We’ll hopefully be shipping the pre-orders the end of next week.
This entry was posted by okie on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 3:38 am.
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on December 2, 2009 at 5:18 am
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How about posting a ship date? Pictures are great but a ship date is better.
on December 4, 2009 at 1:48 pm
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Agreed. Also would be nice if you guys posted more on your blog or replies to comments, so we at least have an idea that you guys are alive.
on December 6, 2009 at 12:34 am
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Alive, although cold! First boston snow. First chunk of the first run are in the mail to us with expected delivery on monday. The rest will be on their way to us this week.
on December 2, 2009 at 8:09 am
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Woah Arm based Arduino Porn!
on December 2, 2009 at 9:50 am
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Woohoo! Which one is #000? That one’s mine!
on December 2, 2009 at 1:09 pm
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any word yet on a shipping ?
on December 7, 2009 at 3:20 am
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http://blogs.leaflabs.com/2009/11/187/#comment-512
on December 3, 2009 at 12:15 am
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Cool! Is the software for the Maple boards ready to go?
on December 7, 2009 at 4:24 am
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The repository at leaflabs.googlecode.com is getting more stable by the day. We’ll have documentation and any final touches ready as you get your board. The software will still be beta, however. The Maple library is located core directory of the Maple directory (which is analogous to Arduino toplevel). This is not the latest version of the library though, which were migrating in slightly differently. Check it out. Also the bootloader and some makefile environments live in that repository. Come hang out with us at #leafblowers on irc.freenode.net if you’d like to chat about software. There is a very comprehensive status update (technical) in the logs.
on December 7, 2009 at 2:24 am
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will there be a maple native someday soon?
i’m so exited to try this but i’m waiting for the native board.
on December 7, 2009 at 3:08 am
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There will be a Maple Native. We’ll be getting the first ones this month, and we’ll hopefully have some for sale in January.
on December 8, 2009 at 12:47 am
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So then, are you planning on a pre-order #2, just going to hang until native comes out, or wait for feedback?
on December 8, 2009 at 2:40 am
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We’ll likely never do pre-orders again because of the unpredictable elements that can affect the delivery time. In the future, we’ll take orders for hardware that we can ship immediately even though with the experience we could be more accurate with future time estimates. The delays we’ve had with these pre-orders has broken our hearts, and we aren’t into messing with hearts like that anymore.
We will likely have more Maple’s available in the next couple weeks. We’re also in contact with distributors who are interested in Maple. We expect that people will be interested in both Maple and Maple Native, and we plan to make both of them readily available all the time as soon as possible.
on December 8, 2009 at 1:20 pm
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Okie, Andrew (and the rest of LeafLabs team),
Of course, whether/not to do other pre-orders is up to you.
However I’d still accept the potential delays from pre-orders — even if delivery takes considerably longer than planned — if doing so helps make cool products available reasonably soon.
From reading your blog, it’s clear that you were sweating the delays, and I appreciate that. So don’t be too quick to paint yourself into a corner on this. Seed capital has to come from somewhere, and man/woman does not live by ramen alone — or at least not healthily/long-term.
By the way, I think the Maple/Native differences in capability seem so minor (mostly wiring, no?); whereas the OAK == FPGA+CPU product would give more (and substantially different) capabilities. A Maple native would be nice, but OAK sounds like it could be a game changer — and would differentiate you from the other “port Arduino to a 32-bit CPU” teams out there.
My $0.02
– Larry Pfeffer
ursine @t gm4il d0t c0m
PS Have you looked into having Olimex do your boards/assembly?
on December 9, 2009 at 12:13 pm
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yeah i agree for the most part. I have started a couple hardware companies and the delays are the nature of the beast. Especially since Leaf Labs seems beta in general, you probably couldn’t have gotten a better read on the demand with out testing out pre orders.
jon
on December 20, 2009 at 3:34 pm
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I’ve been waiting to order one of these since they were first announced. I really wish I could pre-order so that I don’t have to remember to come back in a month to see if you have hardware available. I would rather spend the money now and not sweat waiting a month or two (or risking that something else will distract me between now and then, leading me to forget about it entirely).
With so many potential sensors, projects, and programming ideas, it’s a little like having ADD…
on December 21, 2009 at 1:34 pm
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Any update on shipping the pre-orders?
on December 24, 2009 at 3:56 am
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There might be something to be learned from the experiences around the Bus Pirate. Ian’s done his third pre-order and has probably gotten a few thousand Bus Pirates into the hands of pirate-wannabees this year.
If you’ve got the capital buffer to not do pre-orders I can see how that might be preferable. But unless you’re sure you have a pretty good handle on how much genuine interest you have, pre-orders have a lot of merit. The one downside that I’ve seen (with the Bus Pirate) is that you have inventory (that is, lack of inventory) exposure if by the time that the pre-order closes you can’t get key parts.
After your first pre-order closes you have the option of making extras depending on the uptake rate, or even starting another pre-order immediately.
I guess it all comes down to the stress of sitting on others’ money and not delivering, versus being delayed with your own money sunk. Clearly that’s a choice you have to make and be comfortable with. Not that doing business is always about maximizing your comfort level…
Congrats on the first clear-cut.
on December 24, 2009 at 4:18 pm
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This is right on the mark. I really couldnt have enumerated the issues surrounding preordering any better. We have just the amount of capital where its not clear whether or not we can get away without doing pre-orders. But we are SO pleased to have shipped finally, albeit with some stressful hours running up to dropping boxes in the mail. We’ll regroup after the winter holiday and announce plans for the second Maple run, Maple native, and Oak.