Hi everybody!

OK, first things first. The first batch of international orders was supposed to go out last week, but it wasn’t until last Friday that they started to ship and they didn’t complete until Tuesday of this week. That’s just the first batch though. If you haven’t received an email yet, your reward hasn’t shipped. Keep reading!

Also regarding the international shipments, several people noticed that only the first line of their address was present in the shipment email. Don't worry, we have your address and your reward went to your full address.  And we've received several messages from backers concerned that the destination countries that were supposed to receive tracking numbers (Australia, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, New Zealand, Mexico, South Korea and Japan) didn’t receive tracking numbers. Those will go out in the next couple hours. 

If you’re a domestic backer, we fell a little behind somewhere in there, but we’ve caught back up. All orders have been submitted and if you haven’t already, you will receive a shipment notification from Amazon either today or tomorrow. 

Did you catch that? All domestic Kickstarter rewards have shipped!! yay!! Even some domestic pre-orders are going out this week. 

If you’re an international Kickstarter backer or pre-orderer, our apologies, we’ll get through this. All international Kickstarter rewards will go out next week, Tuesday or Wednesday. (That’s a 100% certainty BTW.)  We’re sorry for the additional delay. I’m not afraid to admit that we’re figuring this out for the first time and some of our estimates have been off. Getting another fulfillment channel up and running was more work than anticipated. Heck, our original plan was to have Amazon handle international shipments. That was, I’d say, a colossal misjudgement, no thanks to our buddies at Amazon. We’ve received several messages from our international friends expressing frustration, and that’s understandable. In a couple weeks, everyone will have their Pixy(s) and all of this will be behind us. Don’t stop believin’! 

For pre-orders, it’s more of the same. Domestic pre-orders are more or less on schedule, going out this week and next week. International pre-orders, like Kickstarter rewards, are delayed by several days and will go out next week and the week after (April 14). 

In addition to shipping, we moved the ball a little on the development front.  In particular:

• We released a new Arduino-Pixy library that adds RC-servo control over SPI, so Arduino can control the pan/tilt and perform object tracking. You can find documentation on how to get this running here.  It’s a great starting point for an Arduino-Pixy application! 
• We released a new PixyMon version (0.1.47) that includes GUI improvements to the Config Properties dialog, firmware uploading, and has support for OSX 10.6 and later.  Initial feedback has been very favorable. 
• We posted new documentation on the wiki for Mounting Pixy, Powering Pixy, and the Pixy Serial Protocol. Also added a FAQ and Introduction section.

That's all for now.  Next update, our Kickstarter and pre-order backlog will be no more!  (yay!)

Hi Pixy Friends!

Oh my, what a week it's been! Some of the early backers have already received their rewards, and many more rewards have shipped and are in transit. If you’re a Kickstarter backer with backer number less than 1500, and you’re in the US, your reward has shipped and you’ll receive it in the next couple days.

And therein lies both good news and bad news. Good news: backers are finally getting their Pixy rewards. Bad news: only US backers are receiving them; International backers haven’t started shipping yet.

It turns out that Amazon won’t ship our Pixys outside the US.

Sigh…. Amazon (if you’re reading this), we’re not feeling the love. You had told us that you could ship our product to our international backers using “multi-channel FBA export”--- not a very catchy name, but it sounded perfect to us, because it meant you could ship to *everyone* on our list --- all we had to do was ship everything to you, and you’d take care of it. We were excited. The friendly representative on the phone was excited for us. But when we tried it, your system choked on anything we tried to send outside the US. We made numerous phonecalls trying to get past the bureaucracy. And we learned some key facts: (1) you’re a big company! and (2) you have rules and restrictions that aren’t readily apparent and (3) even some of your employees are confused by them!

In short, Amazon has placed an export restriction on our little Pixy and it appears that nothing we can do will change that. So….. we’ve enacted Plan B -- a smaller, more nimble company has agreed to help us get the international rewards out ASAP. They will start shipping next week. So to our international friends, we apologize. Your rewards will ship a little later than we expected (by about a week). We will spend all of next week catching the you guys up with our US backer friends.

That brings us to the question we’ve been getting a lot lately. In fact, we’ve been getting so many emails asking us this very question, we can’t keep up with them! and we don’t blame you…. this is, after all, the Big Question.

Here is the schedule (answering the question, when will my Pixy ship?)

Some notes--

• If you’re a Kickstarter backer and you also made a pre-order, we’ve combined your reward and your pre-order, and the combined package will ship according to your backer number (ie, it will get the priority of your backer number). 
• You will get an email when your package ships (regardless of whether you're inside or outside US). 
• US backers and pre-orderers will receive a tracking number from Amazon. Your package will typically take 2 days to arrive at your door once it ships 
• International package delivery times vary quite a bit. If you’re in these countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, New Zealand, Mexico, South Korea or Japan, you will receive a tracking number. All other countries, the package will be handed off the the local postal system, and no tracking facility is available. 
• If you're a pre-orderer, you may have noticed that we've already charged your card.  We needed to do this early in order to combine pre-orders with Kickstarter rewards.  Please email us if this does't work for you, and we'll promptly issue you a refund.   

Many have noticed that our Amazon listing for Pixy and the pan/tilt mechanism has some odd pricing. $6900 for a Pixy? What's up with that?  Amazon won’t fulfill our Kickstarter rewards and pre-orders without also offering our products for sale. But it would be hugely unfair for someone to “cut in line”, so to speak, by receiving a Pixy 2 days after placing an order, so we’ve jacked the price up by 100x. It’s silly…. but that’s the only solution we’ve found. (grrr...Amazon, why can't we just disable the "selling feature"?)

That's all for now... Thank you so much for your patience! For those still waiting, we're working our hardest to get these little Pixys out to you ASAP! 

Hey everybody!

It's been awhile since you (our lovely backers) have given us your shipping address, so please check to make sure that we have the correct address, because we'll need them soon! If you've moved, just send us a message (through Kickstarter) and we'll be sure to change.  If you've already sent us your address change, then all's good!  

We sent our first Pixy shipments to Amazon yesterday!  And we sent even more today, so about 700 Pixys are en route to Amazon shipping centers.  And more will be sent tomorrow...  The pan/tilt mechanism is on a "hazardous materials" hold by Amazon. (huh?)  We don't understand it either... but something in the description of the pan/tilt mechanism caused Amazon's system to flag it.  This might take a day or two to clear up.  The good news is that things are shipping.  And our calculated "rate" is 1500 Pixy/pan-tilts per week to Amazon.  This means that all Kickstarter rewards will be at Amazon within three weeks from now.   

OK, I must confess here --- I've never done fulfillment through Amazon before, so there's some guesswork here.  From what I gather, there are some delays in filling the pipeline, but once it's filled, things go quickly.  Here's how it breaks down--- the packages that were shipped on Monday will get to Amazon Thursday and Friday of this week.  They are scanned and are "made available for sale within three business days of being received".  I assume that three days applies to fulfillment too.  That puts things at Monday or Tuesday of next week for Pixys to start shipping to you.  So hundreds of early backers will likely get their Pixys next week.  There is some guessing/assuming going on here. Pan/tilts will probably be delayed a couple additional days because of the "hazmat" issue.

So the upshot is that you'll be getting your Pixy soon.  We need to gather some more info and we'll have more concrete information, by the end of next week, as the first Pixys land in backers' hands.  A schedule based on backer number will be provided.     

As always, thanks for your patience!  

Hi Pixy friends,

We’ve reached beta status! Our beta testers have been using Pixy for a week and sending their feedback. And so far so good… The beta helps ensure that when we ship to you, it all goes smoothly. Pretty much all new pieces of technology get a beta period and then a ramp-up of sales. We’re out of the gate with an accelerated beta followed by shipping to thousands of customers. Yikes! But we’ll be fine… we have confidence in our little guy. 

OK, what else--- manufacturing is going nuts, in a good way. We have boxes and boxes of Pixys ready for final programming, testing and packaging. 

Documentation is being written and it’s up on our wiki if you want to check out what we have so far. The docs are on the sparse side, but we’ll be adding to the wiki quite a bit over the next couple weeks, so by the time your Pixy arrives, there will be a much richer set of docs. And we’ll continue to add to the docs for the foreseeable future. 

We’re just getting started, and there are lots of features, improvements and sensing tasks planned for Pixy (in addition to color-based object detection and tracking.) These new capabilities will be available to you, of course. Since you are our first customers, we’ll be asking you to weigh in on what we do next. But we’ll ask after you’ve had some time to play with your Pixy, which brings us to The Schedule. 

We expect to get our first box out to Amazon either next Friday (March 7) or the following Monday. (We’re having Amazon do the procurement --- they’re more efficient and quicker than we are, so they got the job!) We’re on schedule, mostly, maybe behind a day or two, but with the coding behind us (for this release) the remaining tasks are all fairly predictable. Put Pixy in box. Close box. Apply tape. Apply barcode. etc. In other words, you will be getting your Pixy soon. There’s light at the end of the tunnel! 

Friends, thanks for hanging tough with us through all this. Your patience has been awesome and inspiring. Really. 

Next update -- we’ll be shipping, and we’ll have some good hard numbers on when you’ll receive your Pixy!  

Pixys and pan/tilts are available for pre-order here.