Version 1 Product Updates

Sprinting on all Fronts

 •  3 minutes read

Sprinting on all Fronts

Here’s the latest update from team Scout:

Visual Design Update

Scout’s original website was created in just a few weeks leading up to our crowdfunding campaign. The speed with which we needed to produce the site meant we needed to make decisions quickly on the look and feel of the site. Now that we’ve had a some time to reflect on and refine the Scout brand, we’re overhauling the visual design for version 2.0 of the website and the software you’ll use to run Scout. The first thing to change is our logo. It’s not good when your logo gets confused for “a parrot in a 76ers jersey." We think the new visual design is going to better complement the standard we’ve set with our industrial design and we’re excited to get it in front of you.

Transitioning from a Crowdfunding Website

Now that we’ve moved into the production process in full force, we’ll also be transitioning the website into more than a crowdfunding site. Soon, we’ll be rolling out the full version 2.0 of the website. In preparation for that, we’ll be phasing out the current system for processing pre-orders and the crowdfunding pricing. Now that shipping product is in sight, it’s time to move to a more traditional pre-ordering process. If you know anyone that was considering a Scout system, now is the time. Moving forward, we’ll be moving to taking payment up front for pre-orders and setting pricing accordingly. As an early backer, you took a chance on us and we appreciate that more than anything. Your pricing is locked in and anything you add to your order will be honored at the pre-order pricing. The same goes for monitoring. As a result of bearing with us during the ups and downs of the project, you’re one of only 1400 people that won’t have to pay for Scout until it ships. Also, by getting in early, you’re going to have saved about 25% off of the final pricing. It’s a small thank you, but we’re excited to be able to reward our backers in any way that we can.

Hardware Update / Optimization

Since the last update, our engineers have been heads down honing the Scout firmware and working with our factory to iron out final design-for-manufacturing details. As a result of their efforts, the Scout hardware has shrunk by over 30% for each component. It’s sleeker, lighter and more efficient than ever.
Before we handed off all of the final docs to the folks in China, we were working and reworking boards here in the USA. One of the steps we hadn’t previously highlighted was the way in which we approached finalizing the Scout design. Below, you’ll find a picture of the "omnibus” board, on which the entire Scout system was contained. Our engineers were able to run through testing and tweaking the full system on these boards before splitting them off into the boards for each individual component. Though we’ve moved on from these boards, it’s pretty cool to see all of Scout on one board.

Ship Date & Bottlenecks

Finally, let’s talk about the ship date for Scout. Despite our best efforts, we’re not going to be able to ship product by the end of this month. We’d love nothing more than to have Scout ready for the December holidays, but it just isn’t in the cards. We ran into battery life issues with our Arm Disarm Panel that had to be taken care of and needed to re-work some of the internal setup. It took a while to balance the combination of battery-saving adjustments, while not hindering the user experience. In the end, it’s a better system for it and you’ll experience less pain over the long term by not having to change Arm Disarm batteries regularly. That said, it did involve pausing on multiple fronts temporarily to get everything worked out. As we previously mentioned, the first batch pre-orders are ending. So, this initial group is going to be the first to receive Scout. But, the ship date is going to be pushed into the early part of 2014.

Thank you for your patience. We truly appreciate your support.

Happy holidays!

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