Month: November 2023

Los Gatos, California – September 25^th, 2023 – The printed circuit board is the brain of MAPTATTOO. This is where the magic hapen and its design is the reason we are able to get exceptional performance.

Here is a video of our production batch. 150 Printed Circuit boards are being assembled, which covers our needs for this Indiegogo campaign.

Assembled Printed Circuit Boards

Los Gatos, California – September 19^th, 2023 – All of our Printed Circuit Boards for our first mass production batch have been produced but we had only assembled 10 of them with their electronic components for testing purposes. Our pre-production tests having concluded successfully, we are now proceeding with the assembly of the full mass production batch.

We have recorded this video at our supplier’s assembly facility in Canada, I might be biased but I think this is one of the most riveting video I have ever seen:

Printed Circuit Board Assembly

In this video, you can see the pick-and-place machine precisely positionning our 365 electronic components on our printed circuit boards. Some of these components have hundreds of pads. In subsequent steps, the boards are oven baked and then tested.

Within the next 2 weeks, we will receive all our components at our assembly facility in Chicago where we will proceed with the final assembly, functional testing and packaging.

Los Gatos, California – September 19^th, 2023 – Our injection molding supplier sent us this video of our enclosure mass production:

Front Enclosure Injection Molding

What you can see on this video is the production of the front of our enclosure. It is the most complicated polycarbonate part because of the dimension constraints required for waterproofing the USB-C connector and ensuring the seal with the back part. The part is in Polycarbonate to ensure impact and flex resistance. We made it translucent so that our green and blue LEDs are visible but also to facilitate the assembly of the screen (it is easier to see if the adhesive is properly set). This part will actually be invisible to you because it is then overmolded with black elastomere.

Los Gatos, California – September 18^th, 2023 – Small Craft Advisor recently published an article about our project.

Here is what Jerry Culik (Engineer, Technical Writer and Boat Enthusiast) said about MAPTATTOO:

“The MAPTATTOO tablet chartplotter addresses a number of the items on my wish list. The 6-inch display is much bigger than anything I’ve got now, but it’s not too big to use on my smaller boats. It has a touchscreen that’s backed up by a keypad. It will run 50 hours on its internal battery and doesn’t require a power cord “leash.” It has a waterproof USB-C fast-charge port and comes with a cable to charge it from a small solar panel or power pack with a standard USB jack. A low-cost 5 watt solar panel with a USB charging jack is light and compact – less than half a square foot in area—and ought to be able to do the job. The MAPTATTOO power consumption is so frugal, only 400 mW (or an order of magnitude less than the Garmin 44dv), that I could probably leave my power station at home.”

Read more

By the way, Small Craft Advisor is an awesome publication, I encourage you to subscribe to their Substack.

Erwan

Los Gatos, California – September 10^th, 2023 – We get it, things happen on a boat.

We designed MAPTATTOO carefully to ensure that it can resist all sorts of shocks:
– We bonded our E-Ink screen to a 1.1mm Gorilla Glass panel (that is about 2X mor than typical phones and tablets)

– Our enclosure is made in polycarbonate (about 2mm thick) and is extremely resistant

– Most of the enclosure is overmolded with a thick layer of elastomer (1.5mm) to further improve shock resistance

– The screen is recessed so that it is protected from most shocks and scratches

We had a little bit of fun torturing this MAPTATTOO over the week-end:

MAPTATTOO is intact, after a dozen drops from 6ft 

Los Gatos, California – September 6^th, 2023 – Many of you took the time to fill-in a survey and I would like to take some time to share with you a few insights.

First of all, we asked you what you were excited about:

Sunlight Readability

The first feature people are the most excited about is sunlight readability, and we agree! Using electronic devices outside can be quite a challenge, and getting the best readability in the brightest light has been driving the design of MAPTATTOO since the beginning.

50H Battery life

Following closely is the battery life of MAPTATTOO, and it makes sense; 73% of our backers plan to use MAPTATTOO on multi-days trip. Having a device able to work up to 50 hours on one charge is perfect for those long navigation sessions!

Versatility

You also love the versatility and portability offered by MAPTATTOO, 75% of you are using more than one type of boat! Sailing, motor, multihull, kayak, inflatable, row boat… you are planning on bringing MAPTATTOO onboard no matter the type of ship!

Lastly, we asked what future developments you were hoping we integrate into our roadmap and you gave us great feedback! Some of the key priorities will be:

1. Ability to create a route without a Laptop
2. Ability to personalize the screens and widgets
3. Support for inland waters
4. Display AIS / NMEA data via USB Gateway

Having your feedback is super key for us, knowing what’s important for you allows us to focus our efforts on what matters most! We will continue to implement features to match your use as best as possible.