🧠 Firmware & System Stability

Over the last month, our engineering work continued to focus heavily on the new Ukrainian PCBA, firmware validation, power behavior, and the remaining items required before we can move toward production readiness.

Last month, we shared that the I2C bus had been stabilized and that several major issues from the previous PCBA had been corrected. This month, the team continued deeper Ukrainian PCBA hardware bring-up and validation.

The good news is that the Ukrainian PCBA is now much further along, and we have a much clearer picture of what is working, what still needs firmware work, and what small hardware refinements need to be made before production.

🧩 PCBA Hardware Update

After deep hardware testing, the team confirmed that most of the major hardware systems are working properly, including:

• Cameras
• PWM control
• I2C communication
• Audio
• IR LEDs
• PIR sensor
• Door sensor signaling
• USB debugging through the correct setup
• Power delivery using the proper USB-C PD adapter
• Battery charging behavior
• Internal USB-A and USB-C device charging

This is a major step forward.

The team was also able to confirm that the MediaTek chips being tested for the new Ukrainian PCBA are working properly. This is important because those chips are part of the core system architecture, and confirming their behavior gives us more confidence in moving forward with the Ukrainian PCBA direction.

That said, the Ukrainian PCBA thus far is not being treated as production-ready yet. There are still PCB-level refinements still needed to be made by the hardware engineer, mainly around power routing, filtering, and improving overall stability.

From what the team has told us so far, from our original Chinese team’s PCBA to this new Ukrainian’s team PCBA, there were lots of changes. And from the tests that they have been running, it seems like there is a possibility, that another minor PCBA revision may be necessary for us. We should know soon, and while this isn’t great news, the good news is it wouldn’t change much. Hopefully we will get the green light to proceed with not having to do a revision with testing and rather just order whatever revision they give to us.

⚡ Power System & USB C

One of the biggest areas tested this month was the new power system.

Ukrainian PCBA is designed to operate using USB-C Power Delivery, specifically in the 9V-15V range. This is different from a simple 5V USB power setup which didn’t have enough power to drive the system.

The reason this matters is because if you remember from older updates, the Chinese team did not deliver enough power to the safe and the components wouldn’t work, or they would fail. We had to make major adjustments to the new PCBA to allow for the safe to pull enough power it required to be able to:

• Run the full system
• Charge the main battery
• Power internal electronics
• Support connected USB devices (USB Hub)
• Keep cameras, sensors, lights, and other components stable

While they did have some issues during testing, the team was finally able to confirm that the safe can run properly when powered by the correct USB-C PD adapter. The Chinese originally told us we needed only 5-7w of power for the safe, however, after after further evaluation from the Ukrainians, its closer to 45w of power, and the PCBA needs to be able to handle that.

🚪 Door Sensor

One of the requirements we told the Chinese to have for us was adding a door sensor, to know when the door was fully closed for the safe. Although we have many chats and emails proving this was supposed to be in the system, The Chinese had said they never knew about it, which is funny because the PCBA they made had hints of a door closed sensor that was never actually developed.

The Ukrainian team added it to the PCBA and wired up the door sensor. This is great news! This sensor is important because it helps the system know whether the door is open or closed. Previously, if the door was not fully closed, you could still push ‘lock’ button on the safe, and the bolts would come out. The problem was, if the safe wasn’t closed, then the door could lock. This matters because the safe should not try to lock if the door is not properly closed. Not something we would postpone production for, however, since we were doing the work anyways, we had the ability to add it back in.

Now, with this sensor, it means that you cannot lock the safe unless you close the door. The safe will either automatically lock on its own while holding the door closed because of the sensor, or you can manually lock it after holding the door closed. That can be customized per the owner in the settings.

It will help improve:

• System responsiveness
• Reliability
• Power efficiency
• Locking behavior
• Door open / door closed detection

 

📷 Cameras, Audio, Sensors & Other Hardware

Several other hardware systems were checked this month.

In The Chinese PCBA, the cameras were working, however in the newest Ukrainian PCBA, the cameras are not fully working yet. We do think we they will be up and running by the next update. When the Chinese left us, they never did a proper handoff. Something that hurt us was that we had to find new factories for certain materials or components. The cameras were one of them. While we had the model type, etc, we still needed the PCBA that they were running on. Some had to be recreated, and others we took from the new factories we worked with. Specifically around cameras, the team found that the newest interior camera cable appears to have an incorrect pinout on the USB camera module side. This again is due to recreating or using a new factories board. Not to worry, this wont be impeding on our final product and it will be working, even if we have to make changes or continue making coding or driver changes, and it is not a core PCBA failure.

Audio is also now working on Ukrainian PCBA. There had been an issue related to how the amplifier mute signal was configured, but that was identified and corrected.

The PIR sensor is working.

The IR LEDs are working.

The ambient light sensor still needs follow-up. The newest PIR / light sensor board appears to have poor light sensitivity, showing readings much lower than expected. When the older Chinese PCBA, ambient light sensor board was connected to the Ukrainian PCBA main board, the sensitivity looked normal. We need to continue to find out what the issue is. It could be the PCB redesign wasn’t properly done. Just a reminder, we did not receive these files from The Chinese and they had to be recreated. This suggests the issue most likely is with the newer light sensor board (PCB) or component, not the new main PCBA itself.

The temperature and humidity sensor still are not working, and we need more investigation and coding to figure out why. As you are aware, since it’s been so many years, lots of the components were replaced or stopped being manufactured from when our first PCBA was made and the last Ukrainian PCBA development. This means that the new Ukrainian PCBA has some components that we didn’t use before, and we had to code and make sure these new components work on the new PCBA and the system.

The 6 axis tamper sensor is also not working yet in the new PCBA. This is used to know if someone tries to move the safe. With The Chinese PCBA it took us about 3 weeks to develop this, and with the new PCBA and new sensor, we will need some additional time to code this up. Again, this is not viewed as a hardware failure. It is a firmware integration task, and it takes time.

🛰 Firmware & Kernel Work Still Remaining

While the PCBA hardware and Firmware has made strong progress, there is still firmware and kernel work remaining.

In addition to what we named above already, the remaining work includes:

• Completing the charger / power wrapper so the system fully understands the new charging architecture
• Completing integration for the new accelerometer / gyroscope
• Improving PD controller behavior so the system reacts properly to charging events
• Debugging the temperature / humidity sensor
• Finalizing specific kernel and system configuration work
• Creating cleaner tools/scripts so firmware builds can support the board more easily

The charger wrapper is another important firmware item. The system is physically charging, and the battery level increases (charges), however, the system still needs to be coded properly and at the moment, a system-level warning still appears. The system has many system level warnings that appear if there are any issues, this is one of them.

The team believes this can be solved through firmware by completing the wrapper and properly connecting the new charger behavior to the charging system.

This is exactly the kind of issue that appears during hardware testing, and while it is frustrating, it is now understood much better than before.

🧪 Production Readiness Status

We are not yet ready for mass production, but it does mean the team has confirmed that the new board is fundamentally mostly working.

The remaining work now falls into a few clearer buckets:

1. Small PCB refinements
   These include power routing, filtering, and stability improvements that should be made before production.
2. Firmware / kernel completion
   This includes the charger wrapper, PD controller behavior, tamper sensor integration, and lots of other configuration adjustments and cleanup.
3. Sensor follow-up
   This includes the temperature / humidity sensor and the newer ambient light sensor board.
4. Final stress testing
   Once the remaining firmware items are completed, the team still needs to run full system stress testing, including processor, memory, power, battery, USB device charging, cameras, sensors, lights, audio, and full system behavior under load.

Just so you understand, we cannot sign off on the PCBA until all the sensors are coded and verified they are working with our system.

⏳ Timeline Expectation

The progress this month was meaningful because the unknowns are narrowing.

We know everyone wants a shipping date. We want that too. But we also do not want to give a date just to give a date. The responsible path is to finish the remaining validation work and confirm the new PCBA and firmware are stable enough for production.

This is not ideal for anyone, but it is controlled, measurable work that must be completed before we move forward.

We continue to receive emails asking when this will ship, but to be honest, it is difficult to provide an exact shipping date until the new PCBA and firmware are fully finalized and validated.

💻 Software & System

Alongside the hardware and firmware work, we are continuing to refine the Safe OS. This work happens behind the scenes, and only those who have safes have been able to see updates. We are continuing to work through these items carefully so the final product is stable, reliable, and ready for real-world use. Whether you receive a safe now or in 1 year, you will continue to get these updates with our OTA system that we’ve been able to continuously use for months now. Which we spoke about so many times over the years. This is a huge win, and it’s still working seamlessly.

If you have the mobile app and you’re logged in, you would have seen some test emails or notifications come through over the last few weeks. You can ignore them, as we are making improvements to our systems and messaging.

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Pitching

Some other amazing news on the pitching side. We were selected to be in eMerge Americas Cohort for 2026 with a chance to win ~$150k. We were up against nearly 2,000 other companies. 80 total companies got selected to be a part of the cohort. Each company then pitched in front of judges. Of those pitches only 5 moved forward to a final stage where they got to pitch again. While we didn’t win the overall pitch, we did show at the eMerge Americas tradeshow, which was pretty great.

Some really awesome news; the team met the founder of Ring at eMerge America, and our founder took a picture with him, and he told us he loved our product! While he didn’t invest, SPACE is now on his radar. Here are some photos from the event:

 

Jamie talking about how hard entrepreneurship is and how, if he knew how hard it was, he would not have gone forward with it:

 

Although we have not secured an investor yet, the process is ongoing and we are staying persistent. If for some reason these conversations do not result in funding, one of the alternatives we are evaluating is launching a Wefunder crowdfunding campaign. This is simply a backup route we may explore, and our goal is to give ourselves every possible chance to get the product into everyone’s hands.

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We request that you please hold back from sending individual messages about delivery dates and refunds. We will continue to provide full updates through our monthly updates, so please stay tuned. Your understanding and patience during this crappy time is greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you for your unwavering support.

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TLDR - SUMMARY

• The new PCBA hardware has testing has been going well. While we aren’t completely finished with testing, we are close. 
  

• We do believe we will have to make another minor revision. Whether that means new samples or straight to production is yet to be determined. 
  

• The door sensor is now working, and the system can detect door open / closed changes.
  

• A few items still need extra review and coding which will take several weeks; you can read about it above in detail. 
  

• We are not ready to announce a final shipping date yet, but the unknowns are much narrower than before, and the path toward production readiness is clearer.
  

• On the business side, we met Jamie Siminoff, the founder of Ring. He said we have a "very cool product" and it's "super cool". (Are we allowed to just say he loved it?)
  

• Investor meetings still continue. 
  

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Next update will be sent around (not before, and possibly after): July 20, 2026.
Thanks for your support!