Mini Update: HydraDock Production Starting
over 7 years ago – Thu, Sep 01, 2016 at 04:37:12 PM

This is just a quick update to let everyone know that our factory says they will be setting up today and will begin mass production of the HydraDock tomorrow. They plan to finish the HydraDock run this coming Tuesday and begin the Roadie production run the next day.

Based on this information we are planning to begin shipping rewards/preorders from our Hong Honk fulfillment facility the end of next week.

Stay tuned as we will alert everyone by email as your products begin shipping.

Thanks to all for backing and supporting our efforts!

The KickShark Team

HydraDock and Roadie headed to mass production
over 7 years ago – Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 12:06:23 AM

We have released the HydraDock and the HydraDock Roadie products for mass production. The factory says that the HydraDock will be produced in 2 to 3 weeks, and the Roadie immediately afterwards. They say they will provide us with firm production dates next week, which we will then pass along to our backers.

Shipping

Because of the lengthy delay, we have lost our original fulfillment shipping relationship out of Hong Kong that we were going to use last year. We are working with several options on shipping what will be over 2,000 unique packages, and will have this arranged by the time the products are made and are ready to send out.

If you need to update your shipping address, please email Kristin at [email protected] and she’ll handle it for you.

Testing Results

The recent testing was very, very extensive, involving multiple tests of both the HydraDock and Roadie with both instrumentation and with real peripherals plugged into each of the ports. There was individual testing of each port, as well as “dynamic” testing with many products being plugged in and out of several ports simultaneously.

Total failure rate for all reasons across the 407 HydraDocks was 4.4% (18 units). The highest failure for any specific reason was 2.7% (11 units). Total failures across all 201 Roadies was 3.5% (7 units), with all 7 of those failures being general HDMI display issues, but none related to any specific display model.

It has taken two weeks of frustrating effort to get understandable reports here of each of the detailed test batteries on the products, and to then glean through it and communicate with the factory on each test, and to get comfortable with the results. These are solid numbers that match up to or exceed those of any other new USB-C products out there. Frankly, we’re pretty happy with these results.

Statement on Finances

To repeat information we have tried to share regularly along the way with each of you: We are a small team of managers, engineers, designers, product developers and manufacturers in Nashville, Tennessee who run a tech incubator/accelerator program focused on consumer hardware products. We like crowdfunding as a tool to determine market potential, get feedback from shoppers and users, and to cover some of the go-to-market costs.

Our first major win on crowdfunding was this HydraDock campaign, which originally did $80,000 from Kickstarter backers, and has since gone on to do over $300,000 total from backers from our web site. And, that sounds like a lot of money.

Unfortunately, because there were none of the normal development tools, reference designs, model firmware code, or other assets typically available for new electronics products, we had to pay a lot of money to get the HydraDock (and Roadie) developed. Then, when all the performance problems happened last year and early this year, we had to pay out even more money to chase solutions. Our current reckoning is that we have put more than $219,000 of our own money into this venture, beyond the money collected from backers. And, we are presently in a very, very difficult financial situation.

Nobody involved with KickShark is wealthy. Yet, two of our founders have personally borrowed money to put into the company to offset these unplanned costs. We have had to sacrifice client projects and other development projects to conserve cash and pay to keep HydraDock moving. For several months, our core team has worked with no pay.

All factory and vendor/supplier bills are fully paid. What we still face is the cost of fulfillment for 2,000+ packages in about 3 weeks. Knowing this, we are scrambling to arrange the money to make this happen.

Because of the extreme cash shortage here, and the costs we are facing to fulfill all of these rewards, we are having to be very firm on anything requiring cash, including refund requests.

Our ongoing preorder process from our HydraDock web site includes a terms and conditions statement in the checkout process where users agree that this is a continuation of our crowdfunding process, that those are paid preorders, that we will use the money to pay manufacturing costs, and that refunds will only be given for 10 days. We must enforce that policy. So, please between now and us getting all of these packages shipped, we ask everybody to not request refunds.

Our commitment is to get working products into everyone’s hands. And, that’s what we intend to accomplish.

Summary

So, we have both the HydraDock and Roadie being scheduled for mass production, with fulfillment thereafter. Extensive testing says these will be great products. And, since everything needed for production is already under roof at the factory, we can see no reasonable reason for any further delays. It looks like this is it. Finally.

We know some of you have been understandably grumpy. We apologize for anywhere along the way when we failed to meet your expectations for communication. All we can say is that it’s really intimidating to publish an update here that we know is being seen by over 2,000 backers, and that each of you counts on to be honest and accurate. Sometimes we have held back publishing until we knew with more certainty that what we said was reliable. And, as you know, even that has not worked — as we have still been surprised and disappointed at turn after turn.

In any case, we’re here now. And, we thank everyone for your support and patience, and for joining us in this wild journey through the land of creating shiny new electronics products from scratch.

Thank you!

The KickShark Team

Another quick update: Deciphering test results
over 7 years ago – Fri, Aug 05, 2016 at 06:52:18 PM

This Tuesday we received thirteen emails from our factory, each with an Excel sheet attached supposedly showing the results of a test on 407 HydraDocks that were put through detailed bench testing as previously explained here. A separate sheet for each test. With Chinese notations. With values shown with no explanations. Another seven sheets arrived Wednesday done the same way showing the similar testing done with 201 Roadie units.

We are pretty clever about this stuff, but none of us can glean any usable information from these "reports." So, we've been going back and forth with our engineering contact at the factory, trying to get some useful information — even simple pass-fail stats would help a lot right now.

In any case. We are absolutely still working here, still pushing forward with this project, still trying to resolve it all and get to the end point — and dealing with this sort of weirdness.

We'll post again when we get anything resolved. Stay tuned.

As always, thanks to all of you for riding along with us during this ongoing saga.

The KickShark Team

Quick update: Still waiting for test results before production
over 7 years ago – Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 12:55:44 AM

This is just a quick note to let everybody know that we are still waiting for the final report on the massive testing project of 400 HydraDock and 200 Roadie circuit boards the factory started three weeks ago. They initially told us that would take a week — so, that's what we told you.

Since then, it's apparent that the process has been a lot more difficult and time consuming than the factory initially believed. We have had only three emails in this time period, basically all saying, "Be patient. We are doing the testing and will provide a report when completed." The last one over the weekend added that they hoped to finish the work this week.

So, we have yet again moved the "expected shipping" time forward, this time to "early August."

We will update here when we have the next round of information from the factory.

Thanks again to everyone for backing us and putting up with what has become a crazy situation. We are still 100% committed to delivering this project.

The KickShark Team

Final PC Board Tests Ahead Of Final Assembly
almost 8 years ago – Tue, Jul 05, 2016 at 10:44:55 PM

Just a quick update to everyone waiting on their HydraDock or Roadie. We are in the final test/assemble/ship phase, with orders expected to start going out by about the 10th.

Testing & Timing

The factory received 4,000 new PC boards for the HydraDock and 2,500 boards for the Roadie this past week, with circuit tests by the board manufacturer all successfully passed. Yesterday, our factory began their own in-depth testing of 400 randomly chosen boards. These tests involve hooking each board up to 3 different HDMI monitors and 3 different DisplayPort monitors, at both FHD and 4K resolutions, with each of the 6 monitors being models that have had problems with previous HydraDock users.

Beyond the monitors, the boards are being connected and tested for Ethernet, digital audio, and SD card functions. And, the full USB test suite for USB 3.1, including Power Delivery is being run on the USB connections.

All tests are being run on both a 2015 MacBook and a new 2016 MacBook. The factory says they will not do the final product assembly and packaging until this testing is completed successfully, and this should be early next week.

Money

Our relationship with our factory is very strained at this time, as they are very hesitant and demotivated to continue work on this project, because of all of the problems and frustrations so far. And frankly, despite their reputation as a solid Tier One USB supplier (they are a Foxconn direct vendor), we have almost completely lost faith in the relationship. They and other vendors have taken advantage of every setback to drill us for more and more money. So, even with the apparently better profit margins in the pricing for more recent pre-orders, we are just over $200,000 negative on this project at this time. This $200,000 shortfall has been put in from our other business operations, by our founders, and most recently a bank loan.

The HydraDock project has literally consumed all other activity at our small company, causing us to not be able to take new client projects or undertake new product development of our own for many months. We have had to cut back staff. We have essentially been dragged forward to a point where our existence depends on being able to ship these properly working HydraDock and Roadie products.

This, of course, is not what we dreamed would happen when we excitedly launched a Kickstarter campaign last year.

Issue With The Whole New USB-C Sector

Articles like this one have been increasingly pointing to broad issues with the newest USB Type C standard, especially with the new MacBooks.

We are frustrated with the entire new USB Type C ecosystem of semiconductor suppliers, monitor and peripherals makers, and host computer makers — including Apple with its MacBooks. Nothing we have tested and tried to work with is 100% within the USB 3.1/Type C specification. 90% of our work has been trying to find adaptations and compromises possible in firmware to overcome the device limitations. For well over a year when we get one thing working with one combination of computer and monitor or other peripheral, we then found out that the changes created another set of problems with some other combinations of computer and peripherals.

Now on our second completely new circuit board and our 15th completed firmware version, we “think” we have the best set of compromises in place to work reliably with the MacBook and any reasonably foreseeable set of connected products. The testing that’s going on now will prove that belief one way or the other.

As always, we’ll stay in communication every step of the way. And, we thank everybody out there who has tolerated this irritating, frustrating process alongside us.

The KickShark Team