robacarp:
While you may not see big sweeping changes to the site, I can assure you things are changing. I appreciate the loyalty some of you are demonstrating here with comments of “I’d really like to come back to BatchPCB” and I assure you that your suggestions are heard loud and clear. I’ve only got one spot for ‘top priority’ though, and right now I’m sorting out some issues we’re having with FedEx and USPS.
The board size issue is pretty serious - ALL of my boards are the wrong size. Asking us to email you to "correct" the size kind of misses the point when we have no idea if our designs will even print correctly.
I’m not doing anything unusual - We’re using Eagle 6.2.0 and the Sparkfun CAM file to generate gerbers - if this doesn’t work, I’m sure nothing will.
Honestly, the site issues probably wouldn’t matter much if I were just a hobbyist, and maybe most customers are and can wait a few weeks or a month for the site to start working properly again.
Hobbyists design PCBs in their free time, but some of us design PCBs for a living or use them in products we build and sell, and our time is NOT free. We liked BatchPCB because it was an inexpensive way to prototype our designs, even multiple iterations of the same design. It is customers like us who you want to keep, as we probably order far more than your average hobbyist; but it’s also us who most appreciate a reliable service. For us, seeing the website go down with no warning, and continuing to be broken with no assurance that the technical problems will be fixed in a reasonable time, is unprofessional and wholly unacceptable.
So BatchPCB, ask yourselves - do you wish to present to us a professional-grade website, or a hobbyist-grade website?
robacarp:
you’re likely to get a quicker response by emailing BatchPCB directly.
Tried it, six days ago. No response and my uploaded PCBs still have incorrect dimensions and one known-good one fails DRC. I have work to do -- Sitopway and OSH Park to the rescue!
I think that the site is getting worse, not better!! I submitted a design +/-20 hrs ago and it still says that it is “checking”!! I guess that I’ll have to find a new service to make prototype boards… Still no email, too!!
I to have this checking problem! The same designs worked yesterday morning but started this checking status yesterday afternoon. Now although it has not been directly stated, “Patrick” in support has implied I have a problem somewhere on my computer so I went to another freshly loaded computer. After informing him what I did he said IE8 has known problems with many websites and knowing this to be true I went to foxfire! Well it did not help! I still have the same problem! How about fixing this since it seems that multiple people failing leaves the problem again at your doorstep!
hormiguero:
I think that the site is getting worse, not better!! I submitted a design +/-20 hrs ago and it still says that it is “checking”!! I guess that I’ll have to find a new service to make prototype boards… Still no email, too!!
Yep, tried to upload a couple yesterday, still says “Checking” :? … 36hrs later :whistle: !, now all sent to OSH Park .
Robacarp, It would not be possible to know the status of the job? Perhaps understand the development time to get everything back to normal reassure everyone.
It 's just my idea. I look forward to new updates.
As of right now, the batchpcb.com domain name has expired. A renewal is in process, but the domain name system can be slow at times like this when you want it most. It looks like batchpcb.com was forgotten when SFE moved all our domains away from GoDaddy a year or so ago and the registration was pointed at an old credit card of Nate’s that has since expired.
As for state of development, here is an update:
- This week I’m looking into the new “checking” issue, fedex tracking numbers, missing emails, board sizes, and drc-fails. I’ll be going down the list in that order and updating the site with each fix.
- The http://batchpcb.com/panels page is live and shows the status of all open panels. It isn’t quite up to par with the old stats page, but it’ll have to do for now. I’ll revisit later.
- We’ve also got another developer allocated from SFE to BPCB for the time being to help me put out the fires started by all this.
I like the “idea” of the site but, WOW, I can’t get my boards through the DRC bot and they are known good designs that I’ve had built on BatchPCB.com before. I’m shocked that SparkFun seems to not want to put the proper resources towards this venture, perhaps this isn’t a division of the company that generates much revenue…
Regardless, I applaud the effort of the technical guys (glaring issues of not end-users testing aside), but this is 100% a misstep in management and SparkFun should throw all available resources at it to get things running smoothly or run the risk of losing numerous customers for good, once they go else where guys, they are nearly impossible to get back.
Love the SF company, love the PCB service, saddened by what “appears” to be a major management failure.
It would be nice if possible to replace the status column with maybe three (or more) columns (filled, production, shipped) and have the date for the action in the box rather than the status “word”. Then keep the latest shipped entry that precedes any board #'s not yet shipped.
Then adding back %filled %queued stuff from the old status would make it real nice.
I should have just added my previous edit about status as a new post.
I just wanted to say that while I have had some problems with the new website, I have also been very pleased with support@BatchPCB helping resolve the issues. I hope that the issue of the black text on the black background in the browse box gets resolved quickly, it is a serious annoyance.
That shouldn’t be an issue anymore, can you send support@batchpcb.com more details including which page you’re seeing this on, and the browser you’re using?
Well I have sumittied a board like 8 times and have revised it each time, the one think I wish they had was a way to tell you what was wrong. It checks fine with Eagle DRC with sparkfuns DRC file, except for stop mask errors witch from what i have read is just for label and i have deleted them all any help would be great.
wilee98:
Well I have sumittied a board like 8 times and have revised it each time, the one think I wish they had was a way to tell you what was wrong. It checks fine with Eagle DRC with sparkfuns DRC file, except for stop mask errors witch from what i have read is just for label and i have deleted them all any help would be great.
I sent an email to support about this exact issue. I’m also stuck with no way of knowing what the problem is since the tell-tale red coloring of the problem areas is absent. I do have a strange DRC error included which simply says “DRC Error - trace to narrow (0.0080000000 < 0.0081000002)” - I am using 8mil traces with 8mil spacing which has usually been fine.
Well I get the same thing in my email trace too narrow I am also using 8mil. Would be nice if someone could fix of tell us how to fix so I can get my board LOL
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LOL