TL;DR – The LumiCube is now shipping! But please note that the interactive add-on isn’t shipping yet: see below.

Hello everyone,

Discord

To discuss all things LumiCube, and for help resolving any issues getting started, please do join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/Vw4GP74jyR

Note: If you’d prefer not to join Discord, you can still ask us questions in the comments section below.

Shipping

It is so exciting to have the LumiCube shipping! It feels like it’s been just a month away for the last few months now, but it’s finally happening, and some LumiCube’s have already reached their destinations :) We’re sure the cubes will be happy in their new homes!

The kits have been split into advanced kits (any with the screen add-on) and starter kits (those without the screen add-on). The advanced kits were all shipped on Friday 9^th September. The starter kits should be shipping today 15^th September. It should take about 6 to 12 days to reach Europe and the US.

We’ll post another backer-only update in the next few days, with details on how to access your tracking number.

Interactive Add-On

As we’ve mentioned in previous updates, the LumiCube kits shipping right now do not include the interactive add-on (the IMU, the environment sensor and the cable board). Sadly the chip shortage is still very much a thing, and we cannot get hold of the sensors we need for these boards. We will be shipping this add-on separately, but it’s looking like it will be a while before we can get hold of the required chips.

In fact, we were lucky to get hold of the chips needed for the base kit. There are stories of people paying $600 a piece for STM32F7 chips – a model down from the ones we used – and articles about big corporations taking apart washing machines, just to get hold of the chips inside!

When assembling your LumiCube, just skip steps A1, A2 and part of step A5.

Issues with the Pi resetting

We have noticed that when using the Pi 4 in the LumiCube, it sometimes “browns-out” and reboots, especially if it’s using a lot of current. We believe it’s because the polyfuses on the base board are dropping a bit too much voltage across them when they get a bit warm. This means the voltage can drop below the acceptable level for the Pi, and it crashes or “browns-out”.

• To resolve this, we suggest people plug the USB power supply into the USB-C port of the Pi, and not into the base board.
  

It doesn’t make any difference to anything else. The Pi has it’s own over-current protection, and is more than capable of supplying the rest of the system with ample current.