Audio Brick production progress update

Hey folks, quick update on the production process after a slightly longer-than-usual break. Despite the summer holidays, as soon as we got the funds transferred, we were able to submit the order for production.

Thanks to Elecrow’s flexibility, we were able to start with just two board samples, one per board version, and after just a few days, I had these beauties on the desk for testing, knowing that mechanically they are tip-top and production people don’t have any complaints about the design.

Not that I wasn’t sure about them, compared to pre-production proptotypes there were just a two minor fixes: (1) I replaced power connector with a 2-pin verson, as one of the supporters with more industrial experience suggested: “You don’t want to allow mixing up power and speaker connectors in a dustty dark electricity box”, which I think is a great reason to add a cent to the production cost. (2) I fixed the RGB LED power line that I had accidentally omitted in the pre-production prototypes.

Otherwise, I didn’t expect any surprises, and indeed, the boards are working as expected. I was able to test both boards with ESPHome and even run load tests on the test bench. While a pair of my 50W test resistors started to smell funny, the DAC was still working fine, and the TAS5825 DAC was able to correctly report an overtemp warning after some time, so automation kicked in and reduced volume somewhat to avoid shutdown.

Small bonus point, for a first production batch, white silkscreen was used to highlight my huge gratitude to everyone who supported the campaign, and I hope you like it.

The production is at full speed now, so hopefully the batch will hit the US soil before July ends, and you still have some summer holiday time to play with them.