What a month of heavy rain and scorch in Shanghai. In August, the team has split into two groups to race against time. One group has been working overtime for weeks to develop docs site, tutorial contents, and open-source software. At the same time, the other group has been taking business travels each week, connecting with suppliers & production teams, and landing production materials and manufacturing details. A busy month with almost no day wasted, we are working hard to tick off one thing after another on the to-do list.

In a nutshell, we have made the following progress in August:

1. Completed contract and quotation of critical materials and started procurement
2. Completed final version proof of the protection plate and heatsink, mold unloading this month
3. More document development and open-source app center

40% Critical Materials Now Stock In

Our supply chain team did a quick math and found out we docked with over 15 different suppliers to procure critical materials on ZimaBoard. These suppliers have various business scales. Some are distributors, while some are chip manufacturers. They mainly focus on supplying Power IC, DDR, and other related materials. 

We had a strong feeling that the electronics supply chain environment has been improving significantly since August. It is due to two main forces. On the one hand, we have gradually established cooperative relationships with high-quality suppliers via the Intel ecosystem partner networks. On the other hand, the slowdown in electronics component demand has been slowly easing the shortage situation. Hence the team is ramping up the procurement work. (ง’̀-‘́)ง

PVT version of ZimaBoard

Friends who stay tuned about the production progress should know that we completed PVT-proof batch production last week. Let’s take a photo. 

Compared with the EVT version, we have changed the manufacturing supplier and improved the new factory’s surface treatment process in detail. Color calibration is also taken good care of. However, mass production quality control should always be our No.1 consideration. During molding and mass production, we will stay in the factory to carry out process quality management and quality standard establishment. The color scheme of the heatsink is still under selection(below photo for reference). In terms of structure, there are currently few interferences. After fine-tuning the design, we will start the mold.

Tutorials Go Live, Discussions/Ideas for Open Source Application Center

Part of ZimaBoard tutorials has been published on the official website in the Docs section.

The Docs section is mainly designed for those new to home server, providing simple applications and knowledge focused on multiple home server-related scenes. Overall, we’ve divided the contents into three modules: Getting Started, Explore, and Knowledge Base. The scope completed now is limited to the hands-on section, covering basics such as simple Samba shared disk, video access from Oculus, and more.

The ZimaBoard team devoted a lot of time researching and developing our first software product, code name CasaOS (apparently derived from Spanish). CasaOS aims to create fully open-source, simple, and beautiful application management central for your home server. Users can install, run and tweak their applications easily. 

The development of Docs and CasaOS is still at an early stage. We sincerely invite you to join our Discord to share your brilliant ideas.