" Just over a year ago I wrote an article here on Forbes titled ZionEyez, Weiner, and Watching which, amongst other topics, discussed a Kickstarter project called ZionEyez.
If you’re not up to speed on Kickstarter it’s a service where individuals and companies can pitch their ideas for projects of any kind such as products, music, artwork … you name it. These projects are looking for backers; people who will sign up at a level of anything from $1 to thousands of dollars in return for rewards that range from being listed as a project backer through to receiving products in bulk.
The idea of Kickstarter is brilliant: It allows small companies and individuals to test the market for whatever they plan to offer. Some projects don’t get funded, some get what they’re looking for, and some, as in the case of ZionEyez, succeed beyond their wildest dreams.
What ZionEyez proposed was to produce glasses under the brand name “Eyez” that could stream realtime high definition video and audio to the Internet from a built-in camera and microphone in the frame of the specs.
Potential users were really excited by the idea of being able to “life stream” for a very low price ($199) … check out the original posting for more details of the planned product.
ZionEyez was looking to raise $55,000 and on July 31, 2011, the closing date for the project, had slightly exceeded its goal with 2,106 backers committing a total of $343,415! That was, by any measure, an astounding performance and spoke to the surprisingly high latent demand for a product such as the one proposed by ZionEyez.
But wait a second … when you consider the sophistication required to deliver streaming HD video from a product that’s as constrained in size and weight as glasses, you have to wonder whether a startup can deliver on such ambitious promises. In June 2011 a post on the Singularity Hub blog framed the issue nicely:
Now, as cool as Eyez may appear, there’s still plenty of reasons to be cautious. That animation video is great, but it’s not a real product. Is it vaporware? Well, the cynic in me says it’s too early to say otherwise, but ZionEyez CTO, Joe Taylor, is coming from Flip, a company that made millions on mobile cameras , and I don’t think there’s anything in this build that would be impossible or undeliverable at this price. Should we be concerned that Eyez is coming from a crowd sourced project rather than a big name distributor? Maybe. But it could also just be a sign that bright young entrepreneurs know that there’s more money to be made the longer they stay independent."
Did it end in tears?
You betcha!
"I think the bigger issue is the Kickstarter model and the company’s unwillingness to take responsibility for projects that don’t deliver. Based on the stories shared by Kickstarter project backers, I believe the ZionEyez project is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to projects that don’t deliver."
Kristina on March 1
"So let me get this straight, you can take $343,415 and live a long & happy life without any consequences? How is this possible?"
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zioneyez/eyeztm-by-zioneyez-hd-video-recording-glasses-for/posts/205189
Off with their testurcles
Aaaaaaaaarrrgh!
I have read the recent messages on the site and I am still at a loss to understand how people can think that a new medium resolution thermal camera can be provided to them for just US$150. Do these people not do any research on the topic at all ?
Hello Everyone,
After a very long weekend of near round-the-clock work we’re very close to presenting our camera and the images that result. What most all of you are wanting to see is coming up quickly. Much of the software is complete, it’s been the hardware that has been the beast for us. Image quality is of utmost importance to us and much of that work is on the hardware side.
We are still evaluating the USB and Wifi scenarios and have not made a decision. That will be coming soon.
I am working towards finalizing the parts suppliers and the assembly team and most importantly to all of you, the schedule for production. I’ll let you know as soon as I’m confident of a firm timeframe. We’re still six weeks out from our original timeframe of late May.
Thank you all that have been patient with our development process. Enjoy your week.
John McGrath
Hope they have some lovely cell mates
After a very long weekend of near round-the-clock work we’re very close to presenting our camera and the images that result.
What most all of you are wanting to see is coming up quickly. Much of the software is complete, it’s been the hardware that has been the beast for us.
Image quality is of utmost importance to us and much of that work is on the hardware side.
We are still evaluating the USB and Wifi scenarios and have not made a decision. That will be coming soon.
I am working towards finalizing the parts suppliers and the assembly team and most importantly to all of you, the schedule for production.
I’ll let you know as soon as I’m confident of a firm timeframe. We’re still six weeks out from our original timeframe of late May.
Thank you all that have been patient with our development process. Enjoy your week.
Taking bets now on what your excuse will be in 4-5 weeks time when you have delivered squat and still shown nothing...
A sudden outbreak of the flue or another illness, confining the whole team to bed.
Much of the software is complete
QuoteMuch of the software is complete
That part is a bit of a red flag for me. I've been on the software development side of things for two decades now, and deal with many platforms - including iPhone/Android. In the only video we have seen, a single "developer" was shown - a guy was clearly very young (therefore inexperienced) and who referred to himself as a "designer".
To write the kind of software these guys are talking about is not a 4-week/1-person project, not even for the very best in the industry. Especially not when you are talking about supporting two incompatible mobile platforms at launch. That's effectively two different applications written in different languages against different API's.
My guess is that the "designer" has mocked up some UI and spackled it together into a barely functional prototype - something that looks like it is useful but is mostly smoke & mirrors. But most of the real code isn't there (stubbed out, TBD). Usually that means the hard parts are left undone until the end... and basically you get screwed by the 80/20 rule. 80% of development time is spent on the final 20% of code. But nobody sees that so far - everything looks great until the wave crashes over.
Unless I have made some very bad errors in guesswork about what the "team" looks like, I'm betting they are probably a good 4 to 6 months from stable software (in the best case). And that might even be with bringing on one or two more very experienced ($$$) devs.
Totally ignoring the hardware side of things - I just don't find it realistic that they could afford to complete the software in time - not without some external investment that we don't know about. There just isn't headroom left in the operating budget for that given what we know about the hardware costs.
Even IRISYS provide detail of how their very clever and economic sensors work. If this company really had a revolutionary sensor, as they seem to imply, they don't need to sell any cheap TIC's, they could sell the idea to the big players and walk away with Millions of Dollars in production rights.
Hello Everyone,
This weekend was a bit tough, we’ve had a setback with our WiFi chipset provider, we’ve been unable to get the adhoc WiFi working well with the multiple phones we’ve been testing it on.
We’ve now gone back to work with a provider that we originally looked at but that required a host chipset to work off of. They have just released a chipset that now meets all of our requirements (and does not require a host) and after a weekend of evaluation and consideration we’ve decided to make the change. Quality and reliability have to take precedence over most everything else.
What does this do to our schedule? Well…regretfully, we’re not going to make the hardware show, though we’ve contacted the people we were most interested in meeting with and they’ve agreed to private meetings later in the month.
As to our delivery to our IndieGoGo supporters, it means a delay. At this point, it’s too early to say when we’ll begin shipping but hopefully it won’t be much of a delay, please give me a week or so to determine what the delay will be. This disappoints us more than you can know and we know it’s a disappointment to all of you. You’re continued patience is appreciated and if you would like a refund due to the delay, let me know.
Next week we’ll show you the software, using the visible light portion of our product (we can’t show thermal images in it until we get the WiFi working well). This will include a run through of the operations of the camera, the database behind it and how you’ll work with it.
Thank you all.
John McGrath
Next week we’ll show you the software, using the visible light portion of our product (we can’t show thermal images in it until we get the WiFi working well). This will include a run through of the operations of the camera, the database behind it and how you’ll work with it.
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.
Hello Everyone,
This weekend was a bit tough, we’ve had a setback with our WiFi chipset provider, we’ve been unable to get the adhoc WiFi working well with the multiple phones we’ve been testing it on.
We’ve now gone back to work with a provider that we originally looked at but that required a host chipset to work off of. They have just released a chipset that now meets all of our requirements (and does not require a host) and after a weekend of evaluation and consideration we’ve decided to make the change.
Quality and reliability have to take precedence over most everything else.
What does this do to our schedule? Well…regretfully, we’re not going to make the hardware show, though we’ve contacted the people we were most interested in meeting with and they’ve agreed to private meetings later in the month.
As to our delivery to our IndieGoGo supporters, it means a delay. At this point, it’s too early to say when we’ll begin shipping but hopefully it won’t be much of a delay, please give me a week or so to determine what the delay will be.
This disappoints us more than you can know and we know it’s a disappointment to all of you. You’re continued patience is appreciated and if you would like a refund due to the delay, let me know.
Next week we’ll show you the software, using the visible light portion of our product
(we can’t show thermal images in it until we get the WiFi working well).
This will include a run through of the operations of the camera, the database behind it and how you’ll work with it.
I'm extra glad I have that refund now... that last update is ridiculous and makes no sense to reality.