Trusted Reviews are a go-to place on the internet to get a low-down on gadgets and technology, and how they really work away from all the marketing spiel. We’re really proud to have NowLight earning a 4 star review from Trusted Review’s Home Technology Editor David Ludlow.
David set up the lamp and used it at his home, and the review has photos exploring his garden and fence in full covid-19 era photography. We hope David enjoys his NowLight out in the big wide world shortly.
NowLight being charged by pulling the cord by the reviewer Source: Trusted Reviews
You can read the full review here, with his verdict being:
A powerful and bright portable light, the Nowlight lets you charge it via solar, USB or using the pull cord on the front. It’s bright enough to light up a tent, shed or even be used as a handy outside light. Expandable satellite lamps let you take light further, although they feel a touch cheap compared to the main light. Even so, this is a great light for camping or areas that don’t have power.
We’re really pleased to announce that as a continuation of our partnership with the Haller Foundation, we will be supplying 12 NowLights funded by customer donations, in support of the re-launch of their Haller Farmers App.
Haller have also partnered with Mara Phones – the first high specification affordable smartphone manufactured in Africa – to support the rural smallholders they work with, who are part of a wider 5 million smallholders in Kenya.
We’re really excited to be building on our existing relationship with The Haller Foundation, where we supplied Gravity Lights in early 2019. Developing these relationships to get NowLights into the hands of people who need them the most is incredibly positive, and we’re really thankful to our customers who have donated towards this cause.
NowLight was chosen for its ability to provide instant light and power at the pull of a cord. Pulling on the NowLight’s cord for just a minute creates 15 minutes of talk-time on a mobile phone, or up to 2 hours of light. This can be incredibly important in an emergency, or even just after a busy day for a farmer in the field.
The 12 NowLights will be donated to Haller Foundation’s ambassadors, who are farmers that are promoting the Haller Farmers App to other farmers. We’ll be looking to continue this relationship with donations of further NowLights to aid the growth of the impactful work Haller Foundation are supporting in many rural Kenyan communities.
The NowLight kit includes a solar panel and SatLight, also shown here with a Mara phone
We’re really excited to see this partnership continue to grow, and are always really proud whenever a NowLight is in the hands of someone without access to reliable light and power otherwise.
You can read more about what the Haller Foundation have planned in their recent blog.
GravityLights being distributed by the Haller Foundation in early 2019. Source: Haller Foundation
We’re excited to announce that everyone in Germany can now buy a NowLight from the excellent Krisenpakete, as well as our website. We’ve been working with Krisenpakete for a few years now selling the Gravity Light, so are naturally excited to see the NowLight joining them on the online shelf.
It’s been great to see the demand for the NowLight in Germany, and we’re pleased to have received the certification for the WEEE standards required in Germany. We all share the same planet, and we completely support the care and attention of the WEEE requirements in Germany as it makes sure that electronic waste is properly dealt with.
You can buy NowLights here and Gravity Lights here.
Your NowLights, packed in their shipping boxes and ready to send out!
We hope that you have had a fantastic start to 2020. We are pleased to report that your NowLights have been assembled and packed, and will ship in the first week of February!
We would like to ship immediately, but unfortunately the courier does not have the capacity to handle the shipments this week. This is because Chinese New Year (CNY) is on January 25th and most businesses in China will remain closed until early February. As such, it’s a very difficult time to get products out of China.
We really regret that we can’t ship the units immediately as both the Deciwatt team and our manufacturing partners have worked tirelessly to ship the units pre-CNY (Deciwatt team members worked continuously for over 36 hours to try and make it happen!).
We are however, delighted your NowLights have been manufactured and will soon be on their way to you!
Thank you, as always for supporting NowLight, we are so excited to deliver your products and we wish all of you a prosperous start to the Year of the Rat!
We have just returned from our trip to China and we are excited to share some updates about our progress towards mass production of NowLight.
We spent the first two days in Huizhou, at our plastic manufacturer’s factory. The same manufacturer also helped us to create our original GravityLight product, which we know that many of you also supported.
The plastic parts in NowLight are produced via a process called ‘injection moulding’, where hot liquid plastic is forced into steel moulds, which are commonly referred to as ‘tools’. Each plastic part for NowLight is manufactured using a custom-made tool.
The image above shows one of the injection moulding machines used to create the plastic parts. These machines are highly sophisticated and properly calibrating the machines to produce each plastic part requires both skill and experience. When operating at full speed, the machines can complete the process of injecting and cooling plastic several times per minute, producing large volumes of parts.
Our plastics manufacturer also has a product assembly division that will manage the assembly of NowLights and SatLights, including the purchase of all the packaging. The photo above shows a meeting where we reviewed some proofs of the outer box for NowLight (a ‘proof’ is a sample of printed materials).
For the rest of our trip we were based in Shenzhen, a city that is often referred to as ‘China’s Silicon Valley’. The city has experienced huge growth in the last few decades. At the start of the 1980s, Shenzhen had a population of around 100,00. Today the official population of the city is 12 million people. But some estimate the true population of Shenzhen (including temporary and undocumented residents) could be as high as 20 million people.
We spent most of our time in Shenzhen with our electronics manufacturer. Their factory is a highly controlled environment, and they take great care to prevent electronics from being damaged by dust or static electricity. All staff and visitors to the factory floor (including us!) have to wear special overalls, hairnets and shoes.
The factory uses some extremely impressive equipment. The SMT (surface-mount technology) machines shown above attach electronic components to bare circuit boards at incredible speed. Another machine further down the production line uses cameras to check that all components have been correctly placed.
The factory also employs hundreds of engineers who perform a range of tests on each fully assembled circuit board to ensure that they are functioning as expected.
Our electronics manufacturer is storing all of the components for the PCBs until they are ready for assembly. They have a large temperature-controlled warehouse and most components are stored in vacuum packs to prevent exposure to moisture. The warehouse has a quality control team who check all the components for any signs of damage and who ensure that the correct quantity have been delivered.
We spent some time in the warehouse examining the components we purchased from different suppliers and checking that they have been stored appropriately.
On the last day of our trip to Shenzhen, we visited the business who will be conducting all of the certifications that are required for us to sell NowLight in international markets. You might remember an update where we talked about subjecting NowLight and SatLight to EMC and ESD testing. Those tests (which we passed comfortably) were a practice run for the official tests that will be conducted in China.
Our testing company will conduct the EMC tests in the room shown above. The equipment used in the room and its construction cost around £3m ($3.6m USD). So, when Shaun (Product Design Manager) joked that the room seemed like a good place to play a game of football, it’s not surprising that the lead engineer gave him what can only be described as a ‘death stare’!
While in China, we also tried to find immediately available supplies of some of the electronic components that we are still waiting for (as detailed in our last update). We spent a lot of time talking to distributors, agents and manufacturers but unfortunately, we could not find a supplier with the components in stock. As a result, we still expect to deliver your NowLights in November as explained in our previous update.
However, we consider the trip to China to have been a great success and we look forward to sharing more production milestones over the coming weeks.
