Autumn update - one step back

Dear friends & supporters. Let me share the latest news on the development of Useeme Bicycle Turn Signals.

As most of you know, we spent most of this year waiting for our programmers to finally give the green light on the program of the new microcontroller. Their task was to achieve at least 95% reliability in the detection of hand signals. As of this moment, they didn't deliver a solution. We heard a lot about different obstacles that prevent them from finishing, and also a lot about almost being there. We still aren't.

Let's face the facts: this was a management mistake. Because of our small budget we wanted to finish the project with 2 programmers who only worked on it in their spare time. We didn't have the money to hire a company or to employ a full-time programmer. Also, we were continously hoping that what we hear about almost being there is true. We were naive.

We are still determined to finish development and bring our project to the market. To recover from this mistake that costed us several months, we decided to let the programmer guys go. We will (again) invest some more money out of our own pockets, find the proper team that can really do what we need, and have them do it as quickly as possible.

We have meetings with 2 different new teams scheduled for this week. By the end of the week, we will know what to expect from them and we will try to establish a timeframe for finishing development and starting production.

The upside is that during the months of waiting we finished and fine-tuned everything else about the product. We have the production line set up, the only thing missing is the new program for the microcontroller. Once that's in place, we do a quick test run and then we're ready for serial production.

For those of you waiting to finally get (or at least be able to order) their turn signals, this most likely means another couple of months of waiting. We are truly sorry about that (more like ashamed, actually). We promise you 3 things:

• We will finish development of Useeme Bicycle Turn Signals and bring it to the market
• We will regularly update you guys through our blog and will make sure you know what's going on at the moment.
• We will find a way to make it up to you for the waiting.

Please bear with us some more.

Best regards,
Peter & the team