Hi everyone, we’re happy to share that all Kei v2 orders from MONOKEI have been fulfilled. We’re also writing to address some of the issues for this run.
BTDB:
The Bluetooth daughterboard (BTDB) used in Kei v2 has been work in progress for a long time. In particular, we chose a design studio in SF out of many others because of their experience in consumer electronic products, having scaled launch products to >100k+ / units for their previous clients. For more than 9 months, we’ve been working with this partner design studio and our manufacturing partners in China to produce multiple round of prototypes. Each round of prototypes were tested rigorously before mass production was finally approved, and debugging was conducted throughout the production process.
In spite of that, we understand that a small percentage of BTDB are not performing correctly. We have reached out to affected customers to provide replacements. We are still investigating with our partners to understand the root cause of these issues.
In the meantime, we have been working with Cipulot to design and produce a wired daughterboard based on the unified daughterboard project. We are currently prototyping and testing these new wired daughterboards and we estimate that we can have them manufactured in the next 2 - 3 weeks. We understand that some of our customers have purchased the Kei v2 with the wireless capability in mind. We are really sorry that not every BTDB is performing as consistently as we hope them to do.
We will be sending an update email to all our Kei v2 customers regarding the unified daughterboard and how you will be able to get one. We will also be providing these wired unified DBs to customers who purchased the Kei v2 from our vendors.
Magnets:
We’ve been using this adhesive variant for several rounds of prototypes for the past 9 months and have sent these prototypes for meetups around the world with no issues. The engineers at our manufacturing partner are also investigating with their procurement department to ascertain the variance in quality observed in the MP units. We’ve also requested for them to also trace and check the adhesive supplier that was selected from their approved supplier list. Over the past 6 weeks, we have confirmed and re-purchased another adhesive and have worked with affected customers to recall and repair any affected units. We are also checking every single unit to ensure that all outgoing units will not have the same problem.
We want to add that this is a different manufacturing partner from the TGR & SINGAKBD collaborations.
Extras:
For those looking out for extras, we’re looking to have them in stock and ready for sale before the end of the month. These extra units will ship with a wired unified daughterboard instead of a BTDB.
We also want to thank everyone for their patience and understanding so far, and as always, feel free to write in if you have any comments or feedback.