The year 2022 is slowly coming to an end. We would like to give you a small look behind-the-scenes.
Parts procurement and manufacturing
2022 was very challanging for us. The issue of the availability of parts and the associated problems during manufacturing of our products resulted in a significant increase in the amount of time needed. Previously, we always kept some parts in stock for the production of our products, and we would order the missing parts just in time for each new production run. The effort for that was kept within limits. This approach simply stopped working mid to end 2021. We started to increase our stock of parts significantly. Nevertheless we were not able to procure all of the necessary items. As an example the DAC7760 (analog to digital converter used on the Industrial Analog Out Bricklet), is not available anymore for over a year now. Because of this we go through parts that are available at ditributors every day now to buy parts that are difficult to procure, even if we don't need this specific part at the moment. One of the most annoying aspects of this whole situation is that distributors stopped to honor delivery dates. They may say that a part will be deliverd in 3 months, but 1 week before the delivery date they will push it back for another 3 months. This happens all the time now. Because of this we needed to stop an already scheduled production run several times this year.
Price increases / inflation
Additionally, some of the parts that were not available anymore are now available again, but multiple times more expensive. As an example, the INA226 (analog to digital converter used by the Voltage/Current Bricklet) was priced at ~40USD (instead of the normal ~4USD) on the market. This is more expensive then the sales prices of the whole Bricklet. Electronic parts have become more expensive across the board. We are currently not sure if this price spiral will stop in the near future of if the inflation in this category will persist for a while. For now we have just accepted big parts of the price increases. It is unfortunately very much possible that we will have to increase our prices again in the near future.
WARP2 Charger
But not everything was bad in 2022, the opposite is actually true! Our WARP2 Charger wallboxes are a huge success. We were able to implement lots of new features this year. They include the charge tracker, user management, MQTT, HTTP API, Wireguard, Modbus/TCP and also our OCPP implementation is nearly ready. Most of the improvements are based on your feedback and improvement suggestion. Many thanks for that!
WARP Energy Manager
Unfortunately we were not able to fully implement the WARP Energy Manager as fast as we wanted. The Energy Manager was supposed to be available in our shop already. We also actually now have the hardware in stock already, but the software needs some more time. Very sorry for the delays!
Bigger team
In 2021 and 2022 the Tinkerforge team has grown! We actually have not even put Vincent, Michael, Frederic and Matze on our team webpage. We will have to make sure to catch up with that next year.
What will be new in 2023?
For 2023 we plan with lots of improvements for the WARP Charger. We will release the the WARP Energy Manager and lots of other new features will be available with a software update. If you are here for the Tinkerforge building blocks you do not need to worry, we also plan to release new Bricklets soon. However, our personal highlight for 2023 will be our new industrial real estate. Our current building is simply full by now. With the increased stock and new employees we are using up every square millimeter now. With the new modern building that we bought we will have a huge amount of space for offices and warehouse.
That's it for our little review and outlook!
We thank you for your trust and wish you and your families a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2023!