Update: March 17, 2020
about 4 years ago
– Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 09:45:22 PM
Hi everyone,
In our previous backer update, we shared that we were cautiously optimistic about being able to start our mass production on time and get the units out within our original planned delivery window in May of this year.
At the time, there was still a greater deal of confidence in containment of the virus, but things have taken a turn for the worse in recent weeks.
In the last couple of weeks, governments around the world have increasingly turned to isolating their populations and communities to try to help contain the spread of COVID-19.
To help give you a better understanding of how that has affected us at TeamRed, here are some of the measures that have been taken by the governments in countries where team members reside:
- The Philippines first locked down the city of Metro Manila from March 15 until April 14. This was then extended to the greater province of Luzon, and the quarantine has been widened to prevent most workers from going to the office to limit movement. In addition, other cities and regions have been given the leeway to declare their own state of emergency and impose quarantine on their populations. This is affecting tens of millions of people.
- Singapore has now implemented much stricter quarantine measures for people entering the country from areas affected by the virus. Depending on the port of origin, people are either being completely denied entry, forced to undergo a 14-day home isolation period, or allowed to enter after strict medical screenings.
- Japan is enforcing much stricter border control, including the invalidation of approximately three million visas held by Chinese and South Korean nationals.
- Taiwan has added a 14-day quarantine from people entering their borders from Europe’s Schengen travel-zone, along with residents from Britain and Ireland. This is in addition to other travel bans already in place.
These increasing travel bans have been spurred on by increases in imported cases of COVID-19, and it is an understandable step for governments to want to protect their citizens from additional risk of transmission. This is not only happening in Asia, but everywhere around the world.
On a company level, this has created several different issues for us. Chiefly among these is a difficulty for international travel, which is a concern because we need to have a few of our people present for the production and testing of the golden sample.
Our commitment to quality and excellence must take precedence here, especially during a time of global cause and concern about COVID-19. You have entrusted us to provide you with a high-quality product, and we cannot falter from doing so. We’re in discussions with our manufacturing partners about how we would be possibly able to transport the golden samples in between countries for us to test, which would be a workable solution that avoids forcing people to travel and congregate during this period of widespread travel bans.
The travel bans create an even bigger problem because isolation periods would separate some of us from our families, which is a difficult situation to deal with. This is a risk that we do not want to enforce on any members of our organization – because family comes first.
With the World Health Organization officially classifying the COVID-19 issue as a pandemic, all of us around the globe have begun to put safety at the forefront of our decisions.
This focus on safety is also the reason that we’ve made the decision to move our base of operations to Taiwan from Hong Kong, because of the way they have dealt with the spread of COVID-19, and our confidence in their ability to continue keeping the spread of the virus at bay. As a country that is home to over 23 million people, their ability to keep the virus at under 100 cases with only a single fatality has been, for lack of a better word, amazing. Hong Kong’s been improving since the issues with the protests, and now COVID-19, but we felt more confident in Taiwan for the long-term.
So, what does this mean for Pangolin? Well, as we shared, we have completed and locked down our software. What we’re hoping for is that the manufacturing process can be completed on time, and the solution we mentioned about being able to transport the golden samples and approve them.
There was optimism a few weeks ago, but the global situation has deteriorated to the point where we are unsure about when travel bans (and potential slowdowns of the transport of goods) will begin to improve.
Our projections have been greatly altered by what has happened in the last two to three weeks, and we are sorry for that. While we’re taking all of the precautions, including a forced work from home policy for all of our employees, we are still living in worry each day about how COVID-19 can affect those around us.
We’re still committed to delivering the final product to you, and we’re trying to find ways to do this on time while also keeping the safety and well-being of our employees and their families in mind.
But, looking on a grander scale, we also hope that the global community is able to bounce back relatively quickly from COVID-19. We believe that all of the measures being taken by governments are understandable, but also feel that we humans have the resilience and the ability to overcome the pandemic. It is understandable to feel fear and worry, but we must not forget that we are all living in the same planet. We are confident that the human spirit will prevail, but it may take a while for countries to be able to band together to tackle the pandemic as a group instead of the single units that are attempting damage control at the moment.
Last, but not least, we want to share our thanks to all of you early backers who have supported us from the start. These are difficult times for everybody, and there are many people out there that are having difficulties at home and work. We hope that things improve for them quickly. We hope that you and your loved ones are able to stay safe and healthy.
Thank you,
Team Red
Update: February 26 2020
about 4 years ago
– Tue, Feb 25, 2020 at 10:00:15 PM
Hi everyone,
We’ve reached the tail end of February, so we wanted to give you another update on our progress.
We’re happy to say that we’ve completed our mass production tool and have sent it over to our partners for testing and verification. After that has been completed, we’ll be ready to begin production of our golden sample.
Once that passes our rigorous tests, the authorization for the factory to begin mass production will be given.
Regarding production, we’re currently waiting on our partners to inform us about the full effect of COVID-19 on the manufacturing process. Some factories are currently experiencing a shortage of workers due to stringent health regulations aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.
What this means, in terms of manufacturing, is that we’re still trying to figure out the proper date for us to start our mass production run. Our software is ready, but now are waiting for our boards and shells to be produced on a large scale. COVID-19 has created a lot of unpredictability, especially with some countries in Asia now enacting travel bans.
We did give ourselves an extended lead time for manufacturing, just in case, but we certainly didn’t expect something like COVID-19 to happen. The global health crisis and various governments’ reactions and safety measures have had unforeseen effects on many companies, including us.
However, we currently haven’t received a definitive confirmation from our partners that manufacturing will be significantly delayed. We’re cautiously optimistic about production starting on time.
On another note, a few of you still haven’t completed our backer survey, which will let us know where to ship your Pangolin units. We’ve sent another reminder so please check your email. We will soon start reaching out individually to those still left on the list.
We appreciate your continued patience, and as we shared in our previous update, we want to remain transparent about the effects that COVID-19 is having. We’re working around the clock to see what solutions we can find and will be updating you again in the next week or two with more information about production.
As always, please feel free to reach out and ask us any questions that you may have. We’ll be happy to answer.
- Team Red
Progress Update: February 2020
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Feb 01, 2020 at 01:31:44 AM
Hi everyone,
We hope you had a great January to kick off 2020. We wanted to get in touch with all of you to share another update on the status of the Pangolin project.
The Coronavirus
The Wuhan Coronavirus situation has raised alarm around the globe due to its quick spread, especially in China.
We’re happy to share that our staff have stayed safe and have avoided being directly affected, but are still staying vigilant. The number of reported cases in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and the Philippines have remained relatively low, but safety of our employees and their families continues to be our number one priority.
We’re still working diligently toward our delivery date of May this year and are liaising closely with our manufacturing partners to stay ahead of the situation. We want to be transparent about this as the outbreak and its possible effect on our manufacturing partners was an unanticipated event.
Rest assured, we will continue to communicate with you about the situation as it develops.
Mass Production Tools
We’re building our own mass production tool for the factory, because we believe that the nature of our product requires that we keep the manufacturing process secure and under our control. By building it ourselves, we ensure that the software and all processed hardware is securely signed by our team.
We continue to work on building a secure infrastructure even with our manufacturing partners. What this mass production tool enables us to do is provide secure and encrypted independent keys to each Pangolin device making each Pangolin truly unique. Software integrity and verification will be conducted securely on each device before they are packed and shipped to you. Though this may sound overkill to some, we aimed out to set a new security standard and we intend to follow through our promise.
That also means every Pangolin that gets shipped has undergone a rigorous security check.
Software Development
We’ve are about to lock our new beta release for the update software infrastructure after a tough January of sprinting by our developers. They gave up a lot of personal time, including some public holidays, to help get Pangolin’s device software up to speed. Some of our early beta users can soon expect an update to both their device and mobile application by March at the latest.
On the other end, our app team continues to work toward improving the app experience for users, and we’ll be sharing another update about the next version of the app when it’s ready.
That’s all for now. We’ll update you again when we’ve got additional news. As always, feel free to get in touch with us should you have any questions.
- Team Red
Progress Update: January 2020
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Jan 04, 2020 at 08:14:14 AM
Hi everyone,
Happy New Year! We hope you all had a chance to unwind over the holiday season and are ready for the new decade.
We’ve been hard at work since we last updated you and wanted to give you another update about our progress so far.
The Pangolin App
The app team have been hard at work with getting version 2.0 of our app out, but we wanted to give you a look at some of the screens you can expect to see while operating your Pangolin.
Please note that the app is still a work in progress, and so its appearance at time of shipping is subject to change.
This is the app’s home screen, which allows you to quickly access your alerts, bandwidth controls, and parental controls. You’ll also be able to access your network device list here.
This is the bandwidth controls screen, which lets you partition bandwidth to devices with the swipe of the finger. The controls are built for dynamic bandwidth usage, so if a controlled device isn’t using any at the moment, then that bandwidth is cycled back out to the rest of the network.
Here is an example of an alert triggered by a phishing link. Pangolin automatically blocks traffic from such sites and lets you choose what to do next.
Our parental controls can be set in two ways: with network-wide rules or on a per-device basis. We recommend setting them on a per-device basis for a greater degree of control.
Manufacturing
We’re carrying the thermal testing on the improved design that we talked about in our previous update. So far, so good.
Additionally, we’re making a couple more slight changes to the outer shell:
- Moving the placement of the power socket so that it’s easier to use.
- Widening the device’s reset button so that it’s easier to press for people with larger fingers (like our founder, Miko).
Our team members are also hard at work finalizing the details with our manufacturing partner. We plan to start mass production by March and have the units on your doorstep in May.
Software
We’re getting closer to our goal of locking the software by the end of January. These modules are working just fine after additional testing in multiple countries:
- Ad blocking
- Malware / phishing protection
- Bandwidth controls
- Anti-buffer bloat
- Parental controls
That’s our current state of progress for now. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you haven’t yet please remember to fill out your survey which was sent out last week. If you haven’t received an email or a reminder about the survey, please PM us to let us know.
Regards,
Team Red
Your backer surveys are on the way!
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 05:57:32 PM
Hi everyone,
We hope you have been enjoying the holidays with your loved ones.
We wanted to write and inform you that your surveys are on the way! We're currently doing a smoke test to 5% of our backers, and then once we've confirmed that everything is working fine the rest of them should arrive in your inboxes.
Please check your email for a link, in case you're one of the test group.
- Team Red
