The below is from Syed's( Outernet ) Blog post this morning: http://blog.outernet.is/lantern-update/
Lantern Update from Syed Karim, Outernet CEO
30 September 2015 on Lantern
tldr: Yes, we're late--and very sorry about it, but we're still hard at work and making steady progress. We hope that you agree with us that the results will be well worth the wait and we very deeply appreciate your patience and support. Although delivering Lantern consists of much more than just the physical device, you can see the final design of the main Lantern component on GitHub.
Sections:
To restate the obvious, yes, we are late. We are not proud of this fact and we are all working very hard to deliver your Lanterns as soon as humanly possibly. The only thing I can say is that making hardware is, well, hard.
Although Lantern can be simplified as just a couple of circuit boards inside of a plastic box, the reality is that there are quite a few moving pieces (some in space) to produce--even though nothing inside Lantern actually moves. In order for Lantern to function as more than just a solar-powered paperweight, we needed to tick off a fairly complicated laundry list of tasks, such as:
So, first things first:
We Were Unrealistic in Our Timeline
tldr: We have learned from our own campaign and from watching others; super conservative delivery timelines are better than overly optimistic ones.
I want to first give a little context for our IndieGoGo campaign. When we first posted the campaign we promised our initial backers delivery of Lantern in July 2015. As the campaign grew in popularity beyond our expectations, we pushed this back to August 2015, September, and then October--and so on. Looking back, we should have been much more conservative from the onset, as we had an incredible task list to complete in a half-year.
Take a look at the Nebia shower, a very popular Kickstarter campaign that grabbed numerous headlines this month. From the date their campaign closed on September 11, 2015 they promised their first backers a delivery date in May of 2016 - that's eight months later. By comparison, we estimated that the first Lanterns would begin shipping just seven months after our campaign closed.
Nebia also raised $3 million and sold over 10,000 shower heads on Kickstarter, meaning they can go into high volume production right away. While we far exceeded our initial IndieGoGo goal, we aren't yet large enough to capture the efficiencies of scale.
I point this out because it is an important lesson we have learned. While the development of a shower head may have relatively few dependencies and complexities, Nebia did a far better job than we did of setting a realistic timeline.
Although a fluid delivery schedule is part of the crowdfunding process, we certainly could have done a better job of estimating and communicating. I apologize to all of our backers for any frustration we have caused and sincerely appreciate the patience and continued support.
This is Where We Are Today
tldr: The core Lantern design has been open sourced (like 99% of what we produce) and added to GitHub.
The Lantern compute board, which is the heart of the device, went through a second and final design revision in August and September. The first iteration functioned as intended - which means that we successfully installed the firmware from Lighthouse onto the board - but there were a few power issues that needed to be addressed.
V1, as we refer to the board, comes complete with a DVB-S2 tuner, Wi-Fi module, and charging circuit for a lithium iron phosphate battery. It is derived from the Beaglebone Black and, like its older brother, is fully open source. You can find all of the project files on Github. A comprehensive description of the board will be added to the Outernet Wiki in the coming weeks.
Modified Industrial Design
tldr: Design revised to account for a single solar panel, larger antenna size, and better reception quality.
The design of Lantern has changed for a few reasons. Before I go into them, please have a look at the new design:
Lantern pictured in our IndieGoGo campaign:
Updated form factor of Lantern:
Dimensions (approx): 4" x 8.5" x 1.75". Please note that the color of the case is not finalized.
The first thing you might notice is the reduction of solar panel surface area. There are a few reasons for this:
1. We are on Earth, not Tatooine.
The original design had four solar panels at 90° from one another. As much as we all liked the design, it would only be truly useful on a planet with multiple sources of light. For use on Earth, this earlier design was overly complex and inefficient.
2. Antenna Size and Orientation.
The antenna for receiving Lantern's L-band signal is larger than we originally envisioned. The power available to us on the satellite ended is less than what we were hoping for. In order to compensate for a weaker signal, we needed to increase the surface area of the antenna.
3. Signal Interference.
Since solar panels are not RF transparent and would interfere with reception, we needed to move the panel completely out of the way of the larger antenna. We toyed with putting the antenna on the opposite side of the panel, but this option would not allow for simultaneous charging and reception. We also experimented with a folding design, but field experience in developing countries--where spare parts are rare--reinforced simplicity in product design.
Flexible (and increased) Content Delivery
tldr: Silver lining of our delay: the ability to occasionally increase data over 10 MB per day.
The delay in Lantern production from our target date has led to one very important and significant improvement. Instead of offering a fixed 10 MB per day that we gradually increase over time, we will now be able to variably increase the total amount of content delivered per day. For example, a global movie night where everyone votes on and receives a free movie for a Friday night? From the islands of Alaska to the bush in Australia, this is now possible.
Delivery Date
The ultimate question: When will you receive your Lantern?
Since I have been wrong about the ship date on more than one occasion, I would like to start under promising and over delivering, rather than the other way around. By the end of this month, we should have our first complete unit. From there we will produce 10 additional units and then another 50. These initial units will undergo user and performance testing. To keep you up-to-date with our progress, we will update you with testing results and videos of field performance.
By the end of November, we should have received all of the components that are necessary for larger production runs. If all prototype hardware performs without problems, then our target is to ship all Lanterns that are subsequently produced. At first this will be small runs of 10, 50, and 100 at a time, with manual quality assurance and testing. Once the assembly process has been optimized and automated testing is in place, production runs will increase to 1000, 5000, and 10,000 units.
--
What we're building here is more than just a physical product; we're realizing the notion that information access is a fundamental human right. The delivery of Lantern, and with it, the ability to receive the Outernet service, fulfills not only your order, but our promise to build Humanity's Public Library.
You backed Outernet, which allows us to offer everyone in the world a basic level of news, information, and education. We thank you for that, as well as your continued patience.
Again, I apologize for the delay in delivering your Lantern.
Better Communication
The team and I apologize that we have not been the best at communicating the progress of the project. From here on out, we pledge to provide biweekly updates, even if the update isn't particularly interesting.
In the meantime, if you have questions, you can reach us at "hello at outernet.is". Please allow us some time to respond, as our small team receives a large volume of email on a daily basis.
If you'd like to ask me questions directly, please join my AMA (Ask Me Anything) on October 6, 2015 at 11AM Chicago time (CST): https://www.reddit.com/r/ama. If you have never participated in an AMA before, I suggest visiting the link in advance and joining another AMA. Don't worry, they are very easy to join.
Most Sincerely,
Syed Karim
Syed Karim
Founder and CEO of Outernet.
Chicago, IL http://outernet.is
Lantern Update from Syed Karim, Outernet CEO
30 September 2015 on Lantern
tldr: Yes, we're late--and very sorry about it, but we're still hard at work and making steady progress. We hope that you agree with us that the results will be well worth the wait and we very deeply appreciate your patience and support. Although delivering Lantern consists of much more than just the physical device, you can see the final design of the main Lantern component on GitHub.
Sections:
- Unrealistic Timeline
- This is Where We are Today
- Improved Look of Lantern
- Flexible (and Increased) Content Delivery
- Delivery Date
- Better Communication
To restate the obvious, yes, we are late. We are not proud of this fact and we are all working very hard to deliver your Lanterns as soon as humanly possibly. The only thing I can say is that making hardware is, well, hard.
Although Lantern can be simplified as just a couple of circuit boards inside of a plastic box, the reality is that there are quite a few moving pieces (some in space) to produce--even though nothing inside Lantern actually moves. In order for Lantern to function as more than just a solar-powered paperweight, we needed to tick off a fairly complicated laundry list of tasks, such as:
- acquiring satellite capacity (done)
- sending content streams to various teleports (done)
- fine-tuning broadcast servers and data carousels (done)
- locating a very specialized antenna (done)
- developing a high bitrate and low bitrate datacasting client (done)
- delivering global data delivery over DVB-S
- creating custom firmware (90% done)
- selecting a contract manufacturer (90% done)
- designing an end user interface (continuously improving)
- building a suitable plastic enclosure (99%)
So, first things first:
We Were Unrealistic in Our Timeline
tldr: We have learned from our own campaign and from watching others; super conservative delivery timelines are better than overly optimistic ones.
I want to first give a little context for our IndieGoGo campaign. When we first posted the campaign we promised our initial backers delivery of Lantern in July 2015. As the campaign grew in popularity beyond our expectations, we pushed this back to August 2015, September, and then October--and so on. Looking back, we should have been much more conservative from the onset, as we had an incredible task list to complete in a half-year.
Take a look at the Nebia shower, a very popular Kickstarter campaign that grabbed numerous headlines this month. From the date their campaign closed on September 11, 2015 they promised their first backers a delivery date in May of 2016 - that's eight months later. By comparison, we estimated that the first Lanterns would begin shipping just seven months after our campaign closed.
Nebia also raised $3 million and sold over 10,000 shower heads on Kickstarter, meaning they can go into high volume production right away. While we far exceeded our initial IndieGoGo goal, we aren't yet large enough to capture the efficiencies of scale.
I point this out because it is an important lesson we have learned. While the development of a shower head may have relatively few dependencies and complexities, Nebia did a far better job than we did of setting a realistic timeline.
Although a fluid delivery schedule is part of the crowdfunding process, we certainly could have done a better job of estimating and communicating. I apologize to all of our backers for any frustration we have caused and sincerely appreciate the patience and continued support.
This is Where We Are Today
tldr: The core Lantern design has been open sourced (like 99% of what we produce) and added to GitHub.
The Lantern compute board, which is the heart of the device, went through a second and final design revision in August and September. The first iteration functioned as intended - which means that we successfully installed the firmware from Lighthouse onto the board - but there were a few power issues that needed to be addressed.
V1, as we refer to the board, comes complete with a DVB-S2 tuner, Wi-Fi module, and charging circuit for a lithium iron phosphate battery. It is derived from the Beaglebone Black and, like its older brother, is fully open source. You can find all of the project files on Github. A comprehensive description of the board will be added to the Outernet Wiki in the coming weeks.
Modified Industrial Design
tldr: Design revised to account for a single solar panel, larger antenna size, and better reception quality.
The design of Lantern has changed for a few reasons. Before I go into them, please have a look at the new design:
Lantern pictured in our IndieGoGo campaign:
Updated form factor of Lantern:
Dimensions (approx): 4" x 8.5" x 1.75". Please note that the color of the case is not finalized.
The first thing you might notice is the reduction of solar panel surface area. There are a few reasons for this:
1. We are on Earth, not Tatooine.
2. Antenna Size and Orientation.
3. Signal Interference.
Since solar panels are not RF transparent and would interfere with reception, we needed to move the panel completely out of the way of the larger antenna. We toyed with putting the antenna on the opposite side of the panel, but this option would not allow for simultaneous charging and reception. We also experimented with a folding design, but field experience in developing countries--where spare parts are rare--reinforced simplicity in product design.
Flexible (and increased) Content Delivery
tldr: Silver lining of our delay: the ability to occasionally increase data over 10 MB per day.
The delay in Lantern production from our target date has led to one very important and significant improvement. Instead of offering a fixed 10 MB per day that we gradually increase over time, we will now be able to variably increase the total amount of content delivered per day. For example, a global movie night where everyone votes on and receives a free movie for a Friday night? From the islands of Alaska to the bush in Australia, this is now possible.
Delivery Date
The ultimate question: When will you receive your Lantern?
Since I have been wrong about the ship date on more than one occasion, I would like to start under promising and over delivering, rather than the other way around. By the end of this month, we should have our first complete unit. From there we will produce 10 additional units and then another 50. These initial units will undergo user and performance testing. To keep you up-to-date with our progress, we will update you with testing results and videos of field performance.
By the end of November, we should have received all of the components that are necessary for larger production runs. If all prototype hardware performs without problems, then our target is to ship all Lanterns that are subsequently produced. At first this will be small runs of 10, 50, and 100 at a time, with manual quality assurance and testing. Once the assembly process has been optimized and automated testing is in place, production runs will increase to 1000, 5000, and 10,000 units.
--
What we're building here is more than just a physical product; we're realizing the notion that information access is a fundamental human right. The delivery of Lantern, and with it, the ability to receive the Outernet service, fulfills not only your order, but our promise to build Humanity's Public Library.
You backed Outernet, which allows us to offer everyone in the world a basic level of news, information, and education. We thank you for that, as well as your continued patience.
Again, I apologize for the delay in delivering your Lantern.
Better Communication
The team and I apologize that we have not been the best at communicating the progress of the project. From here on out, we pledge to provide biweekly updates, even if the update isn't particularly interesting.
In the meantime, if you have questions, you can reach us at "hello at outernet.is". Please allow us some time to respond, as our small team receives a large volume of email on a daily basis.
If you'd like to ask me questions directly, please join my AMA (Ask Me Anything) on October 6, 2015 at 11AM Chicago time (CST): https://www.reddit.com/r/ama. If you have never participated in an AMA before, I suggest visiting the link in advance and joining another AMA. Don't worry, they are very easy to join.
Most Sincerely,
Syed Karim
Syed Karim
Founder and CEO of Outernet.
Chicago, IL http://outernet.is
