Great news! All of the wireless certification tests are now 100% completed and Flutter is ready for production.
We are planning out our production cycles, and this means finalizing everyone's orders.
We are using Backerkit for managing everyone's pledges, add-ons, and shipping addresses. Some of you logged in and made changes, and a bunch of you never logged in at all.
We need all of you to log into Backerkit now and make sure you are happy with your order! If you want to add some discounted boards to your order you need to do that before the lockdown date. If you added things to your order last year but no longer want them, remove them now and you won't be charged for them.
We will be locking down your orders around the first of the year, so please do this now.
Once we lock down the orders, we'll start processing credit cards for any add ons or new orders. This will help us as we plan the larger batches of boards past the initial run.
You can still change your shipping address any time, even after the lockdown. We just need to finalize quantities and start charging cards. If you didn't do it yet, please log into Backerkit now.
Thanks! Now have more pictures of 3D printed robots.
Printable robot. No need to source fasteners - everything just snaps together.
This is smaller than the previous one - a "turtle" configuration. Two drive motors with sliding skids front and rear.
This robot was designed on Sunday evening after dinner. Note the symmetrical design to keep parts to a minimum.
Flutter is now open source and available for general sales!
over 9 years ago
– Mon, Dec 08, 2014 at 11:25:03 PM
Hello Backers!
First, a request. If you know about cryptography, please check out this thread on the Flutter community discussion board and help us determine whether we should stick with AES-256 or go with a new ECC option.
As promised, we're opening up for general sales this week (link below). With the success in wireless testing (just got word that all emissions tests for FCC are done and only one test - temperature stability - is left) we want to start giving new customers the chance to get in line. Backers will of course still be getting their orders first, but we will try to add new orders to the large backer batch so we can take advantage of volume pricing.
Probably the most exciting news for all of you is that Flutter is now officially open source hardware! We uploaded the final board designs to Github yesterday, and they are now freely downloadable for anyone to build or remix for any purpose. They're licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0, which means you can use them for anything you'd like (including commercial use) as long as you share your work and list Flutter as the source of the files. The point of this project was not just to make a neat product for us to sell but to give the community something powerful to build off of, and this is the first step in realizing that goal. For now we just have the hardware files available. I'll be spending the next month or two on software improvements as the first small batch of boards goes through manufacturing, and we will be open sourcing the software some time before we ship. For enterprising hardware hackers, check out the TI CC1190 and see if you can do something with that. :)
If you want to order more boards or have friends who have been wanting to get in on Flutter, follow this link to the orders page! Right now we only have the Flutter Basic for sale. We will be offering the Pro as a kit, but we so far haven't been happy with the antennas we've gotten from China so we're still working on that. This would however be a good time to mention a big upgrade to the Basic that everyone will be getting - the Basic now includes the battery charger chip! In all of our projects, the Basic has had by far plenty of range and is more compact and cleaner than the Pro. So many of Flutter's projects benefit from battery charging that we decided to stuff that part on every board. Due to clever placement of the voltage inputs on Flutter, you can actually plug a standard 1 cell lipo right onto the header of the board and then charge it via USB!
Flutter hooks straight up to a battery for quick prototyping.
If you go to the order page, you'll notice something that may be unexpected. There's no fun way to put this, but Flutter's price has gone up significantly. I have learned a lot in the past year about business, and one of those things is that you can't be too idealistic on price or you'll doom your business to failure before it starts. I set my heart on the $20 price point early in development, and kept it low out of fear that we wouldn't be successful. I did build more profit into the Pro and tried to push users in that direction to help make up for the low profit of the Basic, but unfortunately all the prices were just too low. I have also realized in the past year that I really don't want to spend every week of the next several years single handedly shipping Flutter orders, so we're definitely going to need to find a distributor who can take on the product. Distributors have to make money too however, and at $20 we just had zero room to discount for wholesale. The new price of the Basic is $36. That is of course a fair bit more than $20 and I was very reluctant to go to that price (I told myself $27, then $30, then $35, and have settled on $36), but I believe it will be ultimately a good thing. At that price, we have some chance of being able to sustain the business so that I can keep improving Flutter, and it is more inline with everyone's suggestion of 2.7x the production cost for this kind of thing. Despite the increase in cost, Flutter is still far cheaper than any other available products with similar features. Nothing else gives you ARM, Arduino, and 1km range in a single easy to use package. We hope you will all agree that even at $36, Flutter is a steal.
I know some backers will be unhappy that they invested in a low cost platform only to have the price go up, so all backers are permitted to purchase up to 5 more Basic boards at $10 off the new price, or $26. Just log into Backerkit and you can buy more boards at a discount (if you've never logged into Backerkit, please do that now and set up your account - we will not be able to ship your order unless you have done so). All existing orders on Backerkit will be honored, but we won't be taking any more orders at the discounted prices and have temporarily removed all add-ons. If you have any confusion with Backerkit don't worry - we will be sorting all of that out before delivering. We should have an update all about Backerkit in the next month or so.
Whether you're ordering new boards or just waiting on an existing reward, please do us and the other backers a favor and share the pre-order page with your friends on social media! We need as many people as possible to order more boards to get the best pricing in production. We're working on some awesome tutorials as well as some robots you can 3d print at home, and we want to provide awesome shields for you as well so you don't need to be a master at electronics to build amazing things. The more you support us by sharing the more we can do for you!
3D printed 4WD robot frame for Flutter. Only the bearings, drive belts, and electronics aren't printed. Will be open source for rapid collaboration and iteration.
