No, don't worry. I haven't missed Pioupiou yet 🙂

In fact, I even did pretty well Pioupiou…

– Since I have a mountain of spare parts in my office.

– Since I also have a whole bunch of electronic cards that are ready.

– Since I finished the internal software of Pioupiou (for the curious, it is here).

– Since I received 8 cubic meters of wedging particles to protect your Pioupious in their boxes.

– Since I just hired 2 people to take care of assembly and shipping.

– Since I started coding the new website and the API for data access.

Brief. It's almost closed, what.

But in reality, I am desperate. I'm desperate, because in a few days it's summer. It is symbolic. I wanted to deliver earlier. It missed.

I'm desperate, because I'm still missing 3 pieces. And that without these 3 pieces, we cannot finish.

The first part is the stainless steel shaft for the propeller. I had to redo it following an error on my part on the tolerances. There, no worries. I subcontracted to a box in Haute-Savoie, they are serious. I imagine having them next week.

It's the other two rooms that I'm worried about. I'm desperate, because I've been trusting a******* from Chinese vendors, and as you might expect, they poop.

SO. Poo #1 is the cards for the tail. I received an email on Wednesday:

Dear Nicolas Baldeck,

Your order ***** is confirmed Jun 24, 2015 11:09 and schedule to ship on Jul 1, 2015.

We will send you delivery details as shipped.

Sorry, the scheduled shipping date is delayed to Jul 1, 2015 due to reworking of some of the boards .

We will dispatch your PCBs as priority. Hope you understand.

Please let us know if had any questions, thank you.

There, when I read "July 1", it went wrong. It went even worse, because they had already delayed delivery to June 18. Initially, I was to receive them on the 12th.

Poo #2 is the ceramic bearings for the propellers. This is luxury poop. There's a total of $6600 (about the same in euros).

Brief. I have a very dear "Lisa", who promised to have them in stock. His company presented all the necessary guarantees for me to be able to trust. I had received and validated the samples. Brief.

This Mrs. Lisa, she tells me every week that my bearings will be shipped next Friday. And she's already more than a month late. Besides, she told me she was going to send them to me today. But today I did not receive more information than last Friday.

Finally, I raised my voice. I gave him an ultimatum. We'll see if it works.

If next Friday I have no news, I will give you her email so that you too can relaunch her.

So, I see some coming up: “what are you complaining about, you too are in the dark…”. For my defense: on the one hand, we have a young kid who has embarked on a project whose ambition exceeds him, and who had not foreseen how much there is always shit that delays the project − which seems to me excusable. But on the other side, we have companies that have been used to making the same products for years (so still a lot less surprises) and which are not honest.

Because there's a reason these two providers are late. The problem is that I only order 500 or 1000 units from them. It's a lot for us, but it's very little for Chinese manufacturers. With such small orders, I find it difficult to be considered. As a result, the biggest customers are served first, and Nicolas can always wait.

So yes, I'm desperate because I'm wasting my time dealing with this nonsense. Me, all I want is to quickly finish and send these Pioupious. Because as you can imagine, it's still quite a lot of pressure. (And then it's only a first step and there is a sequel waiting impatiently behind).