Unpacking and before first power on
For BlackIce Mx
My first impression is that the IceCore board, by visual inspection, looks like a very well designed and produced board. It does not feel fragile. Like any good board for home use it has silkscreen text, on both sides, even if there are only a few components on the bottom side. Nice. Plus, it is _so_ small, only 50 * 50 mm. Much smaller than on the pictures 😜. It also has four 2.5 mm ⌀ fastening holes that are replicated on the carrier board. Nice II.
The package was made tracked for me, at no extra cost. This was nice since it took about nine days from UK to my post-in-shop office in Norway. However, there was no packing slip in the envelope (not box), so any customs authorities that might want to open and inspect would have to do the research themselves. This is possible, since all boards have their type in silkscreen. But a printout of the order from Tindie would not have hurt. The two BlacIce Mx boards were each in an anti-static bubble plastic envelope. All were taped well, and finally all had been slipped inside a larger anti-static plastic envelope. Then, a paper board to make it stiff (from a cat’s food box, so the seller most probably has a cat..). I was not impressed by the packaging. For $283 (total for me, including local VAT and handling) I think the risk (or rather consequence) would have been too high for me if something bad happened. Some of the connector’s pins were slightly bent; not a big problem. I have not tested the IceCore boards yet. Which I very much look forwards to!
Response from myStorm | Nov. 14, 2019
Thank you Øyvind for your review I am glad that you like the quality of our boards, we work hard to manufacture these using high quality components, PCB manufacture and highly skilled product assembly. I would also like to respond regarding the shipping. Most of our orders tends to be small single board shipments with 1 or 2 modules, these work well with our current packaging. However your shipment was a little larger, we did add some recycled card in order to reinforce and hold the products firmly in place (BTW, yes we do have cats, their food packaging is also very firm and we like to recycle!). Subsequent this we have now purchased some larger and more rigid packaging to improve larger orders such as yours, this will ensure that multiple products are well protected for their international journeys. Regarding customs, for non European shipments we do have to provide customs declarations which are normally attached to the outside of the packaging, in your case this was not required. However your idea of placing the Tindie order or alternative paperwork inside packages (rather than relying on just the electronic ones) is a good idea and we will need to consider this carefully. Once again for your constructive feedback, we will use this to try top provide even better service and quality for our products, I hope you enjoy using them as much as we do making them.
Regards
Al
