Don’t go for companies without a product. Back established companies with product experience and things get much less sus.
Gotta treat it like any other investment. Only back the ones with a solid plan and apparent ability to pull it off while accepting that there will always some level of risk.
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Definitely, there’s experienced engineers + product designers, a degree of novelty/nobody has tried this before, and general support for the idea. You also need to have patience to wait.
The ratio of delay you can expect over suggested release date is definitely contingent on how many products they’ve done in the past or have out right now. Even experienced developers and engineers need multiple income streams.
I preordered a Wond2/EMPick from Paul Vo (developer of the Moog guitar) and have been waiting since I don’t know how long, 4 years? Single developer needing to pay the mortgage while scrapping and redesigning prototypes, Covid, parts going EOL or a more improved platform coming out giving better dev tools, less reliance on low level assembly… so many different factors.
If you want to support unique ideas and one-person operations, it’s a risk the… speculative gearhead has to take.
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Yes. I got in on the ‘founders edition’ early bird thing.
Updates have been reasonable, and they are pretty responsive to comments on KS, though the one thing they don’t seem to be doing was taking a lot of input/suggestions from backers, which was something they always said was an important part of the campaign… I think we’ll be beta testing for a while when it finally shipped…
However, they are just about ready to ship, with loads of photos of the final stages of assembly/test and completed units ready to pack so confidence it reasonably high that they will indeed start shipping soon.
Hello Backers,
Cheers to a 2021 filled with music and all things good.
PIPES is coming!Our promise is to begin shipping in Q1, and we are on schedule.
Assembly is in full process and things are running smoothly. Over the next few weeks we will start to receive 300+ fully assembled units back at the lab ready for testing, packaging, and shipping. To be sure everyone gets a perfect unit we will fully test each one prior to packing.
Please be on the lookout relatively soon for an email through Kickstarter asking for an accurate shipping address. As per the rules of Kickstarter we will not share your shipping information for any purpose other than delivery of your PIPES unit.
As always, Thank you all for your support.
Vince and Luke
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Dammit … saw the sloping cases in the first pic and thought this was the Anyma Phi 
That one is going really well, they’re close to on schedule, and they continue to add exciting new features to the product.
I just posted about it in its thread.
So Synesthesia Pipes backers, how did it turn out? I see a couple have already made it onto the for sale forum. But online reviews and reactions to the thing (or indeed videos of it in action) don’t seem to have turned up yet. Worth the wait?
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You can check the thread for Pipes, there are some reports there, from a little while back.
This seems to me a good example of some of what can go wrong with a crowdfunded electronic hardware development, massively delayed schedule, poor feedback, and a final product below expectations, though not a total train wreck either.
Interesting to weigh this with the successes, and the products that never would have existed, when considering a decision to back any project.
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…the basic concept remains a great one…
while the neverending projects and those with even bad or dead endings seem to take place a little little more often than thoss solid ones with happy endings…
i personally never joined a pre paid cake…but only because, i’m not aware that much of projects that really trigger me too hard…
if one’s crossing my way, i tend to think…yup, great idea…good luck with it…
It would be good for us to look back at the products listed in this thread and put some metrics to this question.
Unlike you reeloy, I’ve backed quite a few, four in fact. I’m super pleased with three of the four, and the fourth one, the Osmose, has not been completed.
I got an enormous discount on the Osmose, and they’re only holding a smallish deposit, and they’ve way exceeded the initial concept,. Even with the big delay, i feel that that was a no-brainer good deal.
( We shall see ! )
The other three, one was on time even with a very short schedule, one was a couple months late, and much better than expected, and the third, four months late, though the communication was good and it’s now in everyday use.
So i’d back more, but i’m still quite cautious.
Total car crash.
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I remember, they just axed you ! Kerplunk. Off with your head.
Because of what happened to you RiK, i looked up the Kickstarter policy agreement, after you told us what happened. ( That’s over in the Pipes thread for anyone who’d like to read it. )
Kickstarter seems pretty loose in this regard with their terms. I wonder what the Indiegogo policy is like ? Everyone should check the agreement document.
EDITED: Changed a couple words for clarity, and added link.
Funded a rhyrhmo 2 years ago. Everyone in America got theirs way back and apparently the UK ones have been sitting in customs for months. Shit show
Damn that sucks!
What’s a rhyrhmo ?
Annoyingly you can buy it even though nobody in Europe has their one they paid for on kickstarter
Something to do with the shipping company
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I followed up on the list i put together the end of January:
Synths
- SB01 Space Bee from Superlative — Delayed badly
- Implexus from Majella — Delayed but close
- Osmose from Expressive E — Delayed
- Anyma Phi from Aodyo — Shipped and available
- Töörö from Fred’s Lab — Shipped and available, issues ?
Controller Only
- OffGrid from birdkids — Delayed badly
- Theoryboard (redo) from Irijule — Shipped, new firmware still not done
- Erae Touch from Embodme — Not built, they’re showing at Superbooth, panicking
- Striso Board from Striso — Shipped and available
- JV-1 from Joyst — Shipped and likely available
Utility
- MRCC from Conductive Labs — Shipped and available.
- T-1 from Torso — Shipped and in demand
- Timetosser from Alter Audio — Shipped and available
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Thanks for this list! Abstrakt Instruments VS-1 is still delayed too. Seems like it’s just a matter of time but their decision to move to a real-time operating system for handling control data seems to have had a big impact on their plans, along with the usual component and shipping delays from board manufacturers, etc 
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The target delivery date Abstrakt put on all of this complicated multipart development when they listed this project in January 2020, was July 2020. One might assume from that, that this project was completely finished through all development engineering phases including firmware ready for final assembly, and had accounted for the delay in funds clearing Kickstarter. Clearly not the case.
Yes Covid happened in the meantime, but this project had no chance of hitting the target date as set regardless.
Which points out a much larger flaw in the way Kickstarter projects are sold in general. There is little incentive for companies to show reasonable development schedules upfront. Schedules for projects of this complexity bracket a range of time, with best case, worst case estimates. Hard to sell a project to a corporation, let alone investment partners when you present worst case estimates.
I think this accounts for a lot of the long delays in so many projects. It’s not really delay though, it’s that the initial schedule is being used to “sell” the project.
Good to be aware of this distortion when evaluating backing electronic development projects.
Many project schedules on Kickstarter are very realistic and doable, and those projects often complete on or ahead of schedule. But stay aware how frequently project schedules are made overly optimistic to sell a project.
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Yeah I agree - and I always go into Kickstarter expecting the worst 
!
For this one, I don’t know if they saw the likely delay in components/ boards due to China’s COVID situation early last year and decided on the OS rewrite given the extra time, or if it was always planned, or an impulse decision …
One thing people were frustrated about was in their pitch they budgeted some money towards having a project manager to overcome some of the communication issues people had with them in the past. That seemed to be ditched very quickly once things got going, leading to predictably erratic updates 
…
At least Abstrakt are known to be this way and deliver eventually, so I’m confident it will show up. I have the DIY kit, so at least that will go out the door before the assembled ones, which were a much higher investment from folks. Feel bad for them particularly.
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