of future prototype and validation shipments, maintaining compliance throughout the process.

Backerkit Survey 

Unfortunately, we are currently in a region where we cannot finalize orders or provide final numbers to our partners. We have noticed that several large orders are still pending. We are making every effort to contact them through all available channels, although the retention rate has been disappointing thus far. However, we cannot confirm that there is no progress at all, which would allow a different approach. As of today, we have reached 84% completion.

Meanwhile, we do not want the progress of further shipment preparations to be blocked any longer. We are actively seeking responses from approximately 40 larger orders and handling the remaining cases differently, as they have been frequently communicated with regarding deadlines in the past days/weeks. For these orders, we have explored the option of shipping to their provided address on Kickstarter and having them handle all duties and fees on their side, which unfortunately will result in higher costs for them.

The cut-off date will be no later than July 14, or the day we receive a response from the remaining 40 large orders.

If you haven't completed your survey yet, please enter your email address here to ensure you can access and complete it directly. 

Shipping

As mentioned in our previous updates, the team clusters, including any ordered CM4s, will be prioritized for shipment. Those who pledged for a team cluster along with additional add-ons will receive a separate shipment later in the process specifically for the additional add-ons.

The shipment for team clusters is scheduled to occur within a maximum of two weeks after the cut-off day.

AI Module

Bringing the concept to a producible, certifiable, and functional product involved significant additional effort to meet all requirements. One of the key challenges was enabling the necessary two USB3 lines and additional full PCIe NVMe support in a reliable way. The two Coral TPUs require two USB3 lines for their operation because their PCIe access is currently not functioning with the Pi due to a hardware issue.

Access to the documents, components, and software for most of the main components required signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and lot of additional paperwork.

Post-Campaign 

Exciting news! The Compute Blade project is set to continue and expand beyond Kickstarter fulfillment. We are currently started establishing partnerships and onboarding distributors worldwide, and the feedback has exceeded our expectations. We are diligently preparing the necessary business documents and credentials to become trusted partners with these companies.

If you have any potentially interested distribution partners or B2B companies in your network, an introduction would be greatly appreciated.

Additionally, blades and their add-ons will be available and expand after the campaign is fulfilled. While we cannot provide specific dates for when the products will be accessible through distributor channels, please note that there will be a downtime between Kickstarter fulfillment and access to post-campaign blades due to onboarding processes, production planning, and component sourcing.

Some Stats

• There are 702,750 items to ship.
• 21% of backers opted for a 19" metal enclosure.
• 29% of backers chose to upgrade their fan unit.
• Backers are from 928 cities.
• 57% of backers selected homelabs as their favorite topic, followed by smarthome with 11%.

_

Uptime Industries team

Shipping, logistics, and distribution update
almost 3 years ago – Wed, May 31, 2023 at 09:05:18 AM

Dear Bladers,

We have an important shipping, logistics, and distribution update to share with you.

Our manufacturing partners are strategically located on two continents to ensure efficiency, speed, and cost-effectiveness for you. We are pleased to confirm that all electronics/PCBA are manufactured locally in the US and within the EU.

In the EU, we have a dedicated electronics manufacturing service provider who acts as the Master for all prototypes and new products. They handle the production, testing, and manufacturing setup. Once the prototype batch production is confirmed, the EU location promptly shares all the necessary manufacturing information with our US location. This allows us to quickly respond to any required changes or production parameter adjustments.

We collaborate with two 3PL shipping providers for product distribution, offering comprehensive logistics, warehousing, and distribution services. Within the US and Canada, they utilize UPS or FedEx, while DHL is used for shipping within the EU and most other countries.

Once your product is next in line for shipping preparation, you will receive an email notification, similar to those commonly sent by modern online shops. We have ensured an agreement with both 3PL service providers that they will make three delivery attempts and try to contact you. In the worst-case scenario, if they are unable to reach you or if the address is incorrect, the package will be returned to their closest warehouse or local warehouse partner until the missing information is provided by you.
This scalable setup efficiently handles individual product packages and provides comprehensive delivery services, including insurance coverage for your shipment.

Next, we will verify the latest V1.0 prototype, produced under the same setup and parameters as the scaled production. This ensures that the most recent adjustments, serving as the final modifications, are implemented correctly. The adjustments are:
- higher, 100-pin connector
- higher, +1.5mm cm4 stand-offs
- added test points for critical lines
- solder parameter for 30W PoE module adjusted
- updated silkscreen graphics
- improved PCB finishing for edges
- latch mounting improvement

The prototypes with the resolved 100-pin solder issue are currently undergoing the final external testing steps today. We are pleased to inform you that they will be shipped tomorrow. This brings us one step closer to completing the verification process and moving forward with the next stages of production and distribution. The prototypes are undergoing testing, and once both sides have completed the testing phase, we can proceed with the final PCB assembly steps. After that, the product will be handed over for automated testing and afterward get shipped to our 3PL partner warehouse for distribution.

Based on the estimated timeline, we anticipate shipping to occur approximately two weeks after the final prototype approval. Once all orders are locked, we will obtain precise shipping dates from our partners. In the meantime, we can provide you with estimates for shipping:
- Team Cluster, 2 weeks after prototype approval  
- Compute Blade DEV (batch 00), 4 weeks after prototype approval
- 10" Rack Cluster, end of July
- 19" Rack Cluster, August
- Basic Compute Blade (batch 01), +4-6 weeks
- Build your own Cluster, +4-8 weeks

We appreciate your understanding and support as we continue to streamline our processes and ensure the best possible outcomes for our products.

_

Uptime Industries team

Almost there
almost 3 years ago – Wed, May 24, 2023 at 09:38:09 AM

Dear backers,

We are thrilled to inform you that we are just one step away from shipping the first Uptime Lab Team Clusters to you! The development process has been an exciting journey, and we appreciate your patience and support throughout.

Today, at 8 PM CEST, we will be sending out the backerkit survey to all of our backers. This survey is crucial in gathering the necessary information from you to ensure a smooth shipping process. We kindly request that you carefully fill out the survey and provide accurate responses. Your cooperation will greatly assist us in pushing the project forward in the right direction. Once we have gathered all the necessary information from each of you, we can begin preparing for shipping.

While we have encountered a few challenges along the way, such as issues with the 100-pin connector upgrade and unexpected delays in the delivery times of this new component, we have resolved these matters. The final assembly step is now ready to commence, and once the boards have undergone thorough testing, they will be promptly packed and shipped out to you in batches.

We have production and shipping facilities located within the European Union and the United States. This allows us to efficiently cater to backers from both regions.

We are grateful for your continued support and enthusiasm for the Compute Blade project. Your feedback and participation have been invaluable to us. We are confident that the end result will meet and exceed your expectations.

Thank you again for being a part of this exciting journey with us. We look forward to delivering the Blades to your doorstep soon!

We'd love to see you on Discord and hear your feedback about the survey in the #backerkit-survey channel there

Uptime Industries team

Good, bad, necessary
almost 3 years ago – Tue, May 02, 2023 at 01:57:34 PM

Good news, everyone! 

And it is actually good news! The CM4s with 8GB RAM have just arrived! So everyone who ordered the Uptime Lab Team Cluster will soon be proud owners of this rare (some would say mythical) hardware. 

Ok, now you have had the good news I’ll mix in some less good news… Because of my last-minute decision to replace 100-pin connectors on Compute Blade v.1, we ran into a few difficulties – Sorry for my poor decisions.

Basically, the connector is now 1.5mm higher, and because of this, the current temperature profiles of the soldering don’t work correctly with the Blade form factor. You are probably wondering why I would do such a thing – as I often wonder to myself – but there was method to my madness. It would protect us from any future changes to the CM4 components arrangement, and as an added bonus, potentially allow us to swop out the CM4 for different Raspberry Pi clones (if you so wished, or if you cant get your hands on a CM4 because you didn't go for the Uptime Lab Team Cluster option... not just me today regretting my decisions today). I will clarify that this is because of the location of the TMP chip directly under the CM4, I placed it, taking into account the components on the Raspberry Pi. Now the components on the compute module won't obstruct even if they are right above the TMP chip. Anyway, we are back on track with it as we were able to switch to a supplier with some super-advanced equipment and everything is looking great. The only issue though is it has added a 3-week delay to the order – I am really honestly very sorry about that.

On the topic of bad news, we also ran into a few issues getting the money out of Kickstarter. This is because the Kickstarter is in euros, the company is in the US, I am in Germany, and the suppliers are scattered around the world. Little things like that. It looks like it should all still be fine and on schedule, but if I compare it to my schedule it put us back about a month.

Ok, let’s get back to some good news again! We managed to update the "Powered by Raspberry Pi" logo on the Blades to the latest one. We’ll take that as a win! Also, all the components are now in production or are already finished! And, best of all, there haven't been any issues with them at all.

Finally, the last thing to mention in this update is that the final survey will be released later this week.

As always I look forward to seeing you all in our Discord!

Thanks a lot!

Ivan

TLDR; everything is awesome and going to plan!
almost 3 years ago – Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 09:55:07 AM

Hi everyone!

Again I am really sorry I have been a bit quiet, I’ve been trying to reply to everyone individually – so if you still haven't yet had a response, hold tight, it is coming. The first batch of Blades is in production, which will go into the Uptime team cluster for testing, demonstrating, and making sure what you will get will be awesome.  Perhaps the timing of the shipment will move a little bit because of the paperwork. I'll keep you posted.

As some of you know from our Discord, we are working on the design of our t-shirt for all our Kickstarter backers. I don’t want to say that these t-shirts will be the best damn t-shirts you’ll ever have… but these t-shirts are going to be the best damn t-shirts you’ll ever have. Thanks to everyone who gave us ideas. 

Kickstarter is pretty much done now with the payment process. There are some people who had problems paying through Kickstarter for various reasons, and unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be anything we can do to resolve them on the Kickstarter side. We’re going to check with BackerKit, which is a partner we’ve been working with, to see if there is any other way to resolve the issues… so if you are having issues just know we are working on it.

On a really positive note, we are now a registered company in the US, trading under Uptime Industries Inc… yes… you got it :))) if not here is a clue: There was an idea, to bring together a group of remarkable people, to see if we could become something more. So when they needed us, we could make the technologies that they never could. What this means for you, on top of us creating a new superhero team, is that we’ll be able to provide correct invoices for everyone who bought Blades for their business. We also have added a production site for the Blades in the US, this should help with distribution too as a huge majority of backers are located there. Unfortunately, we only had one backer from Trinidad and Tobago, although that is really awesome we’re probably going to wait a little while before we add production there. All in all, we have backers from 50 different countries, which we couldn’t be more excited about!

I guess that is it for today, don’t be a stranger come and join our Discord channel!