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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Group Buy: Budget CRI 95 LED Strip Lights

Thanks Brandon.. sorry for pulling you away from the other work on hand but I hope others had the same questions and benefit from this exchange... Cheers.
 
All invites have been sent.

If you have not received yours yet, and you were in the group buy, please PM me.

If you have had trouble accessing the site or registering please hit reply on the invite email and let me know.

Now I'm neck deep in importing all your orders. I should have it done this week.

If you have strips and plan to build large Kino/LiteMat type fixtures, I have something new that will make that much easier and, if you have not received your strips yet, there will be upgrade options available. It's going to be a really great deal.

Working on a few other things also to thank you all for your patience. Lots of stuff in the works.

Stay tuned.


Ted Parkes said:
Thanks Brandon.. sorry for pulling you away from the other work on hand but I hope others had the same questions and benefit from this exchange... Cheers.
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Yeah, that's a common problem, actually.

Anyone else reading this have a password problem? This is the solution:

Brandon J.F. said:
If it's asking for only a password and not a username also, you need to enter the site password. It's the same for everyone and included in the invite email.
Click to expand...
 
I did seem to have a similar password problem, and just resetting the password with Forgot Password did just as well a trick. It seemed like using the site password again wasn't really doing it for me.

Thanks for getting the site together, I may even order more strips ! Excited to use these once they arrive, and even more excited to see what you have up your sleeve for panels. :)
 
For those that are just waiting on the controllers.

Will we get ours first?
 
Brandon J.F. said:
It's setup to go out in the order everyone placed their first order.
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Thanks Brandon.

Should I be seeing the two controllers in my cart or ?

I only see the store options and nothing in my personal info page yet.
 
Eric Santiago said:
Thanks Brandon.

Should I be seeing the two controllers in my cart or ?

I only see the store options and nothing in my personal info page yet.
Click to expand...

I've said about a dozen times that I have almost 700 orders to manually import and I'm going to have them all imported by the end of the week. You'll see all your orders soon. :)
 
Reading is a lost art. How many times do we open a package of some kind of equipment and turn it on and try it out without reading the directions!! Raise your hand, mine is up
 
Brandon J.F. said:
I've said about a dozen times that I have almost 700 orders to manually import and I'm going to have them all imported by the end of the week. You'll see all your orders soon. :)
Click to expand...

Haha sorry Brandon, this thread is long :)
 
So Brandon how many more controllers need to be ordered before production can start? I could spring for a couple more if we are still short. That and I think I will need some more lights if it looks like they might ship sometime soon.
 
M Hsu said:
So Brandon how many more controllers need to be ordered before production can start? I could spring for a couple more if we are still short. That and I think I will need some more lights if it looks like they might ship sometime soon.
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Same same
 
M Hsu said:
So Brandon how many more controllers need to be ordered before production can start? I could spring for a couple more if we are still short. That and I think I will need some more lights if it looks like they might ship sometime soon.
Click to expand...

Bryan Koss said:
Same same
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The target right now is for production to start the end of the first week of February. We definitely have more controllers to sell, but I'm not done importing orders yet. I'm also contacting people that never paid for the upgrade (unpaid invoice) to see if they want to. Everyone has so far, so that helps.

As for lights, I have variable and a few daylight rolls that can ship this week. The next batch, which will include practicals and LED mats, will start soon after the controllers start. I'm going to post the details about all that as soon as I finish importing orders.

I'm putting 2-4 hours a day of solid, no distraction time towards getting these orders imported. Unfortunately, there's no way to automate this because I'm adding tracking numbers for what has shipped, and there were a lot of order changes, buyouts, trades, etc. I'm over 60 hours in on this so far with a ways to go. I'm timing it now in Pomodoros, for those familiar with how that works :)
 
The target right now is for production to start the end of the first week of February. We definitely have more controllers to sell,
Click to expand...

So... does the production start anyway, or after selling more controllers?
 
Brandon has stated the situation over multiple posts, so the answer may not be totally clear without following every post in this extremely long thread. Feel free to correct any of the following if this is inaccurate.

As I understand it, we currently do not have enough units sold to meet the manufacturers M(inimum) O(rder) Q(uantity) of 1000.

Given Brandon's ongoing health situation and recovery, he is already extended beyond his means, and this includes a 5 figure (I think between 10-20k) PayPal loan he is paying off, that had been taken out with the purpose of pushing this project forward. It would be disastrous for him to go further into debt. If you have been following the health scenario, he sold his entire camera kit and ran a HelpHOPELive campaign to finance his operation AND convalescence (which he is what he is currently doing and working as much as he can). Needless to say, Brandon is doing his best, but is working with finite resources.

What this means for us, is that Brandon does not have the means to front the money to just start production without the full quantity sold. It's rather like a kickstarter without the same visibility. In order for any of us to get our controllers, the 1000 controllers need to be sold. Hence the focus on getting the website up. Now I'm not sure of the exact number sold. He has stated it's close which I can only assume means within a couple hundred, but Brandon will have to comment and let us know the exact number.

I think this is where most of us are stuck, it has felt so close for so long, and not knowing this number has made it a nebulous affair. We need one of those telethon style thermometers to see how close we are to the goal.
I think that most of us are in it to win it, I mean, c'mon, we helped Brandon beat MS, we can get some controllers sold.

What we need to do is get everyone we can to buy controllers - Friends, industry connections, distributors etc. I know it's hard to recommend the cart before the horse, but in the age of crowdfunding as a widely accepted methodology, I'm sure we could get enough people to buy.

I live in Hong Kong, so I know the Chinese New Year delay is no joke. People just stop doing things. Hong Kong pollution actually clears up for the week - not a joke - then it takes a couple weeks to get rolling again. If we sell the rest of the controllers ASAP, mid to late February is the closest realistic point to start production.

We've seen the product, we know it's good, and we're so close to having it, just need to get over the final hump.

He has been teasing a bunch of other developments, and I am gathering that he's a bit of a perfectionist, and may not want to officially announce them until they are ready. Here is a list of, as I understand it, what we can be expecting from this young business.

- 40A Market Leading LED Controllers - Wifi, Dimming, RGB-W, Bi-Color, Flicker-Free, Bomb-Proof
- High Quality 95 CRI Bi-Color, Tungsten, Daylight, and RGB-W 5m/16.4 foot strips
- Power supplies, connectors, and accessories/materials to build DIY LED rigs.
-Litemat style rigs, kino style rigs, larger softbox (without the box) rigs, China ball rigs​
- 500/1000W LED fixtures that have the output of 2.5k/4k HMI (single color, either Daylight or Tungsten(not sure about tungsten actually)) I think they might resemble the Digital Sputnik fixtures, but affordable.
- Assorted LED practicals

Hope that helps, again, feel free to correct me on any of the information here.
 
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James, thank you so much for this consolidated update! Very helpful to have all in one place.

I'll try pushing controllers on anyone I can...

Sean
 
@James... see, that is a little bit confusing.. Brandon wrote several times, that the production run could start (ex. Nov: "Oh, and the controllers are 100% done and field tested for months now with no problems. They work great. We just need to do the production run." sept:"The full production run won't start until I'm out of the hospital"
No word that he has to sell more controllers before the production run can start. In an other post he mentioned the controllers sold (something over 800) but also stated, that production can start. But then, in other postings, it seems that he wont start production until the controllers are sold.
You have to read @reduser and facebook, to get all the information it seems...

It wold be great to get a timeline and a "what has to be done" list.
 
Agreed, it can be confusing. I don't want to put words in Brandon's mouth, but what I gleaned from his prior statements relates to multiple hurdles he faced. Firstly, the group buy began as simply sales of high quality LED stripping. This evolved into Brandon developing, testing and refining the controllers. This is most likely what he refers to when saying we are ready for production. That the product itself was ready to be manfactured. It had passed all testing. This is divorced from the idea of financing the production.

On top of the development of the controllers, we had Brandon's health issues as a time bomb, which rightly made itself a priority. When he exited the hospital there were still a few tweaks to be made to the controller, prior to any manufacture, again independent of the actual financing of the production run.

This is where I see the confusion, as most, I believe, were unaware for one reason or another. You have to remember, this is still just a person, he was not an established company, and he doesn't have the communications resources that a corporation might have. Add a serious health issue on top of that, and you'll see where we all are currently. We have come a long way, and I for one believe, we are close to the finish line.
 
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