iPhone Cable Gifts Have All Shipped
over 8 years ago
– Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 01:39:22 AM
This is just a quick update to let everyone know that we took 700+ envelopes of iPhone cables to our local post office yesterday and sent them off on their journeys around the world.
It was an unexpectedly helpful experience, as we got to test drive our new order management, shipping, and postage systems with a fairly simple batch of "orders" (only one product). We learned a lot that will make the real shipping process go much better once we have the HydraDock in hand.
So, US backers should begin receiving their cable gift as early as today/tomorrow, with those elsewhere arriving thereafter.
We hope to have a report from our chip supplier this week so we can update on the actual main HydraDock product status.
We'd also like to introduce our new Operations Manager, Sonya Thurman, to everyone, as she is now responsible for the whole admin>orders>shipping process here. After handling these iPhone cable shipments, she's now our order/shipping process wizard and will be fielding Q&A here and by email.
As always, we appreciate your support and patience.
Thank You!
The KickShark Team
HydraDock Project Status Report
almost 9 years ago
– Mon, Jul 13, 2015 at 09:57:33 AM
We wanted to start the week by sharing what information we have about when the HydraDock will be completed and shipped to all of our backers.
First, we want to look at where we are now. We are two weeks late on our original estimated shipping date for rewards. Had there been no unexpected problems we would have shipped the HydraDock and other rewards out last week — one week later than we had planned. Everything needed to make that happen was on track and was happening.
In testing our pilot production PC boards we found a problem with the video sync performance of a chip we use that receives and de-multiplexes the DisplayPort Alternate Mode video signal embedded in the USB-C transport out of the MacBook, and that then feeds both the Mini DisplayPort and HDMI jacks on the HydraDock. Video to 2,560x1,440 worked fine from the mDP jack at 60Hz. Video from the HDMI jack worked for several seconds, but then began degrading to not much more than static at 1,920x1,080 and higher resolutions. The chip supplier identified a hardware problem in the silicon that was causing a large area of buffer memory to be non-functional, and told us to wait while they made a change to the mask for this semiconductor, and then produced a new run of the chip. Their time estimate was, "at least 4 to 6 weeks."
We paused all of our production activities, and are waiting to reschedule board production and final assembly of the HydraDock until we receive the new demux chips — which now looks like it will happen about August 10th or so. When we receive the new chips, we will again make a pilot run of a few boards for testing. If those boards pass testing, we will be able to do a full SMT mass production run of the HydraDock boards perhaps about August 20th, with final assembly and shipping from the factory of the completed HydraDocks then happening by the end of August.
That will make us two months late.
We shipped everyone who backed our campaign both on Kickstarter and afterwards on BackerKit a free USB-C to iPhone charge-sync cable this past week as an apology gift for being late with the HydraDock — over 700 cables mailed. This gift has nothing to to do with your actual rewards. Your rewards will all ship in full when the HydraDock is ready. We were able to do this because USPS postage is very cheap both US and internationally for envelopes under 1/2" thick; and, the iPhone cable is so small it can fit into that size envelope. We cannot ship anything else until the HydraDock is ready and we can box and ship all rewards in one large mailing.
Because of the delay we expect some backers to have changes in the shipping addresses that will need corrected. You can email Kristin on our team at [email protected] and she will make sure that is handled for you.
If you have any comments or questions not answered here, just post with any of the methods on Kickstarter, or email administrative questions to [email protected] or technical questions to [email protected] .
As always, we appreciate your support and patience.
Thank You!
The KickShark Team
Status Of HydraDock Production & Rewards Fulfillment
almost 9 years ago
– Tue, Jul 07, 2015 at 04:48:21 AM
This is to let everybody know what’s going on, and what to expect going forward.
First, we want to say that we are a group of people based in Nashville who are committed to making a program work here that takes more and more new products to market using crowdfunding, both on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, with both our own products and doing it for clients.
Our point is that if there was ever a group of people committed to “doing crowdfunding the right way,” it’s us. Our program’s whole future depends on it.
That said, it looks like our first major project has a serious delay. The DisplayPort demux chip we mentioned in our previous update does not have simple firmware issue like we hoped. It has a silicon-level flaw in a set of buffer memory registers that requires the chip maker to make design level changes, and to make a new mask, and then do a new production run. We have been told that this will take, “… at a bare minimum, four to six weeks.”
We spent months getting to the HydraDock board and enclosure designs, sampling and testing, and getting to a working product — using mostly brand new samples of upcoming USB-C related semiconductors. And, now one of them has a problem only discovered in the first production run of the chip.
The good news is that everything else works, our supply chain has delivered first production run quantities, and our boards can be built as soon as we get the replacement demux chips. Our bills are paid to our factory and suppliers. Funds for shipping are reserved. There seem to be no more risks out there to stop us from fulfilling all of the campaign rewards (and those to BackerKit backers since the campaign).
Long before we were Kickstarter creators we were Kickstarter backers. Everybody on our team has backed one or more campaigns. So, we have seen it all: great projects that funded and then delivered on time with a great product; projects that funded, had some struggles, but then did deliver a product; and, projects that fell completely apart, or that were just scams from the start. We have seen this process from your viewpoint.
To show good faith, and frankly to prove that we are really here and not some imaginary group, we are sending everybody a USB-C to iPhone cable this week — everybody. You can look for it in your mail next week.
We are also stopping “Backer Only” updates, and will post all future updates here open to the public. It seems that people who missed the Kickstarter campaign, but later backed us using BackerKit cannot see the backer only updates here. If that is you, you can now just check here for the latest information.
What we are not going to do is to invent a lot of made up nonsense to explain delay after delay… like supposed product changes, or upgrades, or adding new features, or many of the other “excuses” we have seen late projects try to make. Ours is a very simple situation. Everything is done, ready for mass production, except for one defective chip needing to be replaced by the manufacturer. When that is done, we will build and ship all of the reward products immediately.
We are sorry for the hassle. It’s frustrating. Many of you have MacBooks and really need one of the features on the HydraDock. We know, as we have the same problems here. We need HydraDocks, too, for our own MacBooks.
So, please be patient. Give our chip supplier the time they need to get the problem fixed and new chips to our factory. And, we’ll do the rest and get these rewards built and shipped.
Thanks so much for your support and understanding.
Sincerely,
Kristin, Mike, Ryan, Danielle, Kris, Ryan P., Jeff, Jack, Andrey, Paul, Henry, Matt, Jay, Bo, Joon-Ho, and James
The KickShark Team
