What we're up to: Final Photon Testing, Maker Faire Prep, Electron Planning

General
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The pace of development at Spark is as frenetic as it has ever been. As I’m sure many of you know very well, there is no crazier time than right before product delivery. The Spark “full stack” is so much fuller than those words normally imply, and that means that when we ship a new product line, there are an enormous number of things to track and deliver all at once. The whole ecosystem gets an upgrade, and oh my word is it exciting! Here’s the latest.

Final Photon Testing

We have a small internal batch of Photons, and give the big delivery coming up, we’re playing a fun game this sprint. It’s called “Don’t block Doc!” Internally, people at Spark call me “Doc” because I have a PhD in music composition. :wink: Every morning I unbox a Photon and try to set it up. I let my team know where I’m blocked—where the documentation is confusing, where an error message is confusing, where I see unexpected LED behavior, etc. Then it’s a race to see who can unblock me the fastest. Everyone who unblocks me gets a present.

Maker Faire Prep

We :heart: Maker Faire! It’s our biggest event of the year, and we always try to make it the biggest extravaganza that we can. We’re designing our booth and figuring out ways for the community who’s there to participate, have fun, and give us feedback. Travel plans from all over the world are getting ironed out. Can’t wait to hang out with the Elite!

Electron Planning

As we mentioned in a recent Kickstarter update, we’ve begun iterating in ernest on the hardware design of the Electron. We plan to lock down the hardware design in late June, and the biggest question mark is related to power management circuitry. We want to make sure we provide the absolute best tools for prototyping and for production usage.

With the Electron, because of the complexity of a cellular deployment, we’re expecting more people to scale by including the Electron directly in their product rather than by certifying their own hardware. @mohit has started a conversation in the Hardware category to get your input on the designs. Join in the discussion now!

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@Zachary When the photon is released will we have a fully function spark-dev ide and flashing via the cloud? Any possibility that some of this sw can get released before the big hardware shipment?

Also how about a timeline?

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Some big announcements are coming this week in the run up to Maker Faire. The first Photons have left the factory. The goal is to have everything fully functional when Photons arrive in the first customers’ hands. That includes cloud compiling and mobile apps for the new setup process. In typical :spark: fashion we want to make a big splash announcing lots of new functionality at once. :wink:

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