Project Update - October '23

It's the 16th of October and we would love to be so much further along than we are today. We have had an incredible amount of setbacks and delays, but we are still working on the beta and we are still working on getting it out to you as soon as possible. At the same time, I want to be transparent about what's been going on and why we are where we are.

The Good

First let's start with the good. We have been making steady progress and have locked down our circuit designs and worked out the bugs we were having on the hardware side. It took 3 full revisions, but the the burn in tests have resulted in no errors in the firmware and the hardware has been rock solid. We are even running a few of the beta boards in our own yard haunt this year to further battle test it.

On the programming side, we have made huge progress and have a number of cool new features and surprises that we are excited to show you. I'm sure you've noticed that the website (www.igorbox.com) has been changing and you can now pre-order to get in line for the first run of IgorBox controllers! Along side these changes, we have also been working on the documentation and have a number of new articles and videos that we will be releasing with the beta when it's ready.

The Bad

Now let's talk about our setbacks and what is holding us up. The first is that components are still in short supply. We have been able to get enough to build a run of 5 test boards to validate the revision fixed some of our hardware problems. However, when we tried to order a run of 50 boards, not even a week later, two key components were not available. To make it worse, the alternatives that would work are also not in stock in most places. This throws a huge wrench in the works as we need to find a new solution that will work with the existing design and that we can get in a reasonable time frame and be able to test and validate it. The other option is to stock our own parts with the manufacturer, but that takes time too. Our current lead time on boards has gone from about a week to 4-6 weeks if we don't change our design (that we now know works perfectly). This is all so frustrating.

Beyond the component shortage, Lisa and I have both been pretty sick for the past month. We are both feeling better now, but it's been a rough month, and we are only just now starting to feel human again. Lisa got the big "C" in September and then I got a terrible infection that took me out for awhile. I'm still not 100%, but I'm getting there. Since I'm the only hardware engineer on the team, this has slowed down the hardware development quite a bit. It's incredibly hard to focus when you feel like you've been hit by a truck for weeks on end.

The Ugly

This is the part that has been the "all-stop" on everything. We have been working through a number of patents and intellectual property law things for the past year and, until we have resolved our IP paperwork, we won't be able to release anything. We are so close to getting through the legal jungle and we had hoped to be done with this part months ago, but alas, nothing happens quickly in the legal world. We are working with a great team of lawyers and we are confident that we will be able to get through this. As soon as the legal team tells us we are clear, we will be able to release the beta and start releasing videos about the new features and how to use them.

What's Next

We will continue to work through our IP issues and get the beta out to you as soon as we can. We are also going to continue to work on the documentation and videos so that we can release them as soon as we are able to release the beta. As for our launch at Transworld 2024, we are very much on-track for that. We will be there with a booth and we will be showing off the IgorBox controllers and all of the new features. We are also working on a few other surprises that we will be announcing at Transworld. We are very excited about what we have in store for you and we can't wait to show you what we've been working on. So stay tuned and we will keep you updated as we make progress.