We are behind Schedule, Here's Why
My how time flies! In today's blog post, I thought I'd cover where we are with the IgorBox Beta program and our launch in early next year.
I'm just going to come out and say it, we are way behind! We had planned on shipping out beta boxes to our beta program users in June, but supply chains, firmware development, and bugs have been slowing us down quite a bit. Let's break this down and lift the lid to expose what's been going on a little more.
The Supply chain issues for components has been a nightmare (and not the good kind). We designed our boards multiple times because parts that should have been easy to get, weren't available in the quantities we needed. We are on Revision 3 of the IgorBox Beta boards at this point and waiting on our test suite and burn-in to pass. From a hardware standpoint, we are a few weeks away from working boards for the beta boxes. Woohoo!
The firmware development has proven to be quite a time suck. In June, we discovered that a core library we were using had an incompatible license. After trying to work something out, we couldn't come to an agreement and decided to remove the library. The problem with this turned out to be a big one that resulted in a full rewrite of the firmware from the ground up. The newest version is amazing though and much more extensible then what we had before.. I just checked for this blog post and in the last month we've written over 10K lines of C code for the new firmware version! Incredible! This, of course, was an unplanned month of rewrite which lost us valuable time in our beta and launch schedule.
And lastly, bugs.. Oh my.. so many bugs. There were bugs in the firmware, bugs in the hardware, and even bugs in the bugs! Anyway, we have had an internal bug bash to find and eradicate as many as we could find. Most of these bugs were minor and tolerable, but when you're building the next generation of animatronics control systems, they are unacceptable. Some of these bug fixes resulted in hardware improvements and others resulted in usability and programming improvements. As a result of our first internal bug bash, we created a very comprehensive test and burn-in system for our hardware that allows us to really work the boxes hard and simulate multiple seasons of 24/7 use. We've been abusing our test boards at a level that some would consider "extreme", but we want the best products on the market. period.
So, overall, we've lost a few months in our plans, but we all feel it was worth it. We're sure you'll agree that the additional wait was well worth it too. We are so excited to show you what we've been creating in the lab and we'll be getting beta boards out to our lucky beta program users as soon as possible Just in time for the Haunt season to Pop-off!
If you're a beta program user, watch for a more detailed email in the next few weeks too. Whether you're a beta user or not, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel for updates and awesome tutorials!
Sincerely,
Mike -- chief nerd.