We are shipping!

We have officially started shipping the iGPS360 module on Monday, October 27, 2008!

It has been a long weekend with little sleep. Today is the second day of shipping and I just returned from the post office. It is time for a little work-break so I decided to write an update for the blog.

Over the weekend, we have been full-time busy with organizing orders and arranging them in the proper sequence, finding the quickest way to process orders, making labels, printing invoices, printing customs forms, packing, sealing, printing postage, etc. It looks like we are getting the hang of it now :-) although the first packages took a rather long time to prepare.

I certainly have to thank my wife for doing most of the database stuff, cross-referencing orders with the pre-order list and generating order processing list over the weekend.

Some other things have come up along the way as well.

According to the post office, Italy and Canada are high risk countries for lost/stolen packages and as such we strongly advise you to use Express Mail International (EMI) insured shipping, which has tracking and insurance (we note that Orange Gadgets is not responsible if your package gets lost or is stolen after we hand it to the post office, see the Terms of Service on the website under Shipping Liability Limitations). If you have already placed your order without insurance, don't worry; before we ship any module to an address in Italy or Canada, we will contact you with the option to upgrade your shipping to EMI. Also, for new orders, shipping rates to Canada and Italy have been updated in the online store.

I hereby sincerely thank all of you customers who have placed an order for the module and for being and remaining patient while we are handling orders. There are currently about 250 orders that we need to catch up on. We have handled up to database entry number 106 now. I hope to have a better estimate at how fast we can handle/process/ship orders by the weekend.

Also, a new version of xGPS that officially supports the iGPS360
module at a baudrate of 115200 (5Hz refresh rate) is expected to be
released within the next week or two. For the latest software updates, please visit Xwaves blog. In their latest post, they have released a nice desktop map download tool to go with the xGPS software.

Shipping update

Things have been extremely busy since last Thursday. I have been swamped with orders, email inquiries, housing supplier and getting modules prepared for testing and shipping.

In advance, I would like to thank everyone for their continued patience. Please remain patient in the week(s) to come. I am working as hard as I can, and that is pretty much non-stop, except for eating and sleeping and the other necessary living habits :-)

I have not been able to meet the 10/22/2008 shipment date.

Here is why: I have been in touch every single day to get updates from the housing supplier. Unfortunately, nothing goes perfect the first time, and so with the housing. The quality of the housings and lenses were not up to par and things had to be redone. They actually had to do 5 sample runs for the black housing and three sample runs for the lenses. Hence the delay. Unfortunate, but this is out of my control. I hope you understand.

So now for the good news: I have talked with the housing manufacturer today and they told me all parts have been finished and quality checked and will be shipped today for Friday delivery. At last!

What you see in the above photo are the first 32 modules inside of their final housings (these are housing from the 5th sample set which were approved). These modules are waiting for their lenses. Every module is individually serialized and the little removable sticker you see on the top of the module is its serial number.

Considering tomorrow's news delivery date for the housings, I have set new shipping date for Monday 10/27/2008. At least the 32 modules above will ship on Monday and whatever else I get finished over the weekend.

Now, a repeat of some things, as I get emails about this every day:

1. Orders will be handled according to your database entry number (assuming your order is PAID for). This is to be fair to everyone who signed up and to make sure that the people who signed up first, will get their units first. If you have pre-ordered but not paid, we will skip over your entry. Your database entry will only become active after you have paid for your module.


2. The current expected ship date for the first iGPS360 modules is 10/27/2008 (there has been additional delay with the housing as explained above).


3. Keep in mind that not all 1000 modules of the first production run will be ready by that date as they come out of production bit by bit. We expect having all 1000 modules back and shipped before the end of November. So we value your patience after you have placed your order.


4. We will send you a confirmation email once your order is packed and ready to ship.

Some important notes that you should follow with respect to the online store. If you don't follow the instructions (like providing your database entry number and returning to the store after you paid with PayPal), it means much more work for me to fix up your order and order status and your order could get delayed:

• Make sure to enter your database entry number during checkout of your order. If you omit to do so, your shipment maybe delayed. There is a comment box for this.


• The online store has detailed product descriptions, so please take the time to read them as they might answer questions that you have. For remaining questions, please email support@orangegadgets.com.


• Performance of the website will depend on the amount of traffic, so if things are a little slow while accessing the online store, please be patient for pages to complete loading.


• Please report any website related problems you encounter to support@orangegadgets.com.


• For questions with respect to the details of your placed order, please email orders@orangegadgets.com.


• Please verify your order details online by logging into your account and viewing your order history.
  If you see anything that is incorrect, immediately send an email to orders@orangegadgets.com and provide your full order details, like name, shipping and billing address, order id and customer id.
  

Online store is up and running!

After some more delay, the online store is finally up and running.

You can now place your order for the iGPS360 module (and some other goodies) by clicking here or by accesing the Orange Gadgets website and clicking on ORDER in the top menu bar.

When you place your order, make sure to mention your database entry number in the comments box for your order during the checkout procedure.

If you have lost your database entry number, no worries, I will be sending out notifications to all of the emails in the database later today/tomorrow with your database entry number in it.

If you don't have a database entry number, you can get one by signing up here

Orders are going to be handled according your database entry number (assuming your order is paid for). This is to be fair to everyone and to make sure that the people who signed up first, will get their units first.

The current expected ship date for the module is 10/22/2008 (which is still subject to change depending on the arrivals of the housings). Keep in mind that not all 1000 modules will be ready by that date as they come out of production bit by bit. So please be patient after you place your order. We will send you a confirmation email once your order is packed and ready to ship.

With respect to the new online store a few notes:

• Please report any website related problems you encounter to support@orangegadgets.com.


• For questions with respect to the details of your placed order, please email orders@orangegadgets.com.


• Performance of the website will depend on the amount of traffic, so if things are a little slow while accessing the online store, please be patient for pages to complete loading.


• The online store has detailed product descriptions, so please take the time to read them as they might answer questions that you have. For remaining questions, please email support@orangegadgets.com.

As the online store has kept me pretty much busy non-stop for the last couple of days, I still have quite a few emails from people to answer. So if you haven't heard back from me, thanks for understanding and being patient. I hope to get back to my email as soon as I get done with the database notification emails.

As you can imagine, today is a big milestone for myself and Orange Gadgets and I would like to thank everyone for their continued support of the blog and the product.

Thanks, PmgR