Our team has been at the factory for almost 6 weeks now trying to make sure everything is smooth and perfect so we can go into mass production. Throughout the journey we have taken thousands of pictures and videos. It’s been a slight nightmare to sort through thousands of videos and images, which is why there was such a delay in the update from us. We have separated a few for you here to see, and we are preparing a long detailed video with everything which will be viewable sent in the next email update.

 

The trial production has still not completed because of a few last hiccups that we are all trying to sort out. The reason this trial production took so long is because we had so many different issues that kept arising, and each individual issue has been pushing out the completion time. Some of you had complained about having a trial production, however, there’s a reason for it, and it’s a good thing we did have it – that way you can get the best version of this safe. During our time at the factory we had overseen every detail of the production and assembly. So you understand the procedure, each time we have to rework something, it could take days or weeks to design new samples, manufacture the new samples, then test them.

 

Here are just a number of the things that went wrong and some that have held us up:

 

1) The factory incorrectly painted our safe charcoal instead of black (see image below for difference. It is a little hard to see in the photo, but the general idea is visible). We had to rework all of our safes in order to make sure the color was up to spec. The new color / the right color is beautiful – and that’s what we will have for all of you!

 

 

 

2) Our EVVA locks are all silver, but as we all know, for production we want it to be black so its as invisible as possible. During the last few months, we had tried a number of different methods of painting them, but as we continued to use and test the locks with each method, the paint continuously would scratch off – which is not good enough for us. We went back and tried a number of different solutions, but all failed. We then went to re-design one of our already manufactured parts. This redesigned part now had a way cover the entire lock without painting the lock. The newly black cover mostly hides the silver part of the lock. For example, this part had to be redesigned 4 different times; redesigned, manufactured, tested, and did not live up to our acceptable standard. After several different weeks of testing and iterations, this video is the final version we ended up with:

 

 

3) When it came time to install our black hinges, we had taken them out of the packaging and found that ½ of the hinges were poorly painted, or would not open and close properly. Our supplier did not want to fix the issue, so we had to find a new supplier to produce and provide new hinges to us. The old hinges are a loss.

 

 

4) After receiving our batteries and testing them, we found out that the factory provided us with Tier 3 batteries when we had specifically asked for something better. A tier 3 battery will not last more than a year, and we were looking to supply our safes with a good quality that is used in tablets and cellphones. So again, we had to order new batteries from a better and more trustworthy supplier. The new supplier provides batteries to very well-known cellphone companies (we are not allowed to disclose which brands). The old batteries are a loss.

 

5) One of the issues with the old PCBA is that it was created to work with 12v only. That means if anyone wanted to use a different USB-C cable or different adapter, it would be almost impossible to find one – limited you to only what we provide. This would be a disaster if you required a longer cable to connect to an outlet. There were a bunch of other reasons we changed the PCBA power to 5v other than just compatibility. Anyways, once we did that.

 

6) After improving the PCBA (#5), some of the components were not properly working. We only found that out once we assembled the safes. At that stage we had to disassemble all the safes, and figure out what was causing these issues, and began removing each individual component until we found the issues. Here are only some of the components that had issues:

 

a. The WiFi antenna. This was not properly working. When we before had an excellent WiFi signal, we were now having poor and fair WiFi signals. After diagnosing with the antenna factories engineers, we had found that we had to create new antennas that would work with the new PCBA because the old ones would no longer work. The old antennas are a loss

 

b. The IR LED. The safe has a front camera and during our development stage we added IR LEDs that way the camera would work and be visible at night and not just in the day. This means that if the room is dark, the IR LED lights will brighten area for the camera to see everything. If that doesn’t make sense, previously only a pitch black room would be visible, but now you can see everything as greyscale. This is another component that was having issues with the new PCBA. We had to go back to that factory and purchase new components so they would work perfectly. The old IR LEDs are a loss.

 

Each component had to be tested and made sure they were in perfect working order. Anything that was not perfect, was rendered unusable and that was a loss to us.

 

 

7) Our initial speaker was set for 130db, which was louder than most safes, but it was not loud enough for us here at SPACE. So, we have increased the speaker to a 5w speaker, and this alarm is now the most annoying thing in the world – perfect for an intruder. Hope you don't mind the upgrade. The old speakers are a loss.

 

 

8) Our packaging foam inserts that protect the safes were incorrectly made and we were missing a key protection for the screen. We wouldn’t want any safes to arrive with a broken screen. So we had to design new foams. Therefore, the old foams had to be reworked(again) and tested to fit the new additional foam. You can see the attached video we took the original foams, cut them down, and made sure they are workable before mass adjusting.

 

 

9) The exterior LED lights were not properly lighting through the safe. We had to redesign and make new parts to make this fit better.

 

10) On the inside of your safes we have a lining. The lining that the factory gave us was cut perfectly to fit your safe, but they were a little too long, so we had to order new lining so they were perfect. The old linings are a loss.

 

 

 

This is just some of the struggles that we had during our trial production. We have had many more than just this, but Murphy’s law – whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Unfortunately, lots of the issues that arise are only brought to our attention once we are ready to assemble a certain part, or when we go to test a certain feature.

Every issue we have had has cost us a lot of money, whether it was redesigning, manufacturing, retooling, replacing, etc. In almost all cases, we have to repay the factories for any replacement parts (as above). We don’t recover these costs or ask you for them. While it’s normal that most people do not ever know the struggles every product has (like some of ours above), I assure you that every new product, especially in the technology sector, has a multitude of struggles. We hope that by sharing just a few of these struggles with you, and shedding some light on the trial production, you can understand and provide a little support. It’s hard to continue working on providing such an amazing and unique product to everyone when we get so much hate mail from some of the community, or when some continuously ask us when you will receive your safes. We really ask that all of you follow the updates section and we will do our best to send updates every month so you know exactly what is happening.

We are trying our best to build a great brand and give you a fantastic product and we hope you can appreciate that, because even though you may want the safe sooner, it’s better that the WiFi works for your smart safe, then it not working at all.

As you could surmise, because of the above, the timeline has unfortunately been pushed out again. In our next email when we get a better idea of what the delays will mean, we will once again send out a detailed updated timeline. In our trial production, we have realized that we need to open a new mold in order to be able to mass produce. What that means is we will require at least an extra 60 days to make that mold and test it accordingly.

What’s next for us?

 

A) Once this trial production finishes, we will need about 4 weeks of rigorously testing the trial production units. This will be fine because during that time we still have to wait for the tooling and molds to finish (~60 days).

B) After we test the mold and are happy with it, we will then be able to go into our first mass production. (We cannot give you timing as to when you will receive your units. We will not know until we finish (B), which is 2 months from now). Again, apologies for the delays. Please bare with us as we make sure to get this product out to all of you in the best possible way.

We have thousands of units that were ordered around the globe, and we are aware you have been all waiting for them. We will try our best to get everything out as soon as possible. Because of the delay here, we will most likely send out the survey in the next 60 days.

Please see some videos here:

 

 

Stay tuned and thanks to the 99% of you for your patience.

 

TLDR - SUMMARY

(written by one of our lovely community members - thank you!)

The company mentioned they have been at the factory for the last 6 weeks and multiple issues have occurred.

They cannot give us timing yes as to when we will receive our units. 

They also enumerated the issues they have been having with the safe:

- Incorrect paint color on the safes
- Difficulty painting the locks black without scratching
- Defective hinges had to be replaced
- Batteries were a lower tier than specified
- The circuit board was redesigned to improve compatibility
- Various components like the WiFi antenna and IR LEDs had issues with the new circuit board and had to be replaced
- The speaker volume and foam inserts were upgraded
- Exterior LED lights had to be repositioned
- Interior lining was the wrong size

Each issue required redesigning, remanufacturing, and retesting, costing significant time and money.