August has been a phenomenal month for progress at Pigzbe HQ. Following on from Apple Store approval of our Pigzbe App, as well as our token generation event, we wanted to shine some light on R&D progress from CXO Jon Marshall and Head of Hardware Engineering Hugo Shelley, as manufacturing moves from London to Shenzhen.

We’re tactile creatures. We’ve evolved swinging from branch to branch as apes to sophisticated toolmakers. The need to touch and hold is deep in our DNA. That’s why we’re so proud of the small, simple physicality that our little hardware devices are bringing to blockchain: a powerful yet highly abstract technology. Pigzbe Pink is a notifier and game controller for kids, and Pigzbe Black is a cold storage device that helps adults keep their Wollo, our friendly token, and other cryptocurrencies.

Electronics Engineering: Inside the piggy brain

There’s a touch of alchemy to the practice of electronics engineering, where precious metals become new and powerful connected tools. Luckily for Pigzbe, our co-founder and hardware engineer Hugo’s time prototyping for NASA, Google, and many others, is testament to the power of his incantations.

Hugo Shelley, Pigzbe co-founder and Head of Hardware Engineering.

Over the past seven months, the soldering bench in our east London electronics lab has been visited by over 1,900 individual components, shipped from suppliers across the globe. Each part has been meticulously hand-placed to produce 7 prototypes, while our firmware has seen over 12 separate revisions.

From luminosity to battery consumption, from data storage to heat distribution and processor speed, in both its Pink and Black variety, the beautifully complex brains that power our little piggies are now ready for China. One more round of factory floor tweaks and 2019 really becomes the year of the pig.

Industrial Design: How does it feel?

How much bounce should a button have? How smooth should a surface be? Materials, weight, sizing. The curve on a corner, the bevel on an edge. Seams, lines, textures. Pigzbe co-founder and CXO Jon Marshall and his team have been at CADing it all, one model at a time.

Jon Marshall, Pigzbe co-founder and CXO.

Our industrial design time here in London has been invaluable, not least because it’s helped us make a bunch of important decisions about security and durability (more on those coming soon.) In cardboard, foam, 3D print, and CNC’d acrylic, our China-ready prototypes have been touched and played with by more than 250 pairs of hands.

Next stop: China

With the prototyping process, quite quickly you have something that looks, feels and works like it should when it reaches the consumer. The trick is arriving at a product that can be produced at scale. In our case tens of thousands of units per week — efficiently, securely, and without fail-rates.

Excitingly, our beloved Pigzbe prototypes have now landed in Shenzhen for the next leg of the journey, where we will be reporting on our efforts to go from 1 to 1,000,000 Pigzbe devices. Stay tuned for more news as we go from “cutting steel”, to selecting shades of pink, to testing LED brightness, to kitting tests and certifications.

As with all aspects of our project, we’re here to drive change through excellence, heart, effort and as always, a little bit of luck. We’re grateful for the opportunity to work on such a great product and ask you to stay tuned as we deliver more magic over the coming weeks and months.

Thank you for reading. Can’t wait to share the next instalment with you.

Filippo, Piggy in Chief (aka CEO of Pigzbe)