How can they not realise that many people are watching them, and this would be quickly seen to be an off the shelf (and somewhat expensive) development board.
It is almost nothing like their "design" they showed (somewhat suspect) 3D renders of, but I guess it could be used as an initial development platform.
I just think they don't know what the term "pre-production prototype" implies.
June 26th. video, test prototype Stress testing, software loading for the first week of july.
I guess today we'll see the actual prototype.
How can they not realise that many people are watching them, and this would be quickly seen to be an off the shelf (and somewhat expensive) development board.
It is almost nothing like their "design" they showed (somewhat suspect) 3D renders of, but I guess it could be used as an initial development platform.
People putting money into this stuff are not known to actually understand the hardware or even do basic due diligence before going all googly-eyed and taking the credit card out
How would a Joe Sheep know that it is an off-the-shelf dev board? Or even know what a dev board is? All they see is a picture of an impressive and complicated looking PCB with a lot of chips, so the project is obviously progressing well and the whole thing is totally legit
So now nearly 2000 people have supported both the KS and IGG campaigns and all they can show is more 3d renderings... reading the comments makes one weep - people falling over themselves to buy these 'things'. As the old saying goes "more dollars than sense (cents)".
lol at all the "can you upgrade me to Soap XYZ" posts on IGG and all the people on KS being like "WTF is going on
"
I have not cared enough to do any math on this, but all of the
"LIMITED TIME ONLY DISCOUNT!!!"
BS seems like a totally asinine way to run a campaign. If they are so heavily discounting the top-of-the-line model (where I'm assuming most of the profit should come from), aren't they eating their own dog food, so to speak?
Now they want to add inductive charging to the router. Why??
Another hilarious thing is how people are pledging for multiple units so they can "mesh" them...what genius marketing, lol.
What if people actually got together and developed something for existing firmwares like DD-WRT, OpenWRT and all the variants. Made a universal configuration app for those? Control your already existing amazing router with super powers from your existing tablet just by installing an app. Ok this open source configuration app for open source linux powered routers might not be a big hit on KS or IGG, but who cares. Using what most people have already and making it even better with some software. Why does the router and tablet need to be inside same enclosure when we already have routers which can be controlled through web interface from a tablet.
Ok like soap router people tell it's not the easiest thing to configure a router, if you want to do directly some tricks with iptables or install programs to do things it becomes even harder. But that is just software we don't need this new developed expensive hardware for things like this. We need to make the existing software easier to use.
...seems like a totally asinine way to run a campaign....
That was the word I was looking for - as others have pointed out, this 'campaign' can only be for their benefit and the detriment of their 'backers'. I hope it implodes before the end of the campaign - either way this is going to cause a lot of grief to a lot of people.
Looks like they've started to post "for backers only" updates. Oh, the secrets.
Looks like they've started to post "for backers only" updates. Oh, the secrets.
I'm a $1 backer, so can see the latest backer-only update.
It is just more BS to convince existing
suckers backers to part with more money...
Only really needed because they've got everyone confused (including themselves) with what backers have pledged for due to the constant upgrade offers, ridiculous add-ons, and "limited time only" discounts.
Looks like they've started to post "for backers only" updates. Oh, the secrets.
I'm a $1 backer, so can see the latest backer-only update.
It is just more BS to convince existing suckers backers to part with more money...
Only really needed because they've got everyone confused (including themselves) with what backers have pledged for due to the constant upgrade offers, ridiculous add-ons, and "limited time only" discounts.
Haha. I should have kept my $1 pledge just to keep reading. No more fun for me.
Now the "soap bar" they've "created"...jeeeeezus....
You didn't create anything except yet another rendering.... oh myyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
What if they shipped every backer... a bar of actual soap... and then disappeared. That would be the best.
^ I'd be laughing anyway.
1500+ suckers going to loose $100 each on average - imagine if it had been called "the potato salad soap router"... they would have been in the millions by now!!!
..issues involving silkscreen and a drill hole that required an adjustment, but not to worry it only set us back about 1-2 days
And 7 days later, all they show are more rendered pictures of vaporware accessories...
Edit: Posted pics of the board.
It's certainly a PCB of some sort. Will it work?
If I'm reading the sightly blurry silkscreen correctly...
"SOAP_carrierboard_rev1.0
To all those who said it wasn't possible and to all the doubters.
Soap is here.
~Alexander"
Funny.
how much of the funds went to the board designer ? apparently nothing left for the parts
btw... such a complex things never works on the first try
and they still need to write the software....
i assume 5 more crowd funding campaigns and 2 more years and the first soap will be here
If I'm reading the sightly blurry silkscreen correctly...
"SOAP_carrierboard_rev1.0
To all those who said it wasn't possible and to all the doubters.
Soap is here.
~Alexander"
Funny.
Yeah, I think that's what it says. I'm not sure I'd say its "here" in any way quite yet. Gotta applaud the optimism, I guess.
I still don't understand some things about this board - still no mounting holes #1 (for the board or for the standoffs for the Congatec module), but #2, how is the assembler going to run this through reflow without any process rails? Maybe this is the solder sample, but then why would they remove the rails for the picture?
Edit: just realized maybe the board was part of a much larger panel. can't see any marks it was removed from a panel, tho.
It's okay, they'll just solder everything by hand, including that dual-row QFN. That won't be painful at all
(From OpenVizsla lore: one of the reasons why the project bled money at the start was because we had the bright idea of using a dual-row QFN part in v1 - and botched the footprint the first time - which proved to be completely and utterly unreworkable, worse than BGA.)
"SOAP_carrierboard_rev1.0
To all those who said it wasn't possible and to all the doubters.
Soap is here.
~Alexander"
Funny.
He seems to think that an unpopulated rev 1.0 PCB would make a running router.
Haha, campaign extended. Oh boy.
For the public record:
The Soap CTO put in an abuse report against this forum to my ISP (well, cloudflare actually) claiming:
I will be filing defamation and slander suits to each contributor and person who has taken part in this. They continue to endorse it and to attack us personally, our company and our project.
For the public record:
The Soap CTO put in an abuse report against this forum to my ISP (well, cloudflare actually) claiming:
I will be filing defamation and slander suits to each contributor and person who has taken part in this. They continue to endorse it and to attack us personally, our company and our project.
We are criticizing your project. If you can't take criticism, don't get on the internet.
Good luck serving those summonses, though the sheriff of the local court who has to serve them will love the worldwide travel and accommodation that he will have to pay to serve.
Does he realise that the owner of the forum is actually not living in the USA? As well he will have to prove this to each jurisdiction world wide.