That was terrific. My dad is no longer with us but I could imagine him reacting similarly to something like this. I passed this link to this to friends and clients with engineer dads.
Happy Father's Day to all us Dads alive & those gone but not forgotten 😇 I have that exact same Wall-E USB Hub Also a Monkey both came from Avon 10+ years ago 👍🏻
Loved the clock, really beautiful! But the best part of the video was you two chatting and showing off stuff on the desk, the drone footage and all other info. Love the video big time! ❤
Well, at least you got one. Apparently thousands of folks on Kickstarter (myself included) have been waiting 2 years for it. It now looks like the company has sent them to China for final assembly.... Or the company did a runner and plan to blame China for the problems.
My Dad and I did a teardown of the Retio (hopefully a post soon on that!), and I know exactly why it's taken so long to ship-the wood enclosure is extremely finicky to finish, and would probably take a fairly skilled woodworker at least half an hour to cut and finish. And that's a very optimistic estimate! I hope they can figure out a way to get past that, because the unit is very nice overall, with the exception of the radio functionality (which we'll discuss in that follow-up video).
Yeah, sadly it seems like the way they built it (the custom wood crafstmanship) killed off getting the units shipped out to all backers. Some people got them, but they ran out of money paying the woodworkers, and never fulfilled the original pledges :( That's the annoying risk of Kickstarter, and also why I try to be up-front about the risks of backing Kickstarter projects. It would be neat if they released the source and design files so people could build their own if they could source nixie tubes. Even a 3D printed case would be perfectly adequate (IMHO).
Sadly, Retio is 3years behind and still hasn’t shipped to most of its backers. They are exporting production to china now so most of us KS backers will likely never see this product with our own eyes except for the few who did get theirs shipped to them in early production before they ran into issues.
Yeah, one of the slow failures I've seen play out on Kickstarter. It's been a while since I talked to the team behind it, but I remember they mentioned the details (especially the wood finishing) were what held up production. It required a skilled woodworker to make every enclosure. We revisited the Retio later I think in our 'Where does AM radio go from here?' video, and my Dad mentioned more from using it a while (the radio tuner's not great, though Bluetooth worked okay).
Didn't you tear it apart before? Beware, someone could have sneaked in a microphone and a cell phone module. Although your dad can detect that without opening it, i guess.
The sound quality and reception is poor and the controls don't respond quickly. Threw mine in the trash. The cool tubes aren't enough for me to enjoy it.
I'd be interested in seeing inside that radio if your Dad does take it apart. I'm particularly interested in how the box is built as it appears to have an unusual construction. None of the parts of the box are hard to make but getting the fit and finish just right is going to be tough. They've got a potential issue with cross grain expansion on the back, it's fighting against the long grain on the sides. Cool gadget though, I'd certainly pleased to get one.
Hey, I was wondering if you still have the paper instructions that came with this beautiful piece. I displaced mine, thinking I can always find it online, buuuuuut for once it backfired because the website is down. Now I need the instructions for re-setup and can't find them!
It looks like the Nixie Clock site has a lot of kits available, it would be neat if they could make the insides part of a kit for a bit less so you could 3D print or craft your own outer case for it, since that seems to be their production hold up!
That's the crazy thing-apparently they have a lot of PCBs and the electronics ready to go, the bottleneck is woodworkers, since a number have left the SF area in the past year or so.
