Hello Backers and Customers,

I trust that you have had a happy holiday, and that you are preparing, as we are, for a great 2013!

Despite the holiday, the ConnecteDevice team has been hard at work improving the watch, the apps, our fulfillment process, and our customer support.

CES 2013

We are preparing for our official worldwide launch of the COOKOO Watch at CES2013!  Please come and visit us there!

Android

While the Android challenges have been great, through the help of some of the phone manufacturers we have unlocked the primary issue that was blocking our progress on one of the planned HTC phones. 

This also bodes well for the other phones that we intended to support. 

We will know a lot more in the coming days, so expect another Android update soon.

iOS App Update

We have now root-caused and resolved a backgrounding issue that we had received several reports about.  This issue was leading to missed alerts when the app was backgrounded and that there was no activity for extended periods of time on iOS6.

Our updated app (that also includes music control, an alarm, and a countdown timer) is currently in-test and expected to be submitted to Apple this coming week for app review and we hope that it will be available in the store by the 2nd week of January.

Reward Fulfillment

Watches:  We have now shipped most of the watches to backers.  The last of the backer watches will be received from our supplier and shipped to backers in the 1st and 2nd week of January.

By mid January all backers should have received their watches.

Keychains:  While we have received some keychains and already shipped these to backers the we will not receive the balance until the end January.  Once received, we will immediately ship the remaining keychain rewards to backers.

NOTE:  We will not be holding-up watch shipments for the keychains.

We apologize for the delays, however, we had to ensure that the product met our quality standards, and that you, the backers, would be pleased with the product you received in the end.

Customer Support

We know that many of you have filed customer support tickets and not heard back to us for days, some of you maybe even a week or more.  As you can imagine, with a small team and the flood of shipping questions and address change requests that have come-in, our support team has been completely overwhelmed.

To help improve the response times, we have hired additional support staff and are in the process of training them up on our product and support systems.

Please be patient with them as they get up to speed.

If you are encountering issues with your COOKOO Watch or COOKOO Keychain, please take a look at our FAQ at support.cookoowatch.com.  We have created several instructional videos as well to help you should you run into connectivity issues.

At times, I have personally responded to individual support questions, in particular about technical issues.  For those of you who have heard from me directly, I thank you for your time, especially in helping me to understand your individual experience with the product.  

This direct feedback is instrumental in helping us improve the product and our service.

Thanks again, and I wish you a very Happy New Year and all the best for 2013!

Peter Hauser & the ConnecteDevice team

Hello Backers,

I wanted you to be the first to know!

The COOKOO app is now "Ready for Sale".  It may take another 24hrs for it to be visible in the app store worldwide, but this milestone means that we can (finally) offer the COOKOO watch experience to all iOS5 and iOS6 users with Bluetooth 4.0 capable iPhones and iPads!

For those of you who have already received the watches and are anxiously awaiting the app, here is the link:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cookoo-time-to-connect/id569014243?ls=1&mt=8

For those of you who have not yet received the watch - we will begin bulk shipping watches to backers shortly and will publish another update in the next few days explaining the process that we will be following, and when you can expect to receive yours.

Thank you to all of our backers for your patience and understanding throughout this process.

Thanks,

Peter & the ConnecteDevice team

Dear Android user,

I want to take this opportunity to apologize for the abruptness of the November 13th Kickstarter announcement, to explain the background, and to update you on what we are doing to honor our commitment to provide Android users with the complete COOKOO watch experience.

At the onset of the COOKOO watch project, new Android phones claiming support for Bluetooth 4.0 were being announced and all indications were that these phones would fully support the Bluetooth Low Energy standard and that the APIs provided would be sufficient for app implementers. Our research supported this as the Bluetooth 4.0 chip vendor’s APIs and libraries were already available and seemingly provided the tools needed for successful implementations.

The team has been working since June on the Android app, and while we encountered several challenges resulting from both incomplete and varied Bluetooth 4.0 implementations on multiple phone platforms, we were optimistic that a suitable Android solution was both feasible and imminent.

All of these implementations, however, were based-on the BlueZ Bluetooth 4.0 stack that was common to all Android platforms prior to Android 4.2.

The Android 4.2 release announced on November 13th came without the traditional BlueZ Bluetooth 4.0 stack support in favor of a new Broadcom Bluetooth 4.0 solution . This came as a total surprise to the entire Bluetooth community. While this announcement promises a universal long-term Bluetooth 4.0 solution for Android, it means that our work will need to be redone for the newly released platform. Furthermore, the initial release did not include support for Bluetooth Low Energy:

“Android 4.2 introduces a new Bluetooth stack optimized for use with Android devices. The new Bluetooth stack developed in collaboration between Google and Broadcom replaces the stack based on BlueZ and provides improved compatibility and reliability.” – developer.android.com

We are anxiously awaiting updates to Android that expose the new Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy functionality promised in this Android release. More information on Bluetooth 4.0 in Android may be found in some of the Samsung , HTC , and Android blogs on the subject.

In the hopes of clarifying to our backers and customers alike the efforts that we have made towards a universal Android solution and to finding short-term phone-specific workarounds for underlying Android issues, I have included a detailed sequence of events after my signature.

Should you have any further questions or are developer who wishes to get involved, please email us at android@cookoowatch.com and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Our hope is that by reaching out to the developer community we can work together to find the workarounds to support one or more of the existing phone platforms, and once the Android platform supports it, accelerate the development and release of the universal Android COOKOO watch experience.

For those Kickstarter backers who wish to delay the receipt of their watch until an Android solution is released, please email us by November 25th at support@cookoowatch.com and we will hang on to your rewards and ship them at that time.

Thank you for your continued support as we work towards both a short-term and universal long-term Android solution.

We remain committed to providing the complete COOKOO watch experience for Android as soon as the Android platform supports it.

Sincerely,

Peter Hauser
Director
ConnecteDevice Limited

REFERENCES:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cuckoo/cookootm-the-watch-for-the-connected-generation/posts/347989
http://developer.android.com/about/versions/jelly-bean.html
http://www.bluez.org http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s721534
http://developer.samsung.com/forum/board/thread/view.do?boardName=GeneralB&messageId=157757 http://olesitune.mine.nu/blelogg/?p=212
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=33371

Hello All,

We are actively building watches now and are awaiting the "official" release of the COOKOO App (iOS) in the App Store before shipping product to backers and end-customers.

Unfortunately, due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA we will likely not see the app release to the App Store until the week after Thanksgiving or possibly the first week in December.  We'll keep you posted as watches and keychains begin to make their way to you!

Thanks again for all of your support and once-again, I apologize for the delay.

Peter

Hi Backers,

I wanted to share with you some great news.  We have added and are now testing Music Control!  While it won't be in the version of the COOKOO App that is in review right now - it will be in the next release of the app which is scheduled to be submitted to the app store shortly after the first app is released.

Check out the short video I just created while here at the Hong Kong airport on may way home from the COOKOO watch factory.  I'll be testing this new app feature throughout the flight but already I'm cooled-out by it.

Regarding Android - I'll be posting the technical update after I return stateside and have convened with the team.

Thanks again for your continued support!

Peter