News

It’s time for the final Update Monday of this campaign.
After 122 updates we’re saying goodbye to ‘Update Monday’ starting today. From now on we will update you about Ockel on a monthly basis, here on Indiegogo.

It’s time for a short update.

It is time for a new update!

This week it’s time to celebrate an amazing milestone we reached last week. Additionally, we’re updating you about the final shipments.

It’s time for the final update of 2018.

Thanks, 2018!

What a great year we have had. In 2018 we finally celebrated the long awaited release of the Ockel Sirius A, our own official online shop and the launch of Ockel Investments. We also won a Reddot Award and we obviously continue our mission to reinvent the PC in 2019. Stay tuned as we have some big (pocket-sized) things planned for next year!

Shipments Ockel Sirius A Pro

With most of the ‘Rest of World’ backers receiving their Ockel Sirius A Pro a couple of days before Christmas, we managed to ship out the remaining batch of European orders last Monday.

There are still some backers awaiting their Ockel Sirius A Pro perk and we won’t let you down. Next week we’ll be back with a production update and hopefully an estimate on when you will receive your Ockel!

We wish you all the best for the year ahead of us. Together we will continue our journey to reinvent the PC. Thanks for being part of the Ockel community in 2018.

The Ockel team.

Time for our weekly update again.

Today we are very happy to share fantastic news for most of the backers here on Indiegogo, as well as a short production update, the last chance for the perfect holiday gift and our holiday schedule.

The Sirius A Pro’s are (almost) on their way!

Great news for two-third of our backers who are awaiting their shipment. We will ship out your orders this week. Keep a close eye on your e-mail inbox for tracking information, with a little bit of luck your Ockel arrives before Christmas!

For backers who will not receive a trackingcode this week (or Monday next week), we’ll aim to ship your units later this month. As soon as we have more information available about your shipments, we’ll update you accordingly.

Please also consider that you may not receive the color you’ve initially ordered, due to the fact that we streamlined our production. In case you missed the news about the production streamlining, feel free to read the update in which we shared the news here.

Production continues

Here’s a quick shot of our CPU’s which will be assembled on to the PCB’s. We can’t wait to fulfill all existing back-orders and we’re running on full-force to make this happen!

Last chance for your perfect Holiday gift

Today = your last chance to order the perfect gift for the holidays. During our Ockel Christmas Week, you’ll get the last chance to get your hands on the perfect Christmas gift for yourself or beloved ones with an awesome discount.

Order your Ockel Sirius B Black Cherry or Ockel Sirius A Home before the end of today and we guarantee delivery before Christmas!*

Visit our store now

*This promotion does not apply to the Ockel Sirius A Pro.

Holiday schedule

We’ll be celebrating Christmas too. This means that we won’t be in the office from Monday – Wednesday the 24th – 26th of December. Therefore, there won’t be an update on Monday the 24th.  In addition to that please note that e-mail response may be delayed.

The final update of 2018 will be shared with you on December 31.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Hi all,

Time for a new update. This week we’ll update you about the Ockel Holiday Week and we’ll give you a quick production update.

Holiday week

Today = Green Monday. Traditionally the last chance to order your Christmas gifts online with guaranteed delivery before Christmas.
We decided to stretch Green Monday to last a whole week, instead of just one day. During our Ockel Christmas Week, you’ll get the last chance to get your hands on the perfect Christmas gift for yourself or beloved ones with an awesome discount!
Order your Ockel Sirius B Black Cherry or Ockel Sirius A Home before December 17^th  and we guarantee delivery before Christmas!*

Visit our store now!

*This promotion does not apply to the Ockel Sirius A Pro.

Production update

The PCBs are on their way to our SMT-facility and we will be awaiting their arrival this week. As soon as the PCBs arrive we will start with the SMT process, all workers and SMT production-lines are 100% ready to ramp-up the production for the Sirius A’s.

I aim to have some photo’s to share with you in next week’s update!

Holiday schedule

We’ll be celebrating Christmas too. This means that we won’t be in the office from Monday – Wednesday the 24th – 26th of December. Therefore, there won’t be an update on Monday the 24^th.  In addition to that please note that e-mail response may be delayed.

The final update of 2018 will be shared with you on December 31.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for a new update.

This week we’ll share last weeks’ investor meeting with you, as well as an update on the production schedule.

Ockel investor meeting

Last week we organized an investors event in The Hague, to present our innovative investment opportunity to potential cornerstone investors. The turnout was great! We’ve met some loyal Business Class viewers and even one of our first backers. Teun was one of our first backers for the Ockel Sirius B (white model) campaign and he was Backer no.3 for the Ockel Sirius A campaign. Thanks for coming Teun!

Ockel production update

Good news! The PCB’s will be finished this week. The SMT process will begin early next week, after which we will start with the assembly and testing of the units. We can’t wait to bring you the good news about your shipment later this month. An exact indication cannot be given at this time, but we’re aiming for December.

Stay tuned for more!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Happy holidays to all of you!

It’s once again time for a new weekly update, here on Indiegogo.

Production update

No further updates here. We’re still awaiting the PCB production and everything is going according to plan.

Last chance to join the Black Friday & Cyber Monday madness!

We have had a successful Black Friday weekend and we decided to extend our promotion with one more day during Cyber Monday. This really is your last chance to grab an Ockel Sirius B Black Cherry with an amazing discount.

Tim, our TV-star.

Yesterday our CEO Tim joined the Dutch TV-show ‘Business Class’ with Harry Mens to talk about the Ockel Token investment opportunity. It definitely was a tremendous success. Although the interview is in Dutch, we’re happy to share it with you anyway:

Click here to watch the interview

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

We have some news regarding the production to share. As well as upcoming Black Friday deals for our Ockel Sirius B Black Cherry!

Production update

We have good news, as we know have an official estimate for the PCBs to be ready. On December the 8^th we will receive the PCBs and the SMT will immediately kick off at the 10^th of December. When the SMT has been finished our production line will run on full force to assemble all Ockel Sirius A (Pro’s) as quickly as possible and start with the shipping process straight afterwards.

In the meantime we will keep you updated about the overall progress in our weekly updates.

 Black Friday is closing in on us

Great news for ‘deal hunters’. Black Friday is almost here! We will join the Black Friday madness with awesome deals on our Ockel Sirius B Black Cherry model – the perfect gift for the holidays for your family, friends or yourself!

Stock is limited, so make sure not to miss out on this amazing opportunity. To be gain super early access to this deal, subscribe here. No worries, we won’t spam you!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Today we have a brief update. As there is not too much new news to mention, we’ll just share the latest production update with you.

Production update

Everything is running as it should run. We are still awaiting the PCB manufacturing and once the PCBs are ready, we will start the assembly of the Ockel Sirius A’s! Obviously we are eager to make this happen as quickly as possible.

As soon as the PCBs are ready, you’ll be the first to know.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for the weekly update. This week we’ll briefly update you about the Switch Mode feedback, production progress and our dedicated Ockel investments Twitter account.

Switch Mode Alpha feedback

Thanks a lot for sharing your feedback on our Switch Mode Alpha mode, we’re working hard to add more features and will keep you posted about the progress we make. Obviously, a keyboard functionality will be built in as well.

Production update

Currently the production of the PCB’s is underway. There not much news to share regarding this topic, as everything is going according to plan.

Investment opportunity – Twitter

You’ve most likely heard about our investment opportunity before and in case you didn’t, make sure to check our Ockel investments website!

For our investors, relations, backers, fans and family we have created an official Twitter account (@Ockelinvestment) dedicated to the Ockel Investment project. Here you can find the latest news and information about our redefining investment opportunity. Make sure to follow us!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Today we have a new update for you. This week we’ll brief you on the production progress, the Switch Mode Alpha release and last but not least, our monthly newsletter!

Production update

Great news! The new PCB design has been approved and we’ve already placed the order for the new batch of PCBs. The latest estimation is that the lead-time for the PCB is around 40 days. We’ll keep you posted about the progress on the PCB production.

Switch Mode – Alpha v.01

Last week we promised you to release the Switch Mode BETA. To be honest, it will be an Alpha test phase as there are still many aspects that require improvement.

The Switch Mode Alpha can be found here: https://www.ockelcomputers.com/support/sirius-a/

We will continue to develop this feature. All of your feedback is welcome, please e-mail us at: [email protected] with the subject ‘’Switch Mode Feedback’’

“Before experimenting with the SwitchMode app, please ensure your external display is setup as extended display. Once you’ve done that, simply run the SwitchMode executable. If an external display is connected, all applications will be moved to the external display, the Sirius A display will turn white and function as a trackpad. Disconnecting the external display will make the SwitchMode run in the background.

Monthly newsletter

Last month we started with the first edition of the Ockel newsletter. From now on we’ll update our subscribers every month about the latest product news, behind-the-scenes action and much more other cool stuff we’re working on!

Do you want to receive fresh Ockel news in your inbox as well? Subscribe now: http://bit.ly/2P4Z4sm

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

It’s once again time for a new update, this time we’re back at our HQ to present you the latest news. Today we’ll update you about the production progress and the Switch mode BETA.

Production update

Currently we have our hands on the latest production models of the Ockel Sirius A’s with the 2.0 version of the PCBA. We expect to finish our own tests later this week. As soon our tests have been finished we will order the remaining PCBs. The production and assembly will be scaled-up as well.

Here’s a video of the aging/stress tests we have been running last week:

We also have a video of the laserprinting process for you. We use a laser to print the unique serial code, logo and batch number on to the Ockel Sirius A’s.

Switch Mode – BETA

We are working hard to (finally) release the BETA of the Switch Mode in the next week’s update. It will be an ‘empty’ shell, without any installation interface. Obviously, we will use your feedback to improve the switch mode. In parallel we are in talks with Microsoft to make sure that we will be able to distribute the Switch Mode efficient. One of the major challenges we have is to keep the Switch Mode up-to-date according to the latest Windows builds, as they are commonly being released.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Without further ado here is the latest update, all the way from Hong Kong!

Intel Event

As Tim and I are currently in Hongkong, we have had the chance to meet with several of our tech partners. Last night we have had an Intel event, which was quite interesting for us to be part of. Tomorrow we will meet with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce in Hongkong, which will be interesting for us as well. As we are here both for the Ockel Sirius A production and the Ockel Investment project, we have been busy talking to potential investors as well.

In case you haven’t yet invested in Ockel, you still have the option to do so!

Production update

As far as it goes for the production we have no further updates other than we shared last week. Our own pre-production demo units will arrive this Wednesday and we’ll take them home to our HQ for further testing. In our production facility the tests are running on full-force to make sure we can guarantee a high quality for all to-be produced Ockel Sirius A’s.

As soon as we confirm the pre-production models, the Ockel Sirius A production will kick-off. We’ll be back next week with more information regarding the Ockel Sirius A production.

Ockel investment update

As we mentioned in our last update, we organized a press event last week. Our team managed to finish the video of an interview with Tim Haaksma and Chiel Ruiter last weekend. Below you’ll find the video (as we promised to share) in which Tim and Chiel give you an insight in what a token is and how you are able to invest in Ockel starting at only €25,-!In case you want to learn more about this investment opportunity please visit our website: ockel.investments.

As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for an all new update. This week we’ll tell you more about the production status, the Ockel Investment press event and an upcoming trip overseas.

Production update

The national holiday is officially over. This means that all aspects of our production are slowly getting back up again. We are happy to tell you that the test phase of our pre-production models has been started and is expected to finished in the middle of next week. We aim to get our hands on a fully assembled pre-production model later next week. We’ll take it back to our HQ in the Netherlands and will extensively test the model in-house (day-to-day activities) as well as in third party test facilities. As soon as we confirm this model, the Ockel Sirius A production will kick-off. We expect a lead-time for the new PCB models of 30-35 days. After which the units will be assembled and shipped to you. This means that we currently expect to be able to ship out all remaining Ockel backorders in November.

We’ll also be able to ship a fairly small batch of Ockel Sirius A’s later this month, we expect to have more details available about this small batch later next week.

Press event – Ockel Investments

The word is out, our redefining investment opportunity is now available to the public!

As some of you might already know, Ockel Computers has become a public company. We are the first Dutch hardware company to do this in a new groundbreaking way. The funding counter is filling up quick. Claim your piece of Ockel starting at only €25,-!

We are actively promoting this opportunity and last week we hosted a successful press event in Amsterdam. With several speakers, including an ex-banker, a professor and obviously Tim himself we aimed to inspire and inform all present (local) press. An after movie is in the works and will be shared with you later on.

Tim was also interviewed by Bitcoin Magazine. You can find the full video here on Youtube!

Traveling overseas

Tim and I will be traveling overseas later this week. We will be present at an Intel event, as well as several events related to the Ockel Investments opportunity. We also have scheduled several meetings with our tech partners to talk about the Ockel Sirius A production developments. If you happen to be around in Hong Kong next week, feel free to reach out to us to meet & greet!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Without further ado, here’s update #107:

Production update

The trial production of the upcoming round of Ockels is going according to plan. The SMT is finished and we are currently preforming software tweaks to the WiFi chipset. As soon as this process is finished we will start with the extensive tests after which we’ll immediately start with the production of the large batch of PCB’s. Currently the factories overseas are closed due to the national holidays this week. We will update you in greater detail later.

We’re going public this Thursday!

Exciting things up ahead. We’re going public this Thursday afternoon (European time). We have scheduled a local press event in Amsterdam and we will make sure that all of you will receive an update as soon as we’re live. Good news for everyone, as you will be able to invest in Ockel starting at €25,-!

More details will follow in the next update, here on Indiegogo. Obviously, if you want to learn more about us going public, make sure to sign up for our newsletter.

Last chance to vote for us

As mentioned in some of our previous updates, we are nominated for the ‘Start-up of the year Award 2018’. In order to win the precious award we need your help. The voting round is still open, so if you haven’t yet voted for us.. please do so today!

Note that you’ll have to fill-out the form firstly, after which you will receive an e-mail with an unique URL to vote for Ockel Computers in the category ‘Start-up of the year’.

To vote, please click here.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Hi all,

Today we have a brief update for you.

Production update

Last week we’ve started the SMT-process and everything is looking great so far. We still expect to start with the first durability, performance and quality tests this week. Which is ahead of our previous estimated deadline.

Also, we’re doing all we can to finish a small batch of Ockels by the end of this week to be able to fulfill a small quantity of backorders. Due to a national holiday overseas, there won’t be any progress today and tomorrow. Next week we’ll be back with more details!

Along with the news about streamlining the production last week, we felt that we needed to change some images here on the Indiegogo campaign page. And that’s exactly what we did!
In case you missed the news about us streamlining the production, feel free to read last weeks’ update here.

Only a few weeks left

We’re going public. And we are real close to the moment that we’re able to spread the word (including all details) to all enthusiasts around the globe. Our project team is finalizing and tweaking all aspects of this massive project and we expect to release the big news early October.

Obviously, if we want to be amongst the first to get to know all details make sure to sign up here.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for an all new update. This week we have a shipping update, as well as an extensive production update. Without further ado, here is update #102:

Shipping tomorrow!

As mentioned in our previous update, we’re able to ship plenty of orders to backers all around the globe waiting for their Ockel Sirius A Pro’s.
The airfreight is expected to arrive today at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, which means that we’ll receive the Ockels in our European warehouse tomorrow. We will start with the fulfillment of all orders tomorrow afternoon! As with every other Ockel order, we will be using DHL Express to ship the orders with. DHL guarantees a shipping window of less than four business days, world-wide. Stay tuned for the track & trace details you’ll receive in your e-mail boxes!

Last week we worked hard to finalize additional Ockel Sirius A Pro’s and this process will continue this week. A small additional batch with Ockels is expected to be ready for fulfillment next week. Good news for some of the backers who won’t receive their Ockel Sirius A Pro this week.

However, we won’t be able to fulfill all orders with the current amount of ready & ‘almost ready’ Ockel devices. For those who won’t receive their Ockel in the coming week or next week the following production update applies.

Production update

In our previous update we mentioned that we needed additional time to discuss production details with our technical partners. In the past week we have had many conference calls with our technical partners, as well as with our component suppliers.

A couple weeks back we mentioned that we were in the middle of the QC (Quality Control) process. During the QC-test we encountered a high defect ratio of the PCB’s (70-80%). We used last week to find the root of the problems causing the high defect ratio. We found out that the 8-layered PCB had suffered from oxidation in the production facility. The PCB supplier worked around the clock trying to ‘repair’ the PCB’s, but after a couple of days between hope and fear we were updated with the news that the PCBs were not repairable. This for sure is a major set-back for us as a team, as we were real close to the finalization of the production of this batch with Ockels.

After many discussions with our technical partners we decided to switch from PCB supplier in order to guarantee quality and a fast delivery window. We have found two new suppliers for the 8-layered PCB of the Ockel Sirius A. Both suppliers are doing all they can to produce the PCBs as quickly as possible for us without handing in on the overall product quality. We chose for two suppliers this time to minimize the chances of unacceptable build/component quality as well as unexpected delays.

Here at Ockel we always aim to turn ‘bad news’ into ‘good news’ eventually. That’s why we decided to implement a few improvements to the PCB for this unexpected ‘new’ PCB production run. Normally this would cause a major delay to any production, however this time it won’t affect the leadtime negatively as we have to wait for the new PCB production anyway.  The improvements of the PCB are mostly unnoticeable for the average Ockel Sirius A user, but will result in a more stable device overall.

The expected leadtime of the new PCB production is set to 30 days from today. As soon as we have our hands on the first PCB’s we will extensively test the components. After the component tests we will start-off with a trial production and test the fully assembled Ockel Sirius A’s extensively again. As far as our expectations go for the moment, we are facing a delay of about 4-6 weeks from now.

We are fully aware of the fact that some people have been waiting for several months right now and we are truly sorry the production delay. The entire Ockel team is doing all they can to fulfill all existing orders as quickly as possible without handing in on the quality of our product. Since the day we started this campaign we knew it wouldn’t be an easy job to design, create and produce the most versatile Pocket PC ever.
We are very proud of the successes yet to date.  Including the fact that thousands of Ockel Sirius A users all around the globe are satisfied and using the Ockel Sirius A in their day-to-day routines. On top of that the Ockel Sirius A was granted with several awards, including the Red Dot and GIO award last year. You as a backer are an ambassador of Ockel, without you we wouldn’t even exists. You are part of the success, we believe you are even part of the Ockel team and we can’t thank you enough for your trust and patience.

Heading overseas

Our CEO Tim and Product Engineer Jan Paul are on their way to our technical partners and production facility overseas. They’ll make sure that everything is going according to plan and will have several meetings with all parties involved with the production of the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro. They will keep a close eye on the production of the PCB’s while they are there. Their findings will be shared during our weekly update, here on Indiegogo.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for an all new update this week. In this update we will brief you on the Ockel Experience Day which was held last week, another award nomination we received and the shipment status for Batch #2 backers.

Ockel Experience day

Last week we’ve organized an ‘Experience Day’ in collaboration with our PR-partner Reshift, here in the Netherlands. A total of five Ockel enthusiasts were invited to unbox and test the Ockel Sirius A. We have had an amazing day and the testers will all write an article about their Ockel experiences. We can’t wait to read them!

We’re thinking of organizing a Backer Experience day as well. How cool would that be? 😉

Shipment status

Great news for all backers who are part of the second batch. Your Indiegogo order status has been changed to ‘Locked’. This means that we are preparing your order for shipment. Currently we are able to ship out all orders to the backers part of the second shipping batch. The packaging process in our production facility has started today. We expect to be able to ship out the Batch #2 Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro’s next week.

In the meantime we are also preparing the shipments of the Powerbar Pro 9000’s, which will most likely be shipped out in about 2-3 weeks as well.

Please note that the order status of all Batch #1 backers has been changed to ‘Fulfilled’.

Award nomination

Last year we won the GIO, CES and Red Dot Design awards. Obviously, the yet-to-be-won award nominations are still very welcomed!
This week we are happy to announce that we are nominated for the German Design Award 2019. The Ockel Sirius A is nominated in the category ‘’Excellent Product Design’’. The attention of the jury was attracted by the extraordinary design of the Ockel Sirius A.

Hopefully it’s time to celebrate the winning of another award soon! 😉

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for an all new update! We have great news for the European backers this week and will give you a little more insights in the upcoming shipping plans. Luckily we had some spare time to relax last weekend as well.

Kingsday

Last Friday we celebrated Kingsday, or ‘Koningsdag’ as we call it in the Netherlands. During this National holiday, the entire country dresses in orange to celebrate the birthday of our king Willem-Alexander. We hope His Royal Highness had a wonderful birthday!

Due to the National holiday we weren’t able to answer all support tickets in-time. Many of the outstanding support requests have been answered today. Our support team geniuses are doing all they can to work their way up in the e-mail box.

European shipping plan

Fantastic news for the European backers. All backers who are still awaiting their Ockel Sirius A Pro Venus Gold or Moon Silver shipments will receive their tracking code tomorrow! Due to the National holiday last Friday we had to move the packaging process over-the-weekend. Today we started the preparation and packaging of the remaining European orders and expect to ship them out tomorrow. An automatic DHL tracking notification e-mail will be send to the e-mail address used to order the Ockel Sirius A with. Please make sure to check your spam folder as well. The shipment shouldn’t take more than 3-4 business days to arrive.

Batch #2 shipments

For all backers who joined us after the 20^th of January and did not yet receive a tracking code, stay tuned! We will keep you informed about the exact timeframe of your shipment in one of our weekly updates. For batch #2 backers (20^th January and later), who did not yet share their color preference and address information with us, please do so by filling out the Survey which can be found via this link: https://ockel.typeform.com/to/OhLeIh

Powerbar Pro 9000 shipments

As we mentioned in several of our previous updates, the Avanca Powerbar Pro 9000’s will be shipped out in a later stage. Our expectation is that the powerbars will be shipped as soon as we start with the fulfillment of the second batch of Ockel Sirius A machines.

Man of the match

Did you know our Ockel HQ is actually located inside the football stadium of ADO Den Haag?
Last weekend the last home match of the season took place in the ADO Den Haag stadium and a small part of the Ockel team had the chance to meet & greet with the famous Dutch football player Tom Beugelsdijk.

Tom was blown away by our company story and our devices. In the next few weeks he will have the chance to play around with a Ockel Sirius A Pro. Obviously, he was more than happy to accept that offer!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Today we have finalized and released the latest Ockel Sirius A & Ockel Sirius A Pro BIOS update (2018.04) on our website.

The latest BIOS version includes the following fixes & features:

• Updated the Battery Management Driver (BMD)
• Updated the Network card (RJ45) driver
• Updated the WiFi chipset driver
• Fixed issue with battery drains / incorrect status indication
• Fixed issue with an option to eject the WiFi chipset
• Minor overall stability improvements

We don’t recommend BIOS updates for Ockel devices that do not need it. Review the recommendations on our website before updating your BIOS.

A video tutorial and PDF-manual have been published along with the BIOS file package. Download the latest BIOS version for your Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro here.

That’s it for now. We will be back on Monday with an all new update!

As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for an all new update. Great news for many backers who will receive their Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver configuration this week. The shipping is steadily progressing.

This week we’ll also brief you about the new backers who joined our campaign, the BIOS-update which is almost ready for the big release and the shipping plan for the remaining Ockel Sirius A Pro configurations.

New Backers

Last week our campaign was mentioned in one of the weekly Indiegogo newsletters. This has led to a tremendous amount of new (and returning) visitors on our campaign page and luckily many new backers as well!

To all who joined our campaign last week: Welcome! Thanks for the support & your contribution. You’ve contributed to a company with a vision about why and how to do things differently and the product you’ll receive is a perfect example of this mission statement. Together we are reinventing the PC!

All backers who have placed their order after the 15^th of January will receive more information about the expected delivery date soon. For those who not yet have filled-out the backer survey, you can find it here: Backer Survey for batch #2 backers

We will continue to keep you updated along the way every Monday!

Bios update

Last week we’ve published the Automatic Driver Update Tool, which has been useful for many backers. Today we slightly adjusted the driver set to avoid the ‘’invalid file path’’ error notification.
On the BIOS-side of things we’re making great progress. Stay tuned for the BIOS update. This update will include an all new Battery Management Driver, which includes fixes for the battery drains, Wifi drops, RJ-45 connection issues and many more fixes to improve the overall stability of the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro.
Currently we are working on a video tutorial with instructions on how to install the BIOS-update. We’d like to keep things as simple as possible. Our expectation is that we will be able to release the BIOS-update, including the video installation tutorial, via our Online Support Center on or before Wednesday. Stay tuned!

Shipping plan

Last weekend we’ve started with the fulfillment of the remaining Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver configurations. This process has been continued today.
We will send you the tracking code confirmation e-mails as soon as possible. Please make sure to check your spam folder as well! The shipment shouldn’t take more than 3-4 business days to arrive.

The European backers will receive their tracking code as soon as their Ockel Sirius A is shipped out. We expect to be able to start shipping your Ockels by the end of the week.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for a short, second update this week. As we promised, we will update you with the latest production status today.

Shipping plan – ‘’Rest of World’’ orders

We have great news for most of the backers that are still awaiting their shipment. Tomorrow we’ll start with the first shipments of the Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver configurations with destinations outside of Europe.

We have worked hard to be able to ship out the first portion of Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver configurations as quickly as possible. This weekend we will ship a little over 50% of the outstanding Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver ‘’Rest of World’’ orders.

We expect to be able to ship the other half next weekend, as they are still in our production facility for optimization purposes.

As soon as your order has been shipped we will send you the tracking code by e-mail. The first backers will receive their tracking code on Monday.

Shipping plan –European orders

We have great news for our European backers as well! The airfreight is ready for departure from our production facility. We expect to receive the airfreight in the middle of next week. All of the outstanding Ockel Sirius A Pro Venus Gold orders will be shipped out as soon as the airfreight arrives in the middle of next week.

In addition to the Venus Gold configuration we will also ship 50% of the outstanding European Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver orders. We expect to ship the other half a week later.

Support documentation updates:

Today we released a new automatic driver installation tool on our Online Support Center. With this tool, you are able to install all drivers automatically instead of a manual installation. We have included a manual for the installation within the .zip file you can find on our website.

You can find the new driver set here: Ockel Online Support Center

The beloved BIOS update is taking a little longer than expected.

In the last 1.5 week we have made great progression on fixes for software related instabilities. Early next week we will be able to release an all new Battery Management Driver, which includes fixes for the battery drains and overall stability.

Some users noticed an option in the File Explorer to deactivate & eject the Wifi chipset. With the upcoming software update we have fixed this as well. The Wifi drops, which have been reported by several users have also been fixed.

The fixes are part of a BIOS-update. Instructions on how to install this update will obviously be included. As soon as all the required documentation is finalized we’ll publish the update via our Online Support Center.

Device related (technical) questions

For those who have support inquiries or device related questions, we’d advice you to e-mail our support team at: [email protected]. We’re doing all we can to respond within 48 business hours.

See you on Monday!

The Ockel team

Time for an all new update.

Last week we have been working around the clock building-up new driver packs and battery management software tweaks. In today’s update we’ll brief you on the current status of the driver development and production status of the remaining configurations.
We do have something to celebrate as well 😉

Driver updates

Last week we have made great progression on fixes for software related instabilities. This week we will be able to release an all new Battery Management Driver, which includes fixes for the battery drains and overall stability.

Some users noticed an option in the File Explorer to deactivate & eject the Wifi chipset. With the upcoming software update we have fixed this as well. The Wifi drops, which have been reported by several users have also been fixed.

The fixes are part of a BIOS-update. Instructions on how to install this update will obviously be included. We expect to finalize the BIOS-update tomorrow.  As soon as all the required documentation is finalized we’ll publish the update via our Online Support Center.

We have also been working on the finalization of the ‘automatic’ driver installation tool. We will provide this tool later this week. With this tool, you are able to install all drivers automatically instead of a manual installation.

Device related (technical) questions

For those who have support inquiries or device related questions, we’d advice you to e-mail our support team at: [email protected]. We’re doing all we can to respond within 48 business hours.

Production status

In the last weeks we have been promising deadlines we unfortunately couldn’t keep up with. We are truly sorry for this inconvenience.
In the last week we’ve received some e-mails of backers expressing their displeasure about the delay. We understand your frustration and we dislike this situation as much as you do.

The reason for the delay in shipments is pretty straight forward: We are trying to embed the improvements on these last units. The entire Ockel team is literally working around the clock to organize a lot of things. That might not always be noticeable, but trust us.. we’re doing all we can to ship out the Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver and a small portion of the Venus Gold  configurations as quickly as possible.

Currently we are embedding the latest BIOS-update on the machines that are almost ready for departure. Because of the fact that all units had been pre-loaded with a BIOS and Windows configuration last week, we need to re-install the BIOS and Windows configuration for each unit. This process takes about an hour extra per unit.

As some of you suggested we will publish a second update this week with the latest status of the production and hopefully great news regarding the shipping timeframe on Friday the 20^th of April.

Please stay tuned, we never did and never will let you down.

We won another Award!

Last week we were finally allowed to spread the word on the amazing news: The Ockel Sirius A has won the Red Dot Design Award 2018!

The Red Dot award is one of the most prestigious awards to win for product designs.

We’re very honored and thankful to have won this award, and we’ll keep working on more new and innovative products in the future. Let’s hope this is the first Red Dot of many more to come!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for an all new update. We have had a busy week and obviously have some more busy days closing in on us. This week we have reached another fantastic milestone, thanks to all of you! In this update we will also brief you on the latest production status and tell you more about the drivers & support improvements.

An amazing milestone

We’ve reached another milestone! We’re incredibly happy with the amount of fans and backers from all around the world who joined this campaign. It’s heartwarming to see our fan base growing steadily each day.

Last week the Indiegogo counter hit the amazing $900.000 mark. Thank you so much for all your support! Would it be possible to reach the mindboggling $1.000.000 any time soon?

Drivers & Support

We’re working around the clock to solve the issues reported by fellow backers. In the last couple of days we have been focusing on the optimization of the Battery Management Driver as we received some reports with issues related to the battery. Great progression has been made here. We’re eager to release the latest update as soon as possible via our online support center.

In addition to the Battery Management Driver we’ve also been working on a fix for the detachable Wifi chipset, the RJ-45 port functionalities and the Wifi/Bluetooth drops.

We have scheduled a meeting with Intel for later this week in order to dive into the technical difficulties. We have high expectations for a quick fix in the near future.

On our support page we have released a driver set for the Ockel Sirius A & Ockel Sirius A Pro. Last week we’ve included a manual on how to install these drivers manually, as they are all listed in separate folders. We expect to be able to optimize the way of installing these drivers even further with an ‘automatic tool’ later this week. Stay tuned for more information.

For those who have been e-mailing us via: [email protected], we’re doing all we can to respond within 48 business hours.

Production status

Last week we updated you with the latest estimate on the start of the shipments of the Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver and the remaining batch of the Ockel Sirius A Pro Venus Gold configurations.

There is not too much ‘new’ news to share, as we still expect to start shipping these configurations by the end of this week. Once we start shipping we’ll send you the tracking codes.

In case we have new software updates available before the shipping date we’ll push and install the updates immediately on the devices before dispatch.

Share your thoughts / experiences!

We’re happy to read through your reviews/feedback. Feel free to leave a comment here on Indiegogo or via one of our social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). If you have any product specific questions or issues, please contact our product specialists through [email protected].

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

It’s time for an all new update. Last Monday we didn’t post an update due to the National Easter holiday, here in the Netherlands.

Last week we’ve received a tremendous amount of positive feedback on our device. Thanks so much for that! Almost all Ockels have been shipped out already. In this week’s update we’ll brief you on several topics including the feedback we’ve received, the Ockel support page updates, the Switch Mode and obviously the production status of the Moon Silver Ockel Sirius A Pro.

Device feedback

Last week we also received questions regarding several hardware/software related ‘issues’ backers faced. Obviously, we are working on a fix for every reported issue.

During our Quality Control at the end of the manufacturing process, we have checked every I/O port on every unit in “factory mode”. Every shipped out unit was 100% functional during this check, but in order to bring the device back to its default status, an automatic clean-up is performed on the device, so the user can create an account in a fresh Windows environment.

Some of you have contacted us about issues with I/O ports and their drivers, and it appears that this has something to do with an error in the clean-up process, where not all drivers are properly loaded into the Windows system.

We’re confident we can fix these issues through software updates, because we’ve checked all the hardware components numerous times.

Our support and engineering teams are working around the clock to find & build the appropriate fixes. We won’t rest until every issue is solved.

In the meantime we kindly ask you to stay patient. Whenever you’re facing issues with your Ockel device, please let us know directly via: [email protected]. We aim to answer your e-mail within 48 hours on business days.

Ockel support page

We will be updating our Ockel Sirius A support page in the coming days and weeks as well. All (new) driver sets and quick-fixes will be posted on the support page. If you have any question for our support team, please make sure to visit our Online Support Center first.

New FAQ’s and detailed documentation will be added soon.

Ockel Sirius A – Switch Mode

Some users asked us about the Switch Mode functionalities. You might remember we told you about this mode during our campaign. The Switch Mode should have kicked in once you connect an external screen to the Ockel Sirius A, the Sirius A would automatically switch into an input device so you could use it as a keyboard or mouse.

However, the Switch Mode development isn’t in its final stage yet due to the continuous changes Microsoft makes to the Windows platform. Currently we are wrapping up our first Beta version of the Switch Mode. This means that the Switch Mode is currently not installed / pre-configured on the devices we have shipped out. The Switch Mode application will be released as a Beta version first and can be downloaded via our Support Center soon.

Ockel Sirius A Moon Silver production

We’ve fulfilled almost every order placed here on Indiegogo. However, we’ve not yet shipped the Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver and some European Ockel Sirius A Pro Venus Gold orders. Note that we are working around the clock to ship these models to you asap!

Unfortunately we didn’t make our last deadline, stating we would ship before Easter last weekend due to the extra needed time to finish the test phases of the Ockel Sirius A Pro machines. Luckily, we are almost ready for shipment.

Right now, we are facing the national holiday called Ching Ming Festival. This means that our production facility will be closed for a couple of days. This pushes our estimated shipping date of the Non-European Moon Silver Ockel Sirius A Pro’s to late next week.

In case we have new software updates available before the shipping date we’ll push and install the updates immediately on the devices before dispatch.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Hi all,

Time for yet another exciting update!

Last week we’ve managed our way through the logistical challenges we faced. And with  great results, as most of you received their tracking code and some of you even received their Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro already!

Amazing feedback

We are thrilled to read through all the amazing feedback we got from you! Our social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram) have seen a high traffic rate lately. Obviously, the comment section is full with enthusiastic backers. For us, it’s heartwarming to see & read all the positive feedback. Once again: Thanks for the support!

Logistical progress | Outside EU

It has been an amazing week!
We have shipped thousands of Ockel Sirius A’s to countries all around the globe. Did you know this campaign has backers from 88 different countries? It has been a challenge, but we’re more than happy with the results. Most of the orders have been shipped with DHL. A small portion of the orders were shipped with different carriers. We decided to use different carriers in cases where we could win a significant amount of days in terms of delivery time.

In case you haven’t yet received a tracking code. Please double check your e-mail inbox, including your spam-folder. Just a few hours ago we e-mailed the last batch of tracking codes to many of you.

The good news is that we shipped out all Ockel Sirius A’s & Ockel Sirius A Pro’s to countries outside of EU. The only configuration that hasn’t yet been shipped is the Ockel Sirius A Pro – Moon Silver. The expectation is that we will ship out this configuration by the end of this week.

To wrap up the information, here’s the overview of the current shipping status, as requested by many of you:

Shipping schedule outside EU

1. Ockel Sirius A Home – Meteor Grey – 100% shipped
2. Ockel Sirius A Pro – Meteor Grey – 100% shipped
3. Ockel Sirius A Home – Venus Gold – 100% shipped
4. Ockel Sirius A Home – Moon Silver – 100% shipped
5. Ockel Sirius A Pro – Venus Gold – 100% shipped
6. Ockel Sirius A Pro – Moon Silver – Expected for shipment this week

Logistical progress | EU countries

We have good news for all of our European backers as well! The airfreight with has arrived on Schiphol Airport, here in the Netherlands. Our expectation is that the Ockel Sirius A & Sirius A Pro’s will arrive in our warehouse tomorrow.
Our logistic team has prepared all they could in order to ship out the individual parcels as quickly as possible.

This means that as soon as the Ockels arrive in our warehouse we’ll make sure to ship out all individual parcels on the same day. With an expected delivery time of 3-4 days many of the European backers will receive their Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A this week!

Make sure to double check your e-mail box this week – including your spam folder – for the e-mail with tracking information.

There are two configurations that need a little longer to reach your doorstep. The configuration that won’t be shipped this week is the Ockel Sirius A Pro – Moon Silver. A part of the Ockel Sirius A Pro Venus Gold will be fulfilled later as well. The expectation is that we will ship out these two configuration by the end of next week.

To wrap up the information, here’s the overview of the current shipping status, as requested by many of you:

Shipping schedule EU countries

1. Ockel Sirius A Home – Meteor Grey – 100% shipped by the end of this week
2. Ockel Sirius A Pro – Meteor Grey – 100% shipped by the end of this week
3. Ockel Sirius A Home – Venus Gold – 100% shipped by the end of this week
4. Ockel Sirius A Home – Moon Silver – 100% shipped by the end of this week
5. Ockel Sirius A Pro – Venus Gold – 50% shipped by the end of this week
6. Ockel Sirius A Pro – Moon Silver – Expected for shipment at the end of next week

Production of the Ockel Sirius A Pro Moon Silver

Last in line during our production was the Ockel Sirius A Moon Silver. Due to this fact, we have placed this configuration last in line of our logistical process. Luckily the Ockel Sirius A Moon Silver passed the final QC’s last week and we’re expecting to have these units available for shipping later this week. The fulfillment will be handled according to the two schedules released in this update.

Share your thoughts / experiences!

We’re happy to read through your reviews/feedback. Feel free to leave a comment here on Indiegogo or via one of our social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram). If you have any product specific questions or issues, please contact our product specialists through [email protected].

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

It’s once again time for an all new update. Today we will update you about the shipping progress, Ockel Sirius A registration process and obviously our presence at the Info Security event last week.

The shipping has begun

Today, we are happy to announce that the first batch of Ockel Sirius A’s & Ockel Sirius A Pro’s have been packed and are on their way to the DHL facilities for departure. The first backers will receive their tracking code(s) this week.

In the meantime we will continue with the rest of the shipments, as well as the airfreight of the European orders to our Dutch warehouse. Next week we’ll be back with more information about the remaining shipping stages. We aim to ship out as many Ockel Sirius A’s as possible during this week.

Don’t forget to register your Ockel!

For anyone who already owns a Ockel device, it should be familiar to read the following: We do not pre-install bloatware onto our machines.
This means that the Ockel devices are completely free of any ‘free’ or ‘sponsored’ software applications, resulting in a high amount of remaining flashstorage and optimal performance out of the box.

What we did add this time, is a custom ‘tile’ in the start menu of the Ockel Sirius A & Ockel Sirius A Pro. The tile redirects you to our ‘Registration’ page on our website.

We recommend you to register your Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro to receive more efficient support and warranty services, notifications on the latest firmware and software updates to get the most out of your device, and more. Registration is voluntary and failure to register will not diminish your limited warranty rights.

For everyone who is curious of how the page looks like, here’s a direct url: https://www.ockelcomputers.com/register/

Info Security exhibition was a great success

Last week we told you about our participation during the Info Security exhibition in Belgium. It were two successful days, with great potential for future partnerships. The interest in our products has been overwhelming and we were defenitely the ‘showstopper’ of the event!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Today we have another exciting new update for you. We are happy to inform you about the progress we made last week.

Production progress

Chinese New Year is completely over and everyone is back in their offices! As we mentioned in our last update, we have had a meeting with Intel last week.

Together with the expertise of Intel, we further investigated the issues we faced before Chinese New Year. We are very pleased that the efforts our engineering team put into the resolution of this issue, led to a positive outcome of the meeting! Intel re-confirmed that our PCB design was good. We found that the defected computers that were filtered in our QC process, were caused by a simple IC, that in the case of the rejected PC’s, had wrong tolerances, according to its specification. Luckily for us it is possible for us to re-work and repair these PCBA’s, by replacing these IC’s.

With the tests we ran in the last couple of weeks and the knowledge we gained, we are now  also certain that we can quickly filter out, all units that are affected by this issue. This means that 100% of the, to be shipped out computers, passed all our rigorous QC tests.

We will focus on the re-work of the defected units later. The backers will get the units that passed our initial QC, with flying colors.

The last step in our process now, is to have an additional and completely independent third party QC. The QC will be performed by the highly qualified and independent organization: SGS. We decided to perform a 100% QC test once more, to ensure the quality and reliability you want. While some brands might rely on the internal factory QC only, most will hire an independent QC according to AQL (Acceptance Quality Limit), meaning the QC will only consider a sample quality of the total production batch. While this is well above “normal” standard, we chose for an additional 100% QC test, to ensure every produced Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro will have the highest level of quality. A lot of you commented, that despite the delays, you were happy that we kept emphasizing on high quality. We feel that we deliver to that promise, with this decision also. We have a lot of confidence in our manufacturing partner and their QC process. But we also have only one chance for a first impression.  We want you to  have a delightful experience, after all the waiting, this is what all the backers deserve! Besides that, we save ourselves a lot of headache and costs, in terms of after sales service. The number of times after sales support would need be required, simply will be at the lowest reasonably possible.

Next steps

We will start with the independent Quality Control from tomorrow. Our expectation is that we will finish the Quality Control this week.  Immediately after we finish the Quality Control procedures, we will start with the last step, namely the cleaning and packaging process. If this is finished, we will start shipping the computers to all our backers.

Our expectation is that we will be able to start with the first shipments next week. Orders placed from outside Europe will be fulfilled directly from our production facility.
In parallel we will bulk ship both the produced Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro’s to our warehouse in the Netherlands to fulfill the orders placed from backers living in Europe.

As soon as we have a detailed shipping timeframe we’ll update you.

Bottom-line, we found the cause & solutions for the issues we faced and are running on full force again.  The shipment to all of our backers is nearby and we do not give in on quality standards. We can’t wait to start with the shipping process. Bear with us for the last few steps and soon enough we will get back to you with a shipping update!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

It’s Update Monday! We hope you enjoy reading the (relatively) short update this week.

Thanks for the messages & comments

After last weeks’ update we received many e-mails and comments from backers with kind words of understanding. As we mentioned in our update, we do not want to hand in on the quality of a product before shipping the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro to the most loyal backers, world-wide.

It’s heartwarming to read through the e-mails and we are doing all we can to ship out the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro as quickly as possible!

Ockel Sirius A Case & Tempered Glass

In-between the production of the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro, we also finished the production of the Ockel Sirus A Case and Tempered Glass. In case you forgot about this: Every Indiegogo backer will receive the Ockel Sirius A Tempered Glass as a freebie. We hope you love the accessories as much as we do!

Production update

As we mentioned in our last update, there is not too much news to share these two weeks regarding the production progress, due to Chinese New Year. As soon as we have news to share, we’ll get back to you.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

It’s once again time for our weekly update. Today we are updating you about the latest development status & more.

Production status

Today, our factory has restarted and most of the engineers and workers returned. This week, we expect to reach a lot more clarity on the issues that we faced before the Chinese New Year. During Chinese New Year we continued a lot of tests with the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro production units. Currently we’re evaluating the test results, which will give us a better understanding about the unexpected shut downs, we told you about earlier.

A meeting with Intel has been scheduled this week to further discuss the results of the tests and possible resolutions. In the meantime we will continue with the extensive test runs for all of the produced Ockel Sirius A & Sirius A Pro’s.

As soon as we have a clear understanding of the situation, we will re-work (where applicable) and finalize with the production process.

Our goal is to give you an in-depth update next week, or if everything is clear soon enough, we might give you an additional update this week. We hope to present you with a detailed roll-out plan as soon as possible. Thanks all, for your patience and trust.

Production run sold out

The other news that we wanted to share with you is that our sales activities together with our backers  from Indiegogo resulted in a complete sell-out of the first production. Naturally we intend to produce more units to fulfill existing and future demands. Nevertheless it is an important milestone for us! Naturally, future backers will have to wait a bit longer than you, all the backers of the first hour (&batch). We cannot thank you enough for your support and trust!

Brochures have been finished

We are always tweaking & updating our marketing materials. Last week, we received the hard copy brochure with our Ockel Computers product line-up, including the accessories. It’s a fantastic brochure and obviously entirely designed by our own team. The brochure will be handed out on events and meetings with potential partners.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Today we have an all new update for you, covering the latest developments regarding the Ockel Sirius A & Ockel Sirius A production. Without further ado, please continue reading this update.

Production of the Ockel Sirius A & Sirius A Pro

Last week we mentioned that we were almost ready for shipment. Honestly, we thought we were only one step away from shipping the Ockels to all of you; the packaging process.
However, as we continued the extensive hardware and software tests on the yet unfinished Ockel Sirius A’s, we discovered some units with a critical issue. During the accelerated aging and stress tests (as visible in the video of last week’s update), that are performed on all of final products, we discovered a percentage of Ockel Sirius A’s suddenly shutting down. This kind of defect, at the very last step of testing, is unfortunately very critical and therefore not acceptable for mass production standards. We wouldn’t  have accepted 1%, but in this case the percentage of affected units was 6.4% – 11.3% (in different test batches).

Obviously, we cannot have Ockel Sirius A’s shutting down, once the Ockel Sirius A’s are shipped to all of you.

The investigation of the exact cause is currently underway. Our engineering team spent long nights to get a better understanding of the issue. We also had several meetings with our partner Intel and the engineers of the SMT factory last week. Further analyses have to be performed, in order to find the exact cause of the unforeseen shutdowns. What we already know by now is that this problem has nothing to do with the design of the PCBA, nor with any of the critical components. The fact that this is not a PCB design flaw, is very good news!

After the defected units received a new Intel CPU, they were functioning as expected and not one of them had an issue afterwards. Our current focus and the likely cause, is the surface mounting (SMT) process of the CPU. As we learnt before already, our 8 layered PCB design is extremely complex and difficult to surface mount. Perhaps some CPU’s were damaged in the process.

We quadrupled the amount of aging testruns per device. We learned that even without knowing the exact issue (yet), we can filter out the units affected, by this extended form of testing. This means that every device that leaves the production facility has been extensively tested to ensure the quality and reliability you expect.

In terms of delay, we realize this is (another) disappointment. This is a huge bummer for you as a backer, as well as for us. We were so close!
Nevertheless, we have to do all we can to guarantee all of our backers a high quality product, first and foremost. We have decided, based on the advice of Intel and our engineering team, to postpone the shipments.

One of the largest challenges is the fact that CNY (Chinese New Year) has officially begun. This means that our Chinese technical partners are off duty to celebrate the year of the dog. Unfortunately, this means that we are facing a delay that effects our timeline with two weeks at a minimum.  We did find a way to keep the investigation running during the CNY and the planned investigations will be picked up immediately after the engineers return. Therefore, we expect to be able to ship the Ockel Sirius A’s very shortly after the CNY has ended.

Meeting with Microsoft

Along with the meetings with Intel, we also had a meeting with the EMEA Microsoft team last week. We handed out the first production models (which Tim brought back to our HQ) of the Ockel Sirius A Pro to the Microsoft representatives. They were blown away with the OoBE (Out of Box Experience) and the look & feel of the device. Microsoft invited us to a large show (START) next month in Seattle, because of the stunning quality and unique characteristics of the device. More about that show will follow later.

Hang in there!

We’ll keep you updated along the way, but during the CNY we won’t have too much news to share.
Please note that we do all we can to ship the Ockel Sirius A to you as quickly as possible. We apologize for the delay. We hope and trust that you understand that we cannot and never will sacrifice on the quality of our innovation.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Time for an all new update. Today we will update you about the production process, the shipment of the Avanca Powerbar Pro 9000 as well as our new website and obviously the shipping timeframe.

Production update

Last week, our CEO Tim Haaksma jumped on the plane to our production facilities overseas. Tim is there to coordinate the final steps before we’ll start shipping the Ockel Sirius A and Ockel Sirius A Pro’s to all of you!

Currently the production is rapidly progressing. We are real close now, as the SMT and assembly processes are well underway. Today we are happy to share you a couple, highly requested, photos of the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro production.

We expect to start shipping the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro’s next week and will keep you updated about the progress. Please note that as soon as your order has been shipped, a tracking notification will be sent to your e-mail address.

Avanca Powerbar Pro 9000 shipments

Some of you have pledged for an Ockel Sirius A including a Avanca Powerbar Pro 9000. Due to the lithium battery shipment regulations we would like to inform you that all powerbars will be shipped separately after the Ockel Sirius A orders have been fulfilled.

A combination of a shipment with the Ockel Sirius A, Avanca Minim wireless Earbuds and the Avanca Powerbar Pro 9000 wouldn’t be accepted by customs/carriers due to the amount of batteries included in one shipment.
That is why we decided to ship the Powerbar Pro 9000 separately. We will keep you updated about when we’ll start the shipment of the powerbars.

Please note your Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro will be shipped including the Avanca Minim Wireless Earbuds, the Ockel Sirius A Tempered glass and optionally the Ockel Sirius A Case.

A new website!

We are proud to present you our new website! The Ockel website has been completely revamped. Almost every page has been updated with the latest product information and product photos. Our new Ockel Sirius A & Ockel Sirius A Pro product page is now live and displaying several use cases, product information and specifications.

The support section of the Ockel Sirius A will be published as soon as we start shipping.

Discover the new website now!

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Today we have yet another exciting update for you!
In this update we will share more news regarding the production progress and of course, the shipment schedule!

Production progress  

Tim had a busy week overseas. The production of the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro is running on full force:

As several hundreds of Ockel Sirius A’s have rolled off the production lines already, we are still testing the unfinished Ockel Sirius A’s on a continued basis.
Currently plenty of Ockel Sirius A’s are being tested in stress rooms, including aging and temperature rooms. You are right, we for sure do not hand in on the overall quality of our product!

Obviously, testing takes time. The good news is that we expect to start the ‘individual packaging process’ of the first Ockel Sirius A’s tomorrow. The ‘individual packaging process’ includes the packaging of the Ockel Sirius A, the Tempered Glass protector, the Avanca Minim and the optional Ockel Sirius A Case and SD-card.

Shipment schedule

As the production of the Ockel Sirius A is almost finished and the packaging process is about to begin, we are happy to share you more details regarding the shipment schedule. Here’s a short breakdown of our planning:

– We expect to start shipping all non-European orders later this week.
– We reserved a spot for several air freight carrier flights scheduled for department this week.
– All European orders will be fulfilled from our warehouse in the Netherlands. The expectation is that we will start with the fulfillment of the European orders next week.

A tracking e-mail will be sent to the e-mail address you used to order your Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro with. We expect the Ockel Sirius A’s to arrive within 3-4 business days after we’ve shipped them out. Please note that this may vary upon the country of destination!

As we mentioned in our last update, the Avanca Powerbar Pro 9000’s will be shipped out in a later stage. We’ll update you about the shipment status of the powerbars in one of our weekly updates.

We’ll be back

We know you can’t wait to finally receive your Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro!

As we are getting real close to the actual shipping of the Ockel Sirius A’s, we know how important it is to keep you updated.

As soon as there is more exciting news to share with you this week, we’ll post an additional update. For now, stay tuned and we for sure see you next week!

– The Ockel Team

Today we have an all new update for you with the focus on the latest production update, as well as the new perks which are available starting today.

New Perks released

The new perks have been published today. We are officially closing our Indiegogo early bird offers and from now on we will only continue to offer the perks currently listed. Please be aware of the new shipping window as well.

Production update

We have suffered a minor set-back last week regarding the production of the PCBs. As mentioned in our previous updates, the PCBs rolled-off the production line last week.

Unfortunately, the high-quality standards and the complexity of the 8-layered PCB caused a high defect ratio. Therefore, a large percentage of the PCBs turned out not to pass our quality control. This is something that we did not expect from our supplier, as our trial production run in October showed no critical points nor any defects.

The good news is that the percentage of perfectly functioning PCBs is sufficient to fulfill all Indiegogo orders with. These PCBs arrived in our SMT facility last week. Because of the complexity of the PCB and the high defect ratio of our supplier, we decided to perform an additional trial SMT + assembly run in our own facility, which is currently well underway. The expectation is that the we’ll finish this process by the end of this week.

With this additional run, we make sure the quality is guaranteed and all assembled PCBAs will pass our high-quality control checks.

Because of the additional trial run we expect a few days delay and we will know the exact outcome this week. Our honest expectation is that this process might delay the start shipping with a maximum of 1 week. So effectively this means that we expect to start shipping before the 5^th of February.

The Final Backer Survey is now closed

We received many request from backers asking us for a confirmation of their Backer Survey results. Please note that if you have seen ‘thumbs up’ icon, your survey has been received in good order.

Today we closed the Final Backer Survey. If your reply hasn’t been received, your order will not be included within the first batch of shipments. Please note that you are still able to use the Final Backer Survey link. However, your order won’t be fulfilled until we start shipping the second batch with Ockel Sirius A’s.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Today we have an all new update for you. We will update you about our CES attendance, the last chance offer, the shipping & production status and of course, the final backer survey.

CES recap

It was a great week in Las Vegas at the CES 2018, Tim and Douwe had a blast talking to everyone around. We have met great people, including backers, distributors, retailers and Ockel enthusiasts.  On top of that, Tim officially received the CES Innovation Award for the Ockel Sirius A!

We even got the chance to exhibit on the Dutch start-up Pavilion, where the Royal Highness prins Constantijn der Nederlanden met with Tim and Douwe as well.

Last chance offer extended!

Due to the high number of new backers joining our campaign in the last two weeks, we have decided to extend the final offer with one more week until Monday next week (22th of January). This will be your final chance to order the Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro with an extraordinary discount.

Production & Shipping update

Great news, we are still on track and expect to start shipping in the last week of January!

Last week we’ve received several questions from backers asking which carrier we will be using. We would like to inform you that we will be using DHL Express as our carrier. Please note that DHL Express uses partner carriers in regions where DHL Express has limited coverage. As soon as we begin shipping, an e-mail notification including a track & trace code will be sent.

Please note that all orders placed until Friday (19th of January) will be processed during the first round of shipments.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

Don’t forget to rate this update!

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

It’s once again time for our weekly update. As we published an update last Wednesday, there is not too much new news to share. Nevertheless, we will update you on the production progress, our CES attendance and the Backer Survey today.

Production update

This week we’re happy to share a GIF of the many Ockel Sirius A casings we received in our production facility. Obviously, we can’t wait to start with the assembly phase. We used CNC-technology to ensure the best build and detail quality possible for all the casings and we are more than happy with the final results.

This week is your last chance!

As we are approaching the end of the Ockel Sirius A campaign here on Indiegogo, the freebies which are now being included will be removed as well. This is your last week, with the final chance to order the Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro with a huge discount, including the Avanca® accessory pack worth $125: Tempered glass protector and true wireless earbuds.

Starting on the 15^th of January, all perks will be changed to perks with the just the Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro for the retail price as listed here on Indiegogo ($699 and $799).

Make sure to update your friends, family, colleagues as this offer is available until the 15^th of January.

We are at the CES

Tomorrow, on the 9^th and Thursday the 11^th of January our Product Specialist, Douwe de Gier can be found at the CES Indiegogo Stand in Hall G- #51225. Douwe will be able to answer all your questions regarding the Ockel products and obviously, you’ll have the chance to get your hands on the Ockel Sirius A and Ockel Sirius B Black Cherry as well! If you happen to be around, feel free to visit the Indiegogo booth for a meet & greet.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

Don’t forget to rate this update!

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

First and foremost, we wish you all the best in 2018!

In the first Indiegogo update of 2018 we’ll be updating you on several topics, including a celebration, production update, last chance offer and a reminder for the final backer survey.

Celebrating the 800.000 mark

The first celebration in 2018 is a fact, we have reached the amazing 800.000-dollar mark.

It has been a challenging journey, but we’re almost there! We believe the Ockel Sirius A is just the start of a new mobile PC era. Obviously, without your support we wouldn’t have come where we are today. Thanks so much once again!

Production Update

We have great news for you: We will start shipping the Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro’s this month! All components have arrived in our production facility, except for the PCB. We expect to have our hands on the PCB within now and two weeks. Directly after receiving the PCB’s, the assembly and final quality control will follow. As soon as the PCB’s arrive we expect to finish the production within a week!

We are currently preparing all logistic operations for the massive batch of shipments. Together with our logistic partner, DHL Express, we expect to ship all Ockel Sirius A’s in the last week of January. You will receive a tracking code via e-mail and usually shipments arrive within 3-5 business days.

Last Chance

As we are approaching the end of the Ockel Sirius A campaign here on Indiegogo, the freebies which are now being included will be removed as well. During the next two weeks, you’ll have a final chance to order the Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro with a huge discount, including the Avanca® accessory pack worth $125: Tempered glass protector and true wireless earbuds.

Starting on the 15^th of January, all perks will be changed to perks with the just the Ockel Sirius A or Ockel Sirius A Pro for the retail price as listed here on Indiegogo ($699 and $799).

Make sure to update your friends, family, colleagues as this offer is available until the 15^th of January.

We will be at the CES

In several updates, we mentioned our attendance to the CES and today we have the official announcement available for you. As a partner of Indiegogo we have been invited to join Indiegogo on their stand during the CES.

On the 9^th and the 11^th of January our Product Specialist, Douwe de Gier can be found at the CES Indiegogo Stand in Hall G- #51225. Douwe will be able to answer all your questions regarding the Ockel products and obviously, you’ll have the chance to get your hands on the Ockel Sirius A and Ockel Sirius B Black Cherry as well! If you happen to be around, feel free to visit the Indiegogo booth for a meet & greet.

That’s it for now. As always, if you have any questions regarding our products or this update, please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or leave us a comment, here on Indiegogo. We answer all questions within 48 business hours (Monday-Friday)

Don’t forget to rate this update!

See you next week,

The Ockel Team

Production update

Last week we’ve received a couple of questions from backers, asking about the status of the production. We are glad to be able to tell you that the production is on track. We are still awaiting the PCB production. In the meantime, all the IC’s (components used on the PCB) have arrived in the warehouse facilities. The casing production is being prepared as well.

Today we’ve placed the order at Microsoft for the several thousands of Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro licenses needed to load every single Ockel Sirius A and Sirius A Pro with!

As for now we are anticipating on finishing the production early January. When the production has been finished, a quality check will follow and shortly after that we’ll ship out all orders to our backers. Obviously, we cannot yet pin-down an exact shipping date but we’ll keep you updated about this in January!

Photoshoot images

As requested by one of the backers last week, we’re happy to share several images we shot a few weeks ago. Please note that all the images have been shot with the pre-production sample of the Ockel Sirius A. What you see, is what you get!

The Ockel team