Team Edison has been working at frantic pace with unstoppable determination to deliver Edison on time and before Christmas. Here’s a bit of what we’ve been through so far…
We encountered some mechanical issues with the plastics that required some of the injection moulds to be remade or adjusted. The compatibility with LEGO products is fantastic and the gears are now super durable.
Edison is also now sporting what we are calling an ‘enhanced infrared shield’. The robot obstacle detection wasn’t working as well as we liked. The cause was the original orange plastic shielding was allowing too much infrared light to pass through. The new shield works a treat and even extends the detection range.
Getting Edison’s firmware (software that runs inside Edison) working perfectly and bug free was more challenging than expected and added two weeks to the project. A new enhancement was created along the way that allows Edison’s firmware to be updated. This means that if there are any yet to be found bugs we can send out an update online to fix them. Also, we can add new features to your Edison in the future!
EdWare (PC, Mac, Linux) is on schedule to be ready to download before Edison ships. The iOS and android apps are progressing well. We hope to have them available by Christmas, if not then very early in the New Year.
The ‘EdMat’ activity mat, ‘Your EdVenture into Robotics’ activity book and 10 lesson plans are underway. The EdMat and EdVenture book will be available for free download by Christmas with the lesson plans following early in the New Year.
Edison has six pre-programmed functions that are activated by barcodes. These are:
Line tracking – Edison will follow a line
Obstacle avoidance – Edison will use infrared light to detect and avoid obstacles
Clap controlled driving – one clap = turn, two claps = drive forward
Follow torch – Use a torch/flash light to guide Edison
Bounce in borders – Edison will stay inside the a border
Sumo wrestle – Edison will seek his opponent and push him out of the ring
Delivering before Christmas is going to be tight. We expect to have all Edisons shipped out by December 5th. Shipwire will be handling all shipping from their Hong Kong fulfilment centre. Shipwire is a US based global fulfilment service that has helped many Kickstarter projects get shipped.
Rewards will be sent via registered airmail. Standard international delivery times are 6 to 17 days, however according to the Hong Kong postal service we will be within the Christmas delivery schedule for almost all countries.
We’re not ‘out of the woods’ yet. Production problems may still arise, but we will do whatever it takes to get Edison delivered as soon as we can.
Here’s hoping for a very Edison Christmas for all!
Brenton O’Brien