Great News! (Last call to update address)
over 4 years ago – Thu, Jan 02, 2020 at 08:06:28 PM

Hi Kickstarter Family,

🍾 Happy New Year and welcome to 2020! The year you will finally receive your Mu tags 🎉

We are so excited to announce that we’ll be shipping all pledges this month! Manufacturing and Quality Assurance (QA) is running smoothly and should be completed within days. As soon as we ship all pledges we’ll post another announcement.

It’s very important that everyone verifies or updates their shipping address within the next 24 hours! (visit https://informu.backerkit.com/) If you have any trouble updating your address, please email [email protected] with your new address.

Progress

It’s been a crazy past couple of weeks with more painting challenges and the rush to get everything shipped this month. Lang was able to push the paint factory to work overtime and resolve their mistakes.

With all painting complete, final assembly was able to resume and has been moving along well. Our partner factory has also been working overtime to complete everything by the end of this weekend. Lang is personally overseeing all operations and performing final QA on all 15,000 units.

The Mu tag has been a much greater challenge than we could have imagined. We certainly made many mistakes along the way and also experienced several incidents of misfortune, but giving up was never an option.

A huge thanks goes out to all of our backers for making this possible! We are very grateful for everyone that pledged to make the Mu tag a reality.

Painting almost complete before final assembly
over 4 years ago – Fri, Dec 20, 2019 at 09:51:21 PM

Hi Kickstarter Family,

Production has been running smoothly these past few weeks! The first stage of the painting process for all Mu tag colors is now complete. The final three stages of the painting process is in progress. We’ve also completed the final assembly of 1,130 Charcoal (black) Mu tags.

Recap of Last Update

•  (Resolved) Production was completely stalled by the painting process. All remaining plastic painting (about 9,300 units) was pending the resolution of an overspray issue that was causing the UV coating to scratch off.

Current Status

• All 15,000 (8 different colors) Mu tag plastics have completed the first stage of the painting process.
• 1,130 Charcoal Mu tags are 100% complete and have passed QA.

The Painting Process

There are four main stages to the painting process of the Mu tag. The first stage is painting the bottom colored part of the Mu tag. This part of the Mu tag is a colored soft touch paint.

The second stage of the painting process is to apply a black base coat to the top section of the Mu tag and then to laser etch a passthrough on the logo for the LED to shine through.

The third stage is to apply a white silkscreen of the logo onto the black top section of the Mu tag.

For the fourth stage, a glossy UV coating is applied over the black top section. This covers the white silkscreen logo and provides a hard durable glossy finish. Once this coating cures, then the painting process is complete.

Mu Tag Assembly and QA

Since most of the Charcoal Mu tags had completed and passed paint QA, we proceeded with final assembly of those units. Fortunately this process went very smoothly so we do not expect any major issues for the remaining Mu tags during final assembly. Out of 1,157 assembled Mu tags, only 27 units failed QA for various reasons. We are very happy with these results.

We did learn a few things to improve the production process. One thing we noticed is that a very small number of the assembled Mu tags would not charge properly. This was caused by a very thin layer of oils remaining of the PCB from the PCBA factory. We’ll simply have the PBCA factory clean the PCB panel after assembly to resolve this minor issue.

When Will You Receive Your Mu Tags?

We cannot provide an estimate just yet, but right now everything is running smoothly. Mu tags are very close to completion and we’ll continue to keep everyone updated along the way. Once the Mu tags begin final assembly we should be able to come up with some sort of estimation for delivery.

Thank you so much for your support and we are very excited to be so close to the finish line!

October - November Update 2019
over 4 years ago – Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 10:10:22 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

September Monthly Update 2019
over 4 years ago – Fri, Oct 04, 2019 at 02:38:48 AM

Hi Kickstarter Family,

As we mentioned in our last monthly update, we expected to ship out the product from the China factory to the USA by Sep 22nd. You may wonder why we still haven't shipped out the product yet.

Of the 15,000 Mu tag plastic part pieces that the paint factory produced, we encountered three new manufacturing process issues on the plastic parts. Such aesthetic flaws on our Mu tags our unacceptable.

We understand things are delayed again and this is not something you want to hear. It may even sound like an excuse or that we are delaying purposefully. We just didn't want to send out a less than perfect Mu tag. We all appreciate your patience and hope you understand the random challenges in manufacturing that are hard to control and foresee.

Our 2000 unit crowdfunding packages, Mu holder, and Mu fob are all stocked in our CM warehouse, ready to be packaged with Mu tags and shipped out to you.

Production Process

Issue 1: The UV parts have minor scratches on the surface due to the paint fixtures.

On the top part of Mu tag UV part next to the 'U" icon, there is a consistent minor scratch in roughly the same location discovered by the paint factory QA stuff. This issue happened to roughly 70% of all painted plastic parts.

Due to the harsh characteristics of UV oils, it shall not happen based on the factory’s past experience. Before doing these 15K units, the factory of course did small trail runs with 100 plastic units and 300 plastic units. We didn’t see this exact issue with trail run which could not be anticipated.

After investigating the cause of this issue, it’s due to the manufacturing process differences between the trail runs and the full production run. During the full production, we first used a plastic fixture to cover the lower part of Mu tag plastic, then place the entire parts on the automated spray paint production line to paint UV oil on the upper part for the shining effect. After the UV oil is dry, we take off the lower plastic fixture part from the Mu tag plastic, then use another type of plastic fixture to cover the upper part of Mu tag plastic. Again, we placed all parts on the automated spray paint production line to paint rubber oil on the lower part for the matt finishing. In order to make the rubber oil stick on the plastic parts, the entire plastic parts needed to be baked for at least 4 hours.

During this baking process, it could be because of the high temperature, the UV oil got too soft, easily scratched by the upper plastic fixture part. This is why there is a consistent mark next to the “U” icon.

The factory found two methods to resolve this issue. First, we changed the tolerance of the upper part plastic fixtures. It shall give more empty space between the UV oil surface and the fixture surface. Secondly, the factory may plan to acquire a different type of high-temperature UV oil just for our use case.

Issue 2: The "U" logo on the Mu tag is not white enough as specified in the golden samples.

This is a fairly minor detail on the Mu tag in which most customers may not even care about so much. However, we want to build the perfect Mu tag look. Currently, we use the silkscreen paint method to create a white “U” logo on a black layer of Mu tag. It’s very challenging to show as white as needed to be on a black base color. We requested the factory worker to do silkscreen processes twice on a single piece of Mu tag. However, the outcome is still less than ideal.

Currently, the factory plans to change the painting process to solve this issue. They plan to make the base color white first, then apply black color on top of the white base color except for the “U” logo area. We think that the factory probably needs to acquire better white ink to solve this issue. At this very moment, we need to try everything we can. We will keep everyone updated.

Issue 3: The Mu tag injection-molded cover parts have minor sink marks that occurred during the 15K batch injection mold production.

It’s the factory’s fault to not discover this issue during this full production process. After talking with our injection mold factory, they found out this flaw was caused by the night-shift workers. It was not an injection mold design issue as we had multiple injection mold testing runs before.

Lang was very shocked by this issue when he discovered it on the factory floor. We were very certain at that point, we don’t have any plastic issues, but only the paint issue left. Plus, we discussed this issue way too late. We finished all 15K units of plastic production 3 weeks before the full paint production had started. It should have been discovered by the QA staff at both factories, but because our raw injection molded parts are transparent initially, this issue can not be observed by bear-human eyes.

Our injection mold factory recognizes this as their own mistake. They wrote internal reports on this mistake and will produce another 15K batch of raw Mu tag cover parts finished by Oct 9th.

Other accomplishments

Plastic Parts.

Mu tag base plastic parts had a high yield. There were almost no issues from the UV oil parts. The tiny Mu tag button plastic parts were also all good.

Here are our stocked packaging materials.

Next Steps for Production

Oct 7th - 14th

Finish Mu charger final assembly & QA, Mu tag paint potential solution testings & determine a path forward

Oct 14th - 22nd

Mu tag paint done, Mu tag final assembly & QA

Oct 22nd - Oct 30th

Mu tag final assembly & QA

Pack all crowdfunding orders, print shipping labels & ship the bulk package to the USA

Our targeted shipment date: Oct 30th, 2019

How To Update My Shipping Address?

To update your address, go back to your BackerKit survey by inputting your Kickstarter email here. If you are not able to update the address through the link above or need any additional help, please email us at [email protected] for the fastest response.

WARNING:

We still have 109 backers who didn't fill out their shipping addresses through Backerkit Survey. If we don't have your shipping addresses, we can't ship out the rewards to you. Please fill the shipping address by inputting your Kickstarter email here: https://informu.backerkit.com/.

July - August Monthly Update 2019
over 4 years ago – Fri, Aug 23, 2019 at 12:52:21 AM

Hi Kickstarter Family,

We apologize for the delayed update. As we mentioned in the last update, we were undergoing a robust engineering prototype unit testing phase. Initially, we had an amazing yield of Mu tags with unpainted plastic parts. We thought that we were all good and ready to push the button of the 11K unit production. We understand, empathize and appreciate the patience of all our backers throughout our journey, for this is not a news that makes them happy, and neither of us. We want our product out as bad as anyone else, but we want to make sure the quality of our products is up to user expectations. Even with such necessary delays, we want to make sure to convey our message to all people who believed in us that no matter what, we will never give up!

Once we got our UV oil painted plastic parts from a credible spray painting factory, we went through the same process of assembling Mu tags, ultrasonic welding. We found several units had cracks always occuring at the same weak location during ultrasonic welding due to the vibration force. The damages region was a thin plastic lining on the top plastic cover that would be encircling the Mu Tag button (there was a circular cutout in top cover to fit button piece). This is something we never encountered previously and were shocked by the low yield rate.

After discussing with our vendors, we quickly formed an action plan to solve this unexpected issue. In the last two weeks, we have modified our Mu tag injection mold design, produced many more plastic parts, shipped to our spray painting factory, and waited for them to modify their spray painting tools as we changed our plastic structure design.

ACTION REQUIRED: Please fill out your device survey if you have not done it yet. You should have already received the device survey to your Kickstarter/Indiegogo email address (same as your backerkit survey email address) from [email protected]. With over 2000 backers, we only received 1014 responses so far.

Production Process

As we found out that so many plastic parts had the same weak location being cracked, we inspected the issue at a deeper level.

The UV oil paint will make the plastic stiffer and more sensitive to vibrations and cracking. We tried questioning our spray painting factory if there is anyway to reduce the UV oil’s negative effect. Our spray painting factory was also Apple’s vendor, where they produce the Beats headphones for them. They told us that it’s not possible to reduce the UV oil effect on plastic, unless we are willing to sacrifice the Mu tag looks. We hit a dead end on that side.

We decided to take a longer route: changing the Mu tag structure design. It required us to change our existing steel injection tool. It’s certainly not an easy process to modify the Mu tag injection mold. It may even come with a downside of damaging the mold and reduce the life cycle of such mold. It takes at least one week to finish. In the new design we removed the thin plastic part on the top cover and moved it to bottom cover for added strength, such that now the button will be encircled by edges of both top and bottom cover and not just top cover like before.

After a collaborative discussion among all teammates and vendors, we decided to take the route of changing the injection tool. We are glad that the injection mold came out to be in good shape.

We produced 800 units of Mu tag plastic parts, shipped them to the spray paint factory, had them redo the decoration process, then ship back the painted plastic parts to our assembly factory.

We are confident that we solve this plastic crack issue with the changes we made.

We have already kickoffed the Mu tag PCBA process with 2000 units finished so far, and only 4 defective. It’s a big win and high achievement from last year’s 60% defect rate.

All Mu fobs are in our factory warehouse. Mu charger production process is going smoothly.

If we don’t encounter other unknown manufacturing issues, we will be able to have all Mu tags shipped to USA on Sep 22th 2019. We will keep you all updated along this process.

Our CEO Lang Mei, will literally be sleeping on the assembly factory floor to ensure the quality of all 11K units.

Check out the Mu tag colors below:

A Naked Mu tag

Software Update

Recap

After the team decided that the iOS app was working well enough based on user testing and feedback, Tom started on the Android app at the beginning of July.

As we have detailed in previous updates, both iOS and Android apps were a complete mess and we decided to break the relationship with the development company we were working with. Tom worked with the really bad iOS code to bring it to a decent working condition. From this experience, we realized that the Android code was completely unusable and our best bet would be to start from scratch.

With the iOS code still being hacky and of bad design, we also decided that it would eventually be replaced by a new well designed app on React Native. React Native allows us to use the same code that is developed for Android and use it for iOS too with some slight configuration. There are some tradeoffs with choosing this option, but we now understand that those tradeoffs are well worth it.

Tom Learns React Native Android Development

Hopefully we are all continuously learning from our mistakes and the mistakes of others. Tom certainly learned a lot through the experience of getting the iOS app in working order. Now it was time to learn how to avoid so many of those problems.

Tom started with a clean slate, very carefully defining the objectives for the new app and problems that needed to be solved. He conducted just enough research necessary to choose a solution for each problem while trying to execute as swiftly and lean as possible. The learning curve was still quite steep. We are confident that a lot of problems that were experienced during iOS will now be resolved with the new techniques and methodologies.

Android Progress

Tom first learned to utilize a Test Driven Development approach and industry standard software architecture principles. Then he learned React Native development. Login and Session management of the Android app is now complete along with a basic UI for these features.

At this time he is now starting to feel comfortable with the new development environment and methodologies. Development should begin to move much more rapidly. Testing and debugging should also be exponentially faster than with the iOS app.

Android Login Feature

Android Delivery

We have also changed our app delivery strategy. We’ll first deliver a very basic beta version of the Android app to begin getting immediate user feedback. This is expected to be ready at the very beginning of October.

The first version will be missing features, but will include basic status information of Mu tags. This is no reason to be concerned, because app features will be added, improved, and delivered on a weekly basis.

We will be communicating with you a lot during this process to deliver your most immediate needs and improve your experience with the Mu tag continuously. Even once there is a high level of satisfaction with the Mu tag and app, we will not stop improving the experience. This is why we will include customer support directly within the app itself so that you can talk to us easily.

Feedback Required

For those lucky backers who already received Mu tags and Mu chargers, please provide us needed and communicate with us over the same email thread.

How To Update My Shipping Address?

To update your address, go back to your BackerKit survey by inputting your Kickstarter email here. If you are not able to update the address through the link above, or need any additional help, please email us at [email protected] for the fastest response.

WARNING:

We still have over 100 backers who didn't fill out their shipping addresses through Backerkit Survey. If we don't have your shipping addresses, we can't ship out the rewards to you. Please fill the shipping address by inputting your Kickstarter email here: https://informu.backerkit.com/.