First and Foremost

We’d love your help! Could you PLEASE fill out our short feedback survey:

http://goo.gl/kyLCz

The survey asks about your issues with the product, so please complete it as a means of us personally helping you.

What's Trigger Happy up to?

As a team, Trigger Happy’s been through a lot. We started our overly optimistic quest to bring photographers an innovative but simple camera control nearly two years ago, and we’ve been been going ever since. That includes: conceptualizing the product, finding engineering talent, designing circuitry, writing the software, seeking funding, running a kickstarter campaign, finding a manufacturer, designing the production process, refining that production process again and again, setting up a business, running a business, securing a supply chain, meeting with our manufacturers over and over again, traveling to many states/countries/continents, fulfilling product to customers, supporting our customers, iterating on the design of both hardware and software, hiring, firing, and of course using our own product.

The side effect: prematurely losing our hair while hoping it’ll succeed someday. Our little startup is hanging on by a thread with all resources devoted to fulfilling product. The future's looking bright with green grass on our side; however, we have our plate is full. We’ve fulfilled nearly every backer’s reward, but some may still have issues, and nearly ALL of our time goes to fixing those issues. That’s expensive, so our operations are lean. We rely on new orders daily to provide the cash to pay our overhead. As founders of this company, we haven’t seen a dime, so that makes us resource constrained as we’re working other jobs so we can afford live.

Tangent

Here’s a photo shot with Trigger Happy by one of our customers to brighten this post.

Grand Canyon. 76 Seconds, f/1.4, ISO 3200, 50mm

Back to Business

It’s not easy. Some days are gloomy in the depths of engineering challenges, others in the wrath of rightfully frustrated customers. Backers ask, and sometimes we don’t know, but we’ll work around the clock to find answers.

People ask why we do it even though we’re not personally earning anything from our Trigger Happy efforts so far. Sure we may succeed down the road, but it’s the passion for photography that motivates us. Innovating the way a photo is taken gratifying. Would we do it again despite our losses? Only because we love it!

It’s a tricky process, but we’re still going strong and we haven’t forgotten you. You can always reach us at help at trigger happy remote.com but filling out the survey is the best way to voice what you need now. So please jump over to the survey.

We couldn’t have done it without you!

Warmly,

The Trigger Happy Team

Kevin, Jenae, and Todd

This time we’re saying hello from Asia. Our factory is 7,000 miles from our headquarters, but we thought it would be a great idea to stop in. Some have asked for transparency, so here it is. There’s a fine line between giving up our secret sauce and giving you accurate answers. We’ve decided it’s better to give you transparency than inadequate answers.

First, we’ve placed all non-C3 Trigger Happy Units in the mail. If you haven’t received your Trigger Happy Unit (and it’s not a C3), it is probably in transit. And if it’s not in transit, there was an issue with your shipping address. Don’t worry though because we’ll contact you if that’s the case, but please give us time. We need to manually look at every bad address.

Next, we want to give an update for the Trigger Happy C3 issue. We emailed backers that were affected by the problem. For those people, we are sorry for the wait. We’re justifying our apology by spending some quality time in the humid, hot, typhoon-ridden land of our factory. The good news is we’ve fixed the issue! The photo below is a pile of fixed C3 units waiting for testing.

We had an issue a few on the M3 connectors. Connectors on some units have a mount that was rotated 180 degrees meaning the connector housing would hit the lens. If you have this issue, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Again, this is only on the M3 connectors. We’re fixing it by milling guides to lock the connector assembly. That fix will happen after the C3 units are manufactured. For those with M3 issues, we will contact you with more information regarding the process for swapping to a new M3. Please give us some time, since we’re busy in Asia this week getting your new units manufactured.

Here's a photo of our M3 mold without guides:

The bad news is that manufacturing is not instant. Our machines and operators take time to build every single Trigger Happy Unit. Once they are built, we must test every single unit for superior quality. That adds even more time; however, the units are very reliable. Once the Trigger Happy Units are tested, they make their way to HQ on a 16 hour plane ride to the United States where we ship them to you. We ship the Trigger Happy Units as fast as they come.

As for a timeline, it could be three weeks or more until Trigger Happy Units are on your doorstep. We cannot guarantee how long it will take. We wish we could! We’re very sorry for that, but we’re doing our best to get things moving. That’s why we’re going to be at our factory until everything is manufactured.

In terms of software, we are continually pushing updates to fix reported bugs. We’ll admit, we have bugs. Almost all of the bugs are resolved, although a few are lingering. Some of those bugs prevent Trigger Happy from firing. Since our developers are in Asia with us, they may have a difficult time getting updates out on unreliable internet connections.

In conclusion, we’re moving at 100 mph. We get don’t sleep, and we forgot what a social life is. We are doing our best, and using all of our resources. It's super gratifying to deliver you a product. We couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you all! And we’re truley sorry to the few that are waiting on us!

Thanks again,

Kevin, Brett, and Luke

The Trigger Happy Team

...And here's a photo of Kevin stumped by three languages being spoken with only four people in the room.

Hey all,

Almost a year ago I was hiking up a mountain with Brett and Luke. The trek to the top was grueling and exhausting. Talking was the only way to get the death march off our minds, so I told Brett and Luke I wanted to build a camera remote for iOS and Android devices. Immediately after the hike Brett and I ran to his electrical engineering lair to determine if it was possible.

That was the birth of Trigger Happy, and I am pleased to announce that Trigger Happy has landed in many of our backers’ hands after nearly a year of hard work. Developing Trigger Happy and building a business around it feels like that hike, grueling and exhausting. We are finally seeing the success through your emails of encouragement and praise. It has been a long journey, and it is definitely not over for us. We’ll admit, we have a lot of work to do. We want to explain exactly what we are doing.

Hardware

As mentioned before, we had issues with our supply chain, and we’ve done everything in our power to efficiently manage those difficulties. A majority of Trigger Happy Units have shipped, but some Trigger Happy units have not landed at our doorstep. We’ve chosen the fastest methods of transportation to get the remaining units from the factory to Trigger Happy HQ in a jiffy. The good news it that we’ve sorted out the problems, and Trigger Happy units are now steadily coming in.

Once our air-freighted Trigger Happy units touch down at our headquarters, we drop everything to pack each backer’s unit and get it in the mail. We assure you we’re not wasting a second to deliver Trigger Happy. To improve our fulfillment efficiency we chose to ship each unit individually, so if your reward included multiple items please expect to receive each item in a separate package. To those that are still waiting, we are very sorry and we feel the pressure.

Software

Overall the backer response has been great, but there are some compatibility issues. We’ve had some complaints, and we are working hard to address each reported problem.

With iOS devices, we encountered a very strange bug with Apple distribution. Because of it, our iPad native app did not correctly load, and early iPod Touch generation 4 models were showing a blank screen. Please download our update to version 1.0.2; this will fix those issues. We thank you for your patience. Chris, our Android developer, is pushing frequent updates. As users report issues, he fixes them. He has a very tough job due to the diversity of Android hardware, so software patches may take some time. If you do have an Android problem, feel free to email us so we can fix it.

Regarding usability, we’re working on in-app tutorials and writing help pages. Some of the reported bugs are usability issues. We’re working to better inform you on how to use Trigger Happy. More information is coming soon, but you can start by going to our help pages if you’re having trouble. 

Thank you again for your generous support, patience, and feedback as we continue to deliver and improve Trigger Happy.

Thanks,

Kevin
Luke
Brett

Dearest Amazing people (yes, that’s you), 

First off, we’re overwhelmed with how patient you’ve been with us. It’s been great to be working with such fantastic people who have been so supportive of the Trigger Happy dream, which is very soon to become a Trigger Happy reality. That being said, we have some bad news, some great news and some …”meh” news: 

To make a long story short, we had more issues with our manufacturer that have put us far (and we mean like in a galaxy far, far away) from our original deadlines, for which we are extremely sorry and embarrassed about. 

However, we have some great news! We received some of the Trigger Happy Remotes and we’re shipping them out this week! Before you start bounding around the house with uncontrolled outbursts of excitement, we haven’t gotten our hands on all the units yet, so we can only ship them out as fast as we get them. 

We’re working night and day to make sure you get all the sweet, awesomeness that is the Trigger Happy Remote, so hang in there! Trigger Happy is coming to a mailbox near you! …unless you don’t have a mailbox, then it’ll just come to your door, probably …or where ever you get your mail.

Sincerely, 

The Trigger Happy Team