Successful in the case of that wall means they have achieved their goal funding. We still have to see on that.
Well our Protoype is Functional and MVP, but Finished packaged product take
lot more than that, we are raising at least 1.5 million in seed to put this
thing in mass production , So any Investors, Angels in DMS?
Omar Barlas
If you are going to need 1.5 million to put this in production, how are you planning to satisfy the perks for this campaign with so much less? Are you only planning on delivering the prototype design to the backers, or the dual camera, fully developed software, version to backers. If the latter, how do you plan to achieve that if you donât obtain the additional funding you say you require ($1,465,000)
Not right now, because we would include complete design change information
next month of so, because we are still evaluating the new design and there
are some other thoughts and few more designs too
Because we are also Raising money from VC and Angles , already raised some,
but need to raise more to reach our 1.5 million goal
In any case we will be delivering to backers, Worst case we will do
production in limited numbers within USA (with all the functionality
specified on the campaign) but if we raise 1.5 million we can produce bulk
quantities in China.
Omar Barlas
Indie gogo and kickstarter have often been used more for purposes of advertising and Identifying early adopters. Many seeded companies launch indiegogo campaigns just to get the word out and generate hype/publicity for their product.
There is no way of telling if this is whatâs happening. (but take into consideration the easily obtainable Flex goal of 35 k, vs the actual costs of brining this into production)
I am aware that crowd funding is often used that way, but it is used even more often by people who end up defrauding the buyers. Not saying that is happening here, but the campaign raises questions. Many of which have been asked above by myself and others.
But the campaign as it stands is offering these one camera devices if only $35,000 is raised. The second camera is not alluded to on the page, nor do I think the moving video was actually produced with the described device. A camera (or two) with a 190 degree field of view is going to exhibit a great deal of distortion (fish eye effect) and is going to have very little detail (the HD image is spread over an extremely large area). I am also a little sceptical that a device small will be able to include enough computational power to stich two camera images together in real time (15 - 60 frames per second) and produce a steady useable image while the device is moving.
The campaign is also silent on how the imagery is stored. Do you have to have a separate server and a wifi connection, or is it stored by the phone app? And if the latter does the imagery get stored even if your not using the app? If it is stored locally on the device, what is to prevent a thief from simply picking it up and walking away with your evidence?
Like I said, there are a lot of questions that I think the Campaign page should answer.
for your Video Storage Question, it does have 8GB onboard storage and it
can record on the onboard storage without user using the app, once user set
some triggers, like loud sound detected, some object recognized in front of
camera etc. and user can also set to record video and audio stream on our
cloud server (hosted on Microsoft Azure Servers)
Yes if we raise only 35k we will still produce and deliver to all backers,
the difference would be limited features (only the ones described on the
campaign) if we successfully raise more than 1.5 million either via
crowdfunding, VC or Angel then we would be able to offer better product
with better features and 2 cameras,
Single camera is still usable, with Autonomous driving option, for
Autonomus driving we are using BLE Beacons to find location indoor and
mapping the rooms (When user train Orbii first time he setup the unit in
home) Having Said that Autonomous driving option will be Over the Air
Update which we will push to users after first launch.
Omar Baras
Are you planning on charging for that, and have you established pricing for that?
For the Cloud Storage yes (something between 20 and $40 per month), but
onboard 8GB storage is free, we may upgrade onboard storage to 16 or 32GB
if we raise enough
My suggestion would be to not bother. If your marketing this as a security camera, then storing the video on the camera is pretty useless. All it will take is for the thief to pick this up on their way out the door and your video footage is gone forever.
Well you are right, thief can take Orbii with him, but even if Orbii is not
storing on cloud, it will still be able to send Alert message to user as a
Text message (As soon as the camera detects and recognize any human in
front of camera or microphone detects any sound If user has set those
triggers) and user can connect to the unit remotely and get live video
stream as well
If thief can take orbii with him he can take other IP cameras as well?
Omar Barlas
No where near as easily typically, but more importantly the video og IP cameras do not uselly store video on the camera so the loss of the camera does not mean the loss of the video as well.
Well the 35k is definitely going to cover the costs of up to 300 or more orders of this device priced at like 140, I believe. So its likely got nothing to do with setting up or funding the Manufacturing process.
I also donât think anyone is going to spend an entire year developing a prototype, spending money on creating a professional quality demo-video and website to defraud buyers of $35k.
I definitely think the developers recognize these edge cases youâre bringing up and can work around it.
No, not for $35k but $1.5m yes.
To reiterate, while the current campaigm has a goal of $35,000, but the numbers he threw out as needing (400 more backers) would push the target to $70,000. It raises red flags when the numbers donât add up to published values, so I asked questions.
It is important for people to remember, before they commit funds to someone, that even those campaigns that raise their stated goals usually donât end up delivering. The reason is not usually intentional fraud, but simply the result of inexperienced (in manufacturing products) people getting in over their head.
Lets say they get their desire and 400 more people back their campaign. With roughly $70,000 in funding they are now expected to deliver close to 500 of these devices. That is really more then can be hand assembled reliably, and certainly not inexpensively in the US. Then on top of that, they need to earn some salary for all of the development and testing for a year. If they get their venture funding it is in the realm of possibility they could do so, but without that funding, this becomes a hobby project with unpaid labor.
That is the purely monetary aspect of the campaign. I still have technical issues that werenât addressed.
- With the current design (the one they promise in the campaign), what is the quality of the video while the device is moving?
- Does the sample moving video come from the actual device or is it simulated.
- If from the actual device was it an earlier version before they started using a fish eye camera?
You may be overthinking it.
IndieGogo is a crowd funding website. Not an e-commerce platform.
If crowdfunding goals arenât met, then thatâs feedback for orbii that consumers arenât vibe-ing with the product, the price point is unrealistic, or theyâre not seeking the right avenues to market to early adopters. Either way they gain valuable information from the process. Indiegogo, kickstarter, and upcomming sites like patreon are about communicating with and gathering support from consumers. Not creating a cool idea distribution service.
Early adopters may or may not be given the products depending on wether or not Orbi is able to deliver. Thats how investment and risk works.
I donât really think Orbii is in as bad of a shape as you say it is.
Thalmic labs crowd-funded their MYO on kickstarter with the same sort of concept/vision videos that Orbii is rolling with. MYO made dubious claims about the fine-grained articulation of gestures, their ability to manufacture, and get their developer platform functional. Regardless, consumers bought into it, it was seeded, they started production, and now people(myself included) own MYOâs.
Henrik,
I am barely thinking about it, much less over thinking it. The basic numbers didnât add up and the videos provided on the site seem misleading.
BTW, crowd funding sites are not investments. If they were, most of the gamblers involved would not be allowed to invest in the US.
Walter,
We are going to deliver a fully working product, no matter what we raise from Indiegogo as I mentioned previously we are also raising money from other Angels and VCs so we will get there one way or other,
See you on Tuesday in DMS.
You are worried too much about the video yes it is a marketing video but in the finished product user will get same User Experience NOT the spinning and rolling video,
Omar Barlas
Omar,
Do you have plans to overcome rolling shutter or longer shutter speeds from low-light situations? It seems both can be detrimental to the stitching of the images from a rapidly rolling camera.