Keep Vehicle Monitoring: October Update

We are rapidly progressing toward our goal of shipping in 2023. In my September email, I shared the major categories of work that we still must complete and want to share an update.  We have completed “Design For Manufacturing(DFM)” and locked the industrial design for our device. Our tooling and fixtures are in process and we are nearing completion of our updated circuit board designs.  Our eight major categories that I introduced in my September update are below:

1. Finalizing Design: IN PROCESS 
2. Converting the industrial design parts into a mass manufacturable design (called design for manufacturing – DFM) – COMPLETE
3. Tooling & Fixtures & Assembly Line Setup
   1. Completing tooling for the injection molded plastic parts: TOOLING HAS COMMENCED!
   2. Completing fixtures for the assembly line (this allows workers to quickly assemble the device): FIXTURE PRODUCTION HAS COMMENCED!
   3. Set up the assembly line in the factory: WILL COMMENCE SOON
4. Manufacturing the printed circuit boards (brains of our device): WILL COMMENCE SOON
5. Finalizing the production firmware: IN PROCESS
6. Fine Tuning the image quality camera capabilities to ensure good quality in low light and backlit environments: IN PROCESS
7. Validation testing: specifications met for sound, strength, antenna, cellular, sensors, etc.: WILL COMMENCE SOON
8. Certifications: FCC testing: WILL COMMENCE SOON

We also continue to refine our production hardware and achieved a significant milestone this week.  In collaboration with AT&T’s engineering team, we seamlessly connected to their network.  The benefit to Keep customers is nationwide coverage so you get immediate notifications and live-streaming of any event in your vehicle!  Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at our engineering team working with AT&T:

With regards to our design finalization (#1 on list above), after testing the latest proof-of-concept, we found several minor issues that we needed to resolve. We are now dynamically adjusting our sensor sensitivity to prevent false positives, updating the power circuitry to ensure seamless transitions between the car’s power and internal batteries, and making small adjustments to our battery charging circuitry. Unfortunately, completing this engineering work has caused our schedule to slip by two weeks. We are still targeting late December shipment but it will be tight.

And of course, we continue to field test our Keep devices in our personal vehicles. Based on our experience, we are confident that our devices will be worth the long wait!  Thanks again for supporting Keep and for your incredible patience.

David Moeller – Founder, Keep