Kickstarter

Creator Erik Kettenburg on March 27

Matthew - one non-Digispark one coming in the next month or so, and then the Digispark Plus - now being called the Digispark Squared/DigiSquare soon after that! Stay tuned!

If you haven't yet check out our new webstore too: http://digistump.com

Creator Erik Kettenburg on March 17

@Andrew - please send us an email at support @ digistump.com and we'll find a solution.

Creator Erik Kettenburg on March 11

@Svn - glad it arrived - customs must have really held on to that one! Enjoy the Digisparks!

Creator Erik Kettenburg on March 7

@Maverikou - let us know by email if they don't arrive in the next few weeks and we'll try resending them

Creator Erik Kettenburg on February 27

In celebration of the end of pre-orders and a webstore coming soon:
10% Off all $25+ Digispark orders (shields too!) !! For a super limited time!
Details: http://digistu.mp/Xc9197

Creator Erik Kettenburg on February 20

Jordan: for support and tons of troubleshooting info please go to our community forums: http://digistump.com/board

Creator Erik Kettenburg on February 19

@Svn - online tracking only shows info until it leaves the USA - most packages to Germany are taking 30-60 days.

@Dag and @Ralf - glad they finally made it!

Creator Erik Kettenburg on February 14

@Markusla - I apologize for the mistake - while I'm sure it will be much faster if you can find them locally, we'd be happy to send some - just send us an email at support at digistump dot com

Creator Erik Kettenburg on February 7

Thanks for the kind words Brian - glad you are enjoying them!

Creator Erik Kettenburg on February 6

@Miranda - if there is no rev2 on the end of the USB part of the Digispark then you have a Model B and will need to cut the LED trace, that box won't have solder in it as you care cutting the actual trace on the board. I will work on getting some photos of the two models up on the wiki.

Creator Erik Kettenburg on February 1

Please excuse the shameless plug - but if anyone is interested in purchasing a gently used Full Spectrum 5th Generation Hobby Laser, as featured on our updates, and was a Kickstarter project itself without the wait of getting one from FSL - send me an email support at digistump dot com

Again I apologize for the shameless plug - I figure since a lot of our backers are makers, we might be able to set one up with a nice deal on a solid problem free hobby laser cutter - it just isn't fast enough for our use.

Creator Erik Kettenburg on February 1

@Daniel - glad you are enjoying them!

What's next?
Well once we finish the Kickstarter and pre-orders, we're going to ship some wholesale orders next week. And then we're going to take it easy for a few weeks - my wife and I haven't done anything but take care of our farm, work, and pack Digisparks for two months - 16 hours a day, we've even been in Digispark mode while we eat - so we need so rest, sleep, time to clean up and organize, hang out with our horses, etc.

Then we have some big things in the pipeline:

A webstore, with more than just Digisparks. Components, custom laser cutting, solder stencil cutting, maybe some assembled surface mount kits, and definitely some new kits including real time clock, screw terminal breakout, lipoly battery with charger and booster, LED driver, more wireless stuff, some Digispark project kits, and I'm even working on an ethernet shield.

The other big thing we have going is that I have sitting on my desk a big bag of parts for the first set of prototypes for the next Digispark device - the Digispark Squared - which will blow even regular arduinos out of the water in performance and price. This is still at least a few months out, and once I have a working prototype I am happy with I will likely have a small private backing round (off of Kickstarter) limited to 100 units, basically asking past supporters (I'll send a notice out to the mailing list) to back for one of the first hundred units and essentially be the beta testers. These units might even be hand built. After that, with the process down, I hope to open it up to another Kickstarter !

Thanks again for your support!

Creator Erik Kettenburg on January 30

UPDATE:
We're so close! About 95% of order has shipped - and we can't wait to ship the rest, but we ran into a small issue - we were short on Relay kits, and when we went to make more we found out we were short on one component for the last 400 of them (we have been handling about 500,000 components). We already had more on order but our supplier was less then honest about them being on their way (they should ahve been here yesterday) - and they won't be hear until early next week.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN:
There are about 330 Kickstarter orders left to ship, if you don't have a relay kit in your order it will ship tonight or tomorrow morning (leaving with tomorrows pickup). If you do have a relay kit(s), we will ship your order ASAP. I just went ahead and ordered the part from another (better) supplier and I'm having them overnight it - they won't ship it until tomorrow, but if all goes well we'll have them by Friday evening and ship the remaining orders by Saturday's mail pickup. There is a small chance some won't go out until Monday, but we'll do all we can to get them out Saturday.

Thanks again for everyone's patience!

Creator Erik Kettenburg on January 29

@brian

We shut things down for most of the weekend while we worked on installing the new tube in our big laser cutter - it took a bit more time then we hoped and several trips to the store but it is now humming away and shipping should speed back up starting tonight.

Creator Erik Kettenburg on January 29

@briankb -

We have:
Full Spectrum 5th Generation "40w" Hobby Laser - $3500
Shenhui SH-G350 60w Laser - about $3500 including air freight and import fees.

If you want something that will work out of the box I would have recommended the 5th Gen, but I'm hearing lots of mixed feedback on the build quality of them and while the design is very innovative they are made with the same imported power supplies found in chinese lasers. Ours was built well, took a lot of time to align because of a few build/design flaws, but overall was a pleasant experience to get working. It is, however, very slow and it turns out it is actually a 30 or 35w "40w peak" - it is appropriate for hobby use, but due to the slow speed even in hobby use it doesn't cut as cleanly and it stinks because the plastic heats up so much in cutting. The software deserves the praise it gets for getting started quickly with any program, since it is a print driver, though it is still buggy. We'll likely sell this one at some point.

The Shnehui is an awesome machine -it weights over 300lbs (the 5th Gen is about 40lbs) and the build quality is actually very nice. Everything is built for commercial use and it comes not quite completely assembled - meaning you have to install the laser tube and generally clean everything up and tighten everything. It took several solid days of time to get up and running. The software is badly translated but we found our way through it in a few hours. The import process can be long, both in that they take awhile to ship and then freight forward it - and that it will sit in customs while the FDA approves it. This is the one that had a defective tube that burst recently - so we were out another $277 for shipping of the replacement. If you are willing to get your hands dirty this is an truly powerful machine built like a tank. We wish we bought this from the start due to the large volume we ended up needing to cut (we bought the full spectrum before we had all the case orders in). We'll likely keep this one and maybe get a second one of these.

Speed comparison:

One panel of 12 green cases (so 12 halves of a case order, since the other half of the parts are clear):
5th Gen: About One hour, 45 minutes.
Shenhui: About 17 minutes.

Software:
5th Gen - Full Spectrum RetinaEngrave print driver
Shenhui - LaserWorkV6