Considering they are offering free replacements for faulty units, the autofocus issue was with one of their suppliers and with whom they had (QA) discussions in the beginning of this year. Fixing the Europe batch before shipping was most likely one of the biggest reasons for delay compared to the December announced schedule.
Hello Holzhausen, this is indeed what seems to me the most plausible, I can hardly imagine a company shipping around 2000 pieces and risking a return and a replacement at their expense because of a problem identified before shipping.
I just wanted confirmation from them.
For me and especially for all other backers who may be worried.
I am not one of those who spilled their hatred on indiegogo to complain.
This is exactly the point. For most of us, this isn’t our first time in a crowdsourcing project, so we know that delays are inevitable. I think the community mod team have learned from their mistakes (“we don’t give dates because everyone complains when we miss them”), but I think they’ve gone too far in the other direction.
It’s no problem for them to say “We’ve identified a problem with x, we’ve stopped all production until we have this figured out, once production starts again, we’ll post another update”. If I read an update like that, I’ll just come back a week or two later because I know there’ll be no news in the meantime. People are getting ratty on indiegogo because they are trying to glean information from the comments - the information should be readily available.
Hey guys, Philips already said in the last IGG update that they’re addressing this issue at a factory level and that if you have a faulty unit - they will replace it. You can contact them at hello@picopix.com regarding that.
Hey @Vin , one problem people see is: what happens if my unit (with insufficient glue) doesn’t break during the first shipment, but when I move the projector outside in a year or two. Will they still be as accommodating as they are now with replacement units?
That’s why a lot of people want them to take their time and fix all units before shipping, and not just the recently produced ones.
If I had the unit, and Philips admitted publicly there is an issue, which they already did in IGG, I’ll just ask for replacement, no questions asked. So I’d advise you to just send them a request for replacement. Better to play safe than sorry later . But you’re right, if there is such an issue you never know when it might break.
On the face book group he opened the device specifically because it was broken. All that was happening for those units is the gear for the autofocus came off (insufficient glue or to much impact during transit). The person opened the unit to see what was wrong and was able to reinsert the gear (using glue) and it worked again.
Again I would not suggest to do this while in warranty and this is only a fix for this specific issue.
On a side note PPM said they do drop tests (I think a minimal distance and others). Hopefully this is probably a QC issue and why we didn’t see it with all shipped projectors to this point. I would think a combination of rough shipping along with factory not using enough glue combined to cause the issue for select units that say the problem.
Either way a 2 year warranty should show any initial issues with enough use and with a community to share any problems.
I had rather in mind the following affirmation, if the separation of the part with the chassis had caused a breakage of this part.
But it may not be possible for it to break in this way, it will just be wandering around in the chassis, making functionality impossible but without damaging anything else.
Yes from the looks of it the gear can’t be broken as it is a metallic part it just comes loose.
I don’t even think there is enough room for it to wonder around, I think it just sits in its area, just not connected to the motor that moves the gear. I added the key photos from the Facebook group but can’t take credit for any of this as I am still waiting for my device sadly and being in the 16k won’t see it for a while.
Hopefully the issue is fixed with the adjustments they are making.
It is not from me it is from the Facebook group. The gear came loose and one of the owners was able to open up the device and reattache it. I don’t have my PicoPix max yet unfortunately.
That is the reason why I wrote to Philips in the topic “Auto focus System and warranty “ and ask them to extend the warranty by 2 more years for units manufactured and shipped before the auto focus system was fixed. This way we don’t have ask for replacement/refund, and is a win-win situation.
Unfortunately, they don’t even bother to response.