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've had to revisit board designs multiple times because parts that should have been easy to get weren't available in the quantities we needed. From a hardware standpoint, we're a few weeks away from working boards for the beta boxes. Woohoo!

The firmware development has proven to be quite a time suck too. We hit some unexpected work earlier this year that pushed us into a much larger rewrite than we'd planned. The newest version is amazing — much more extensible than what we had before — but the unplanned engineering time lost us valuable runway 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.