Beiträge von mega65 im Thema „Production update 29.02.2020 - Meeting with TRENZ our mainboard manufacturer“
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Can you publish an statistics how many DevKits have been sold in which countries?
I don't know yet. All I know is that 6 are from Australia. I'd estimate at least 60 are from Europe, and the rest I simply don't know. USA looks to be a bit underrepresented. Reasons are a bit unclear for that. Some folks from the USA I think got a bit confused by Trenz payment system, but I'm not rerally sure of the truth.
LG
Paul. -
Thank you Paul, for this extensive explanation on crazy Aussie timezones which doesn't really give me comfort that I moved to downunder for a good reason

With the EU killing daylight saving time, I wonder if OZ will follow. I am sure Queenlanders would agree

BTT: I wonder if you will have the final product shipping only from Germany or will you have an Aussie depot as well?
Well, I don't think that SA will ditch summer time, unless we simply moved to eastern time year round, perhaps. After all, the curtains have already faded and cows put off the milk, so there's nothing to recovere

Now, as for an Aussie depot, this might end up happen. It's certainly happening informally for the DevKits, with most of the units coming to me, so only one lot of customs charges and cheaper freight. But at the scale of sales of the final machines, that might be a bit more complex. Also acting as an importer for a final product is a bit trickier with potential consumer law liability as bringing in kits.LG
Paul. -
Hmmm, is Paul already/still awake, what's the time in Adelaide now, or the US east/west coast, etc....
i.e. my prefered chatting times with Paul are around 3 - 4:00 o'clock in the morning

Adelaide has some weird time shift of half an hour to the full hours somewhere else.

While currently in Sydney we have CEST + 8h to AEST, Adelaide is CEST +7.5h (ACST)
Bitte melde dich an, um diesen Link zu sehen.We like to say in Adelaide that we are 23.5 hours ahead of Sydney

(They like to say that they are 30 minutes and 20 years ahead of Adelaide, but we know they are wrong

Also if you want real time-zone pain, we have Central-Western Border Time, which is about 200 people on the border of two states in the middle of the desert. They use the average of the two timezones to give +8.45 hour. But until recently, only one half of them followed summer time, so withing this little area you had +8.45 and +9.45. So parts of Australia would be on:
+8 (WA doesn't do summer time),
+8.45 (CWBT without summer time, for the part in WA),
+9.30 (NT doesn't do summer time)
+9.45 (CWBT with summer time),
+10.00 (QLD doesn't do summer time),
+10.30 (SA, where I live, which is west of QLD, but does do summer time), and
+11.00 (Sydney etc that do summer time)You can also cross most of those by going only north-south, and avoid timezone changes when going east west by picking your route carefully:
If you start in, say, Melbourne and then drive to Brisbane in summer you go back 1 hour as you cross north into QLD. Then drive to the western side of QLD and drive south back into NSW to go forward 1 hour, then keep driving south to Broken Hill (still in NSW) which operates on SA time, so go back 30 minutes. Now drive west into SA to Coober Pedy. Follow the highway north into NT to go back 1 hour (no summer time), now drive back south into SA and head to the western border towns to go back 1 hour and 45 minutes, then drive west into WA staying on border time, now drive north into the desert to go back 45 minutes. Finally drive west to Perth, without changing any time zone. You have no gone through every mainland state and territory changing timezones ONLY when you go north/south, and never when you go east west.
Now, back to the more serious matters:
International freight and import duties suck. I know, because I live in Australia where just about everything travels 15,000km and gets stuck in customs for a month while they slap silly fees on top of the taxes. So we know the problem the folks in the USA are facing, multiplied by a big factor, as freight between EU and USA is fast and cheap compared with getting stuff down here. For Australia, we have formed a little syndicate of those ordering a MEGA65 DevKit, so that we can bulk ship them to save a bit. If folks from the USA want to do the same, we can talk to Trenz about this, but you need to find a trusted party to handle the shipment and deal with customs. For Australia that was easy, because I'm here, and the five or six Aussies who are ordering a DevKit trust me (I already knew half of them, anyway, because our scene is smaller due to smaller population). For the USA this would be trickier, but not impossible. But its not something I have the bandwidth to organise.
So in summary, we recognise that its not ideal, and are open to suggestions how we can help folks -- so lonog as it doesn't burden us or Trenz in the process.
Paul.
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