Kickstarter

Hello Kickstarters,

It's been a hectic month and this update was supposed to go out last weekend. But the author embraced a nasty cold that lasted the better part of the week. That said, things are back on track and we are going to be shipping out the Early-Early backer rewards  (electronics without the enclosure) this week!

It has taken some time correlate all of the backer information and we are still waiting for a handful of surveys to be completed. But we are going to move forward and start with this first round of shipments. If you have not yet filled out your surveys, please take a moment to do so. We can't ship your reward until we have it.

Once the Early-Early Beacon shipments are completed and we receive the enclosures from the manufacturer, which should be in the next 2-3 weeks, we will begin shipping the Early Development backer rewards.

Finally, towards the end of October, we should begin shipping the remaining backer rewards with the initial version of theapplication. We will be posting another update soon to provide everyone with a first look sneak peek at the application. While we intend to provide all features promised and more, we may be releasing certain features over time in subsequent versions as they become available.

We have received some samples of the enclosure from the manufacturer. They did them in Black and we think they look really good! We had some issues with the threading and the notching on the inside that holds the board snug and flush. These changes are being made to the mold over the next week or so and once we verify the new design samples we should have the shipment of final enclosures within a week or two of that.

The ABS plastic these are made out of is tough! We have pitched these straight to the concrete floor without breaking or scratching them.

Next, we have been experimenting with ideas for future expansion of the product. One of these ideas is the ability to power our beacons without a battery using energy harvesting. We have taken a small solar cell and attached it directly to the positive and negative leads on the battery clip. Given a good source of light, the cell works perfectly, powering the beacon without any difficulty.

Any cell with 2-3 Volts and around 15-30 mA should work for anyone interested in duplicating our success.

***PLEASE NOTE: THE BATTERY MUST BE REMOVED BEFORE ATTACHING ANY ENERGY HARVESTING DEVICES TO THE BEACON.

We are also, as time permits, working on other sensor and add-on modules for our Smart Beacons so we can slowly but surely add more functionality and usefulness to our project. Stay tuned.

In order to fulfill our orders and ensure that we have everything ready to ship out, we have ordered stickers for everyone and t-shirts for our Fan Club and Raving Fan Club backers. The stickers just arrived as you can see below and the t-shirts will be here in the next couple of days. We think they look pretty nice. 

The stickers are Clear with Blue ink. The shirts are also Blue ink on a Charcoal cotton tee.

We have also ordered a 'Limited Edition' brand that will be hot stamped on the bottom of the enclosures for our Limited Edition Backers. We figured this would be a more permanent and elegant solution. For the PCB, we are going hand number each of them in a series as it we don't have the room for a traditional stamp. Once again, we figured this would be a more personal and meaningful gesture.

We appreciate everyone's patience and support while we try to stay focused and deliver the best product that we can.

Cheers,
Jon, Don and Michael