XTND - World’s First Electric Board with AI

We Took the Board out for a Ride
almost 4 years ago – Sat, May 09, 2020 at 12:00:12 AM

Thanks to a spell of nice spring weather and good conditions, we were able to start testing the board outside. We ran a couple of sessions that we were also able to share with our investors to show them our progress. They liked what they saw and were particularly impressed with some of the features, such as Qi charging.

Overall, the tests went very well. One of the goals of our testing sessions was to compare the power of our new battery pack samples with our past results. We confirmed that the new battery packs match the great performance of our older samples. What is more, we made a slight modification to our battery pack in order to make the power connection of the battery pack more secure and stable and to eliminate the risk of losing connection while riding on rough surfaces.

Moreover, we used our latest remote sample for the testing. It had a PCB with redesigned layout, improved throttle sensor resolution and a completely new spring mechanism. The response was smooth and using the remote felt the safest and most predictable of all the samples we ever had.

The wireless charging from the board was improved and tested not only with our remote but also with an iPhone and various other devices.

These test rides also allowed us to collect new real life data in our cloud, which helped us with calibration of various sensors. Moreover, in order to see the sensor data live while testing, we improved their calibration, transfer, and visualization in our mobile application.

Now we can see charts displaying the weight sensors, gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer data in real-time on a phone.

As for other development news, we optimized our charger for injection molding, as it was the last remaining product that was not confirmed for mass production by our manufacturing partner. This optimization revealed some issues in the previous internal structure that was provided by the injection molding partner company of our charger supplier, which we previously considered flawless. We needed to ask the charger supplier for slight modifications of the electronic board in order to better accommodate it into the plastic housing. Fortunately, this process was seamless and we got the result shortly after providing them with a housing sample.

Anyway, we hope that all of you are keeping safe. We really appreciate your feedback as well as your awesome support so let us know how you are liking the look of the board. We cannot wait to show you more soon!

Progress during the Pandemic
about 4 years ago – Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 06:55:30 PM

First of all, we’d like to let you know that the whole team is healthy and safe. We took all the necessary measures to protect ourselves and are handling the situation rather well thanks to the fact that we are no strangers to working remotely.

Nevertheless, despite the pandemic that is holding back the tooling production, we have been able to make progress in other areas to make our product more reliable and easier to manufacture.

First on the list of improvements is the fact that we have found and quickly reinforced a potential weak spot on the board while also working out a few other ways to improve the overall strength. In addition, we optimized a few more parts for easier assembly.

Moreover, we assembled the latest board sample with the latest electronic samples and performed several test rides to analyze their performance, and to collect and evaluate sensor data through our cloud solution. We focused on calibrating the weight sensors, which involved replacing some components on the motherboard and measuring the power consumption of the motors in various scenarios as well as the power of regenerative braking. This will help us understand the battery usage and improve its reliability. Unfortunately, however, we had some parts shipped from China to Europe to perform other tests in our office, but the shipment got stuck, probably due to the pandemic related restrictions. The same reason also limited our ability to perform more test rides and collect cloud data from various environments.

We tested remotely all safety signal functions of our Battery Management System with our supplier in Shenzhen, and approved it. As a result, we produced the latest battery pack prototype that resolved the assembly convenience and worker safety concerns.

As for our other suppliers in China, some of them were still limited in their capacity, as a significant number of engineers who work on our project were not able to return to Shenzhen in March. Because of this, our motor supplier was not able to finish the updated drawings and produce new samples last month. They will have a modified appearance as well as dimensions and will also serve as testing units for our manufacturing partner since all the current samples are needed in Europe.

We also discovered some issues with controlling the electromagnetic locks on the battery compartment and remote wireless charging. Our suppliers in China suggested some modifications to make them work and while these modifications resolved the issues on their samples, they did not fully work on ours, so we need to investigate the problem further.

Since we are slowly but surely getting to the finish line with manufacturing of the boards, it’s time to devote more attention to the company’s presentation. That’s why we are working on redoing our website that will contain all the tech specs and other exciting bits. While we wait for the final thing to take its shape, we have given our old website a fresh coat of paint! We’ll also run a few micro-marketing activities on social media so that we can test out some features of the new website. We’re not launching sales yet, it’s more for the sake of data collection, but we thought some of you might be interested even in this side of our project so we’re keeping you in the loop.

A quick note on the refund policy

Just to make sure everyone understands the situation, we are absolutely aware of your questions and requests for refunds. We also completely understand your concern and frustration. As most of you surely know since we have addressed this repeatedly both in the public channels as well as direct messages, we stopped issuing refunds a while back to manage our cashflow. This doesn’t mean, however, that you will never see your money or the boards, which some of you are worried about.

As we also communicated before, we will start processing refunds once we start shipping the boards. Before that happens, we will collect requests for refunds from you through a designated channel well in advance so that no request falls through the cracks.

That being said, we’d like to ask you to be patient with us. We have been through many minor as well as major setbacks, some of them our own mistakes for sure, some of them out of our control, but we still keep working relentlessly to deliver the boards. We understand that you worry, but making us address the same issue over and over again only cuts into our time and energy that we could otherwise spend working on the boards.

As always, thank you for your support. It might not seem like much to you, but to us it makes all the difference. Every positive comment or message drives us forward and it is very much appreciated.

Weathering the Storm
about 4 years ago – Fri, Feb 28, 2020 at 04:20:54 PM

Last month we made an effort to share with you our roadmap for the coming year. As is often the case, these projections are hopeful and made with some measure of worst case scenarios in mind. However, none of us could have anticipated how the current novel coronavirus would swiftly affect the world’s population, let alone our manufacturing activities. To be frank, operations have been and will continue to be affected. We’d be remiss to not objectively acknowledge that this is yet another set-back. We understand it must be as frustrating for you, our backers, as it is for us. But, we are hopeful about government response and solutions, in China and across the globe, and we’re committed to returning to our proposed timeline as soon as we’re able. We’ll discuss this a further, later in this update. But first, a few operational updates.

With the onset of Chinese New Year in the second half of January, we needed to accomplish as much as possible in the first two weeks of the year. We finalized the battery pack design modification, which should make its assembly easier and safer. The plastic housings are now ready and awaiting manufacturer assembly to test the final samples.

Our electronic components partner did a great job finalizing the samples of both the board and the remote control’s electronic parts, and they managed to send them to us before the holiday. After they arrived at our office, we spent two weeks testing and reviewing them. We found a few issues but none of them are major or too difficult to solve.

Our packaging partner made a sample of the board and accessory boxes. We haven’t seen it in person yet, but it looks great in photos and it is the first time we have a full sample of our packaging.

We made great progress in app development and there are just a few functionalities left to add. Then we’ll begin testing and fixing any bugs we encounter.

Now, returning to the epidemic situation in China. Some of our backers have already asked how this is going to influence our progress. We were hesitant to give you an answer because we weren’t sure ourselves. As you certainly have read and heard, the situation is ever in flux, changing daily. Our manufacturing partners and suppliers were supposed to return to work after their holiday on February 3 and they should have picked up where they left off with the entire tooling design process.

Currently, we’re almost a month behind schedule and our suppliers are still working with very limited capacity, waiting for the government's permission to open their offices and factories. Even if they receive this permission, many employees were unable to return to Shenzhen and they are working remotely from their hometowns where they visited their families for the holiday. In many locations, public transport is currently unavailable and based on our information, the employees who have managed to return to Shenzhen from other provinces need to stay quarantined at home for, at least, two weeks to prevent the spread of the virus. In both cases, this means they don’t have access to company computers, software and effective communication with their colleagues.

Plainly, this means manufacturing, as such, can’t proceed. Even things like communication and planning are exceedingly difficult. We are trying to do as much of the hardware development work in our office in Europe as we can, but there’s not much we can finalize without our partners in China.

Our progress will also definitely be slowed down by our inability to fly to Shenzhen and work effectively with our suppliers.

At this time it’s difficult to draw any conclusions on the ongoing situation in China. We’re hopeful that the factories will open soon and we’ll quickly be back on track.

As always, we really appreciate your support. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us.

Latest Progress & Updated Delivery Estimate
about 4 years ago – Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 01:30:21 AM

We made another trip to Shenzhen in December to inspect our latest prototype, the EP4. From the mechanical point of view, we only found a couple of areas to improve on in order to make the assembly easier and to ensure longer lifetime of the entire product. With our manufacturing partner’s engineers, we made some modifications to the drawings right in their office and the majority of the changes were completed even before we left Shenzhen. For the first time ever, these changes didn’t require us to make a new prototype.

As December slowed down progress, the main accomplishment from the software point of view was automating the app deployment, so we save time on every future update. We also improved our data collection pipeline and are now able to calculate ride statistics in the cloud.

As we mentioned in our previous update, one of the biggest challenges in the past few months was the battery pack, but the issues related to it were also resolved during our last trip. Our project was very challenging for the Battery Management System supplier since our BMS has many advanced safety functions which they’ve never incorporated into any other product before. We did manage to successfully implement them, but the placement of the connectors was now unusual, which made assembly a bit tricky. But we also resolved this issue by modifying the plastic case and changing the assembly procedure, as well as having one of the connectors custom made, so everything, as it relates to the battery pack, seems to be fine now.

We weren’t exactly satisfied with the speed of electronic development in Europe, so in November we moved this part of the production to Shenzhen as well. We did a few quick rounds of iterations with our new partner to find solutions for any and all existing issues. Currently, we’re waiting for the new physical samples to be delivered for testing.

Once we test and confirm the new design of the electronic components, we’ll be able to finish the Engineering Validation Test phase (EVT) and switch to a phase where our boards will be made using the final tooling, which means we’ll be producing a larger number of samples. The board’s hardware drawings are ready to be sent to the suppliers who will manufacture the individual parts. We’re expecting some optimization of all the component drawings in regard to the specific manufacturing process needs of each factory.

We know that many of you have asked for updated delivery dates, or a roadmap, but after so many inaccurate estimates, we were hesitant to give you one. Production, manufacturing, and delivery have been full of frustrating twists and turns. When we’re delayed it’s usually for various reasons. However, this is the plan we’re following now:

• February 2020 - Chinese New Year begins, all suppliers start working again. Our deck manufacturing partner will review the drawings and modify them for easier manufacturing. We’ll make a final prototype (FEP) based on these drawings. After confirming the prototype, the tooling process will start. The estimate is 50-60 working days for the tools and molds to be made.
• March 2020 - We’ll start the certifications pre-scan process with our final prototype. If the lab finds any issues, we can still fix them before we apply for the final certification tests.
• April 2020 - We’ll begin the tooling process for other parts, most of them should take less than a month. Board tooling is still in process.
• May 2020 - All tools should be ready. The Design Validation Test (DVT) begins with a month of fine-tuning the processes to make sure all parts are of the highest quality. Production and assembly of the first batch of production boards begins. The certification process also starts.
• June 2020 - The Production Validation Test (PVT) kicks off while we optimize the production line during the first production batch.
• July 2020 - Delivery of the Kickstarter pledges.

As we get closer to manufacturing the boards, we hope there will be fewer surprises, but this timeline is still just an estimate. Nevertheless, we are working day and night to get it done as soon as possible and in the meantime, we’ll keep you posted about the progress we’re making and any possible changes.

As always, we are infinitely grateful for your patience and support.

Ups and Downs in China
over 4 years ago – Mon, Dec 02, 2019 at 12:22:03 PM

We visited Shenzhen at the beginning of November to examine and test our latest prototype — EP3. We hoped that it would be flawless, and we would be able to approve it for mass production straight away. As you might be able to guess from the length of this post, it wasn’t. The first issue was visible upon the initial inspection of the parts — they were from a month old drawing, the one we originally sent to the prototype manufacturer for a quotation but updated later. They admitted their fault and offered to rework the prototype in a few days. However, since the duration of our stay was limited, we couldn’t choose this option. Luckily, the changes we made in the last month were not so significant, and we could test the main things we needed to test — the new battery-cover sealing, the strength, and flexibility of the board with our unique internal structure, etc.

The areas of the most significant design changes from EP2, which we feared the most, turned out to be okay, which was a massive relief for us. We still found some smaller issues, but most of them were fixed in the drawings during the first few days of our stay. With those things fixed now, we’re ready to manufacture a new sample.

However, an unpleasant surprise came from the battery pack and battery management system suppliers. They concluded that assembly with the current dimensions of the battery pack housing would be complicated and dangerous for the operator because the internal soldering would have to be done after the power is connected, which is not a standard or recommended approach. In order to make the assembly more comfortable and safer, they demanded the battery pack be at least 15 mm longer to make the wires and connectors easily accessible for them. This was not good news for us at all, because adding 15 mm to the battery compartment length meant moving a lot of components inside the board and reducing their size. The change is finished, but it took a whole week of modifying the 3D drawings until we were satisfied with the result.

With this, all our chances of approving the design for manufacturing during our visit were gone. This change was simply too significant to approve without manufacturing a new sample. You can imagine what a surprise this was to us and our manufacturing partner, as the battery pack and BMS suppliers have been working on the battery pack for the past three months and didn't discover this issue until the BMS factory boss came to our meeting and started drawing diagrams on the whiteboard while gesticulating wildly. Then, suddenly, all the engineers changed their minds and claimed the assembly would be impossible. They still have their concerns even after we increased the length, but we really hope these concerns don’t ever become a problem. Otherwise, we would have to simplify the design of our battery pack electronics and get rid of the smart features, which was the reason for designing a new battery pack in the first place.

A brief test of the new motors didn’t show any flaws, which was expected, because their design is based on the original design of those motors which were already produced by this supplier— one we tested previously and with changes which were only cosmetic. It was a bit of a compromise, but we made this decision after our latest custom design motors had problems with noise. However, we will still take them through proper performance and durability testing in the lab to make sure.

We also discussed our board and accessories thoroughly with the manufacturers of plastic and metal parts, received some final design recommendations before mass production, and we established a more precise project plan with them. Some of the plastic parts will take a bit longer than we expected, but we are trying to minimize the delay by finishing the design as soon as possible, together with our manufacturing partner’s engineers who are getting more and more involved in the project as we get closer to the finish line.

We’ve approved the drawing for our EP4, and we expect the sample to be ready when we next visit.

The internal electronics for both board and remote are going through their final check-ups and preparations for mass production. We’ve also been working on energy draw optimizations, so our boards can last longer on battery.

On the software side, we’ve set up a new pipeline for collecting anonymized data collection about the board’s attributes. We’re now able to monitor the systems in real-time, and we can also use this data to further optimize the performance of the motors, battery usage, and other aspects of the board. Next, we’ll start preparing our machine learning infrastructure to process the incoming data to create a more personalized experience for you, the rider.

The mobile app’s design is now almost complete. We’ve been working hard to implement all the features of the app, including real-time dashboard, stats, riding history, and more. We still have a bit of work left to do on some animations and polishing the overall user experience of the app so that it’s not just functional but beautiful and fun to use. We expect to finish the app with enough time to thoroughly test it so that you’ll be able to download it from an iPhone or Android store as soon as you receive your board.

In the meantime, we’ve been designing our new website, which will eventually cover everything from our products to checkout. We will let you know when the first iteration with new content is released.

So, some small delays, but things are looking good — steady progress. We’ll be back in China next week. A week from that, we’ll finalize all drawings and designs for mass production.

We look forward to seeing and sharing some news about the new prototype shortly thereafter. And, on top of that, we might still have one more trick up our sleeve, so stay tuned!