A milestone is reached, we're getting closer. 
Just received the boards back from China, and completed the final assembly of a few for some testing. All the surface mount components are machine placed and soldered at the assembly house, I finish with the thru-hole stuff like LED's, connectors, and the heatsink and buffer. I also received the additional blank thru-hole boards with the latest layout that will be the basis of the kits to be offered after the first order is shipped. Again, these will have identical functionality as the original production, the only difference is they use different form-factor parts. All five boards shown tested OK, a good sign that the rest of the production run is most likely good as well.
Still waiting on a few components and hardware to complete the full order, but the big stuff is already in and I'm starting to put stuff together.
The little board in the foreground is a test board that plugs into the six position connector block for final test. It allows me easy connection and also puts a load on the buffer to insure it's capable of driving a load.
