Charles McGrath posted an announcement 1 hour ago
Part 1 of 2
Hello all,
I’ll address a few things in this email and hopefully have another update again before the end of the week.
We’ve been watching the comments for +1USB, and so far we’ve counted just over 150 comments on that subject (out of 1920 contributors), with 72% asking for USB support, 21% for both, 6% for WiFi only, and 1% doesn’t care (just get it done).
We like WiFi for it’s nearly universal support and lack of cables; and it’s very cool taking the camera into places without the phone, but we certainly do understand that a physical line is sometimes best, and it looks like many of you have uses in mind where that is the case, some of which are very, very interesting. When we made the decision to switch to Wifi it removed a few headaches related to USB support across multiple platforms. We have a few meetings later this week to discuss this and what our final approach (approaches?) will be. For those of you who need USB we really are paying attention, because you were all early supporters we want to have a workable solution for each of you. (I really wish that Bluetooth was a viable option. Oh well, we work with what we can right?).
Charles McGrath posted an announcement 1 hour ago
Part 2 of 2
There is some talk in the comments about us not being on the roster for the Hardware show. This is true, we pulled off of the show floor because we realized that it would be more economical for us to meet with the big buyers privately rather than show the imager on the convention floor. We’re associated with people who can get the right people into the suite with us and they believe the booth to be more of distraction than anything else. So…we’re still aimed at showing the camera there. We also did this for competitive and confidendiatilty reasons.
Let me take a minute to talk in general terms about development status. We started this project knowing that thermography could be such a useful tool for so many more people than currently use it. And so we knew that an affordable thermal camera would be huge. We set off doing our research, noting where the big expenses were, and coming up with dozens of different ideas. Some of these ideas were genuinely very clever, although most ultimately didn’t pan out. In the end, we have a great plan and we’re nearing the finish line to a great camera. We’ve mentioned that we’ve experimented with a few different detectors. Well, we’re very happy with the one we’ve settled with. Abe is in the other room right now tweaking bias voltages and the like to get the best picture possible in the field. Turns out it’s just as hard to make the picture look great as it is just to get a picture in the first place. We’ve got a new case about to be machined (hopefully with proper and final mounts and clips). The next PCB we order should pretty much be the one that goes into the first cameras we ship…baring any big changes. I’m off to poke around the Internet for a new battery because I’m just not satisfied with the pack that we’ve been working with so far. I imagine that you all would be happy with as many milliamp hours as you can get, right?
Late in the month of May still seems good. The longest lead-time we have on any part is a few weeks and suppliers are at the ready.
We’re making steady progress, a video is coming very soon. We’re working late into the evenings and weekends. You’ll be very happy with what you see.
Cheers