Manufacturer is picked and the funding has stabilized!
12 months ago – Fri, May 19, 2023 at 09:30:34 PM

Dear Backers,

We're thrilled to share another exciting update with you! It has been a productive month for our project, and we have some significant milestones to report.

Manufacturing: 

After careful consideration and diligent evaluation, we have selected the perfect manufacturer for our project. We took the time to ensure we made the right choice, and we're confident in our decision. The down payment for the molds is being sent within the week, and we expect the injected molded plastic molds to be completed in approximately 35-45 days. Once we receive the samples, we anticipate making some adjustments before moving forward with a small batch pre-production run, followed by the full production runs.

Funding: 

We are pleased to inform you that we have secured approximately two-thirds of the funding required to bring this project to completion. While we still have about one-third of the funding left to obtain, we have multiple pathways in place to secure it. Rest assured, this funding is not critical at this moment.

Delivery Schedule: We want to reaffirm that we remain on track for our targeted October delivery, as originally stated on Kickstarter. As we progress closer to the delivery date, we will send a final address lock-in notification during the last month before the units are shipped. At that point, all addresses will be locked. Please remember that you can change your address anytime on Backerkit until then.

Shipping: 

Regarding shipping fees, we are required to wait until we are within 90 days of shipping to lock in the shipping prices. However, we have positive news. This year, shipping rate hikes have been less severe compared to previous years, and we are confident that we'll secure a favorable rate.

Engineering Updates:

 Mechanical: 

Our final manufacturing package is complete, and we have identified the areas that require close attention during the evaluation of the initial injected molded plastic samples from our manufacturer. While our 3D printed models have been impressive, we are incredibly excited about the superior quality of the molded plastics. We can't wait to get our hands on them!

Electrical: 

Over the past month, we have been working diligently on the board spin, and we're happy to report that the units are working flawlessly. We have resolved a major firmware bug, and we are now 80% complete with the firmware development. The remaining 20% focuses on fine-tuning and eliminating any remaining bugs to ensure everything functions exactly as intended.

Software: 

Our software development is progressing well, with around 70% completion. We are constantly making updates and generating new ideas, making it an ongoing process. Our primary focus in the software department is to ensure the correct and expected functionality of individual button programming.

We appreciate your unwavering support throughout this journey. As always, we'll continue to keep you informed of any significant developments. Thank you for being an essential part of this project.

Best regards,

-Branden

Founder, Hedgehog Gaming

March update --- The Speedbumps
about 1 year ago – Fri, Apr 07, 2023 at 12:23:16 PM

Dear Backers,  

We want to give you a quick update on our progress. March was a challenging month for us, but we're happy to report that we're still on track for an October delivery. 

Prototypes and current build:

We're particularly excited about the new circuit boards that are coming in early next week - they're going to make our best working units to date!  

Pesky Lenders:

Unfortunately, we hit a snag with our original lender and were forced to pivot to our backup plan.  We are already seeing positive results from this new approach, and we're confident that we'll be able to meet our financial goals.  

A Manufacturing Scare (Good thing we checked):

We had originally narrowed down our manufacturer choices to two options. While we were doing our due diligence, we brought in a private investigator to help us vet both options. Unfortunately, one of the manufacturers had some red flags that we couldn't ignore. To be absolutely sure that we're making the right choice, we're planning to conduct an on-site audit of the facilities before locking anything down.  We appreciate your support and will continue to keep you updated as we move forward.  

Best regards,

Hedgehog Gaming

Shorter update --- Most Mold quotes are in!
about 1 year ago – Fri, Mar 10, 2023 at 09:55:16 AM

MARCH Update:

Hello,

We have some injection molded plastic quote updates, a circuit board update, and some financing news to discuss here.  Lets get right into it!

Injection Molded Plastics:

A majority of the quotes from over 10 manufacturing companies have come in and we are looking to pick the manufacturer who will be making our parts in the week of March 20th.  To lock them in, we will be putting a deposit down on the molds.   The quotes for the steel molds for making the plastics for the left- and right- hand devices range anywhere from $56,200 to $124,000 (in case anyone was curious about how much these things cost!).  Luckily one of the more reasonable quotes is from a company that the mechanical expert on my team has worked with on multiple occasions.

After we pick our manufacturer and get the down payment to them, we expect to see our first sample parts approximately 8 weeks from March 20th (which puts us into mid-May).   We will fully evaluate these units and expect that there will likely be some minor quality changes and adjustments that need to be made.  Those changes should take another ~6-7 weeks to turn around.   We are hopeful that, after one set of changes, we will be ready to start the smaller 100 piece manufacturing build followed by a larger build that will fulfill the Kickstarter units.

These injection molds are the highest risk to the timeline of this project currently but, we're still very much on track to deliver on or before October.

Circuit Board Update:

As mentioned, in the previous update, we had to correct some small errors made on our last board spin.   After an evaluation period, we have extracted a reasonable amount of useful information out of the current circuit boards.  We are now initiating our second circuit board spin using this microcontroller.  We anticipate this will be our final spin for our right-hand devices.  Once the circuit boards for the right-hand are complete, we will quickly follow up with our left-hand circuit board.

Financing:

We have found our lender (we hope).   We initially had reached out to several financial institutes around the states, including some that turned out to be nasty predatory ones.  It turned out we should have started with our local bank.   We have had a great relationship with them in the past and, due to this, they are excited to work with us.   We are currently in underwriting for a SBA loan through our local bank which is a big step in the right direction!

___________________________________________________________________

FEBRUARY UPDATE (Public)

*We only did a private update in February.   Below is the public portion:

Hello,

Here is our February update showing the progress of various parts of our design:

Circuit Boards:
 

As mentioned in our last update, we ordered circuit boards and they are in now.  They are working great and our firmware engineer is hard at work programming these to work exactly like we want them to.   Our firmware engineer is also working on the integration between the desktop software application and the mouse firmware.

The buttons you see in this picture below are Omron switches.  While we love Omron, we had an opportunity to put in the Kailh 8.0 switches into this mouse (pointer and middle finger).  This is a switch that is mechanically rated to 80 million mechanical clicks.   It's one of the best switches out there currently.   These switches are on order and will be in within the next few weeks along with many of the other switches in our design (and the encoder wheel).

Mechanicals:
 

We have a nice, robust mechanical design.  Everything is functioning very well.   We have been focusing on 3 main items lately.

• We are working on the base unit that springs the device back to center.   It is going very well and it feels amazing right now; it has just the right tension, it's very thin profile, and it has tight tolerances.
   
• We have been working on getting the thumb buttons tuned in with the right feel, conures, and lighting.
   
• Lastly, we've sent out about several quotes for getting steel injections molds built along with quotes to building the just over 1900 units that you all have so graciously pre-ordered.
   

Software:
 

We had mentioned to some that we desired to do a web-based software but, we were struggling to get this done cleanly.   There were some hurdles that were making the solution we were working on very clunky and non-user friendly.   We decided to go back to a desktop software solution that supports Windows, Linux, and Mac.

With this desktop solution, we strive to make it so users won't have to run a background software with our mouse after re-mapping the buttons.   This is has always been our goal but it's worth stating.   We purposefully added a non-volatile memory chip to the mouse so several profiles could be loaded into the mouse.  After a profile is loaded to a mouse, it becomes plug-and-play with any computer and all of your macros and bindings are fully functional.   ---WE HATE BLOATWARE! :)

Here is what the UI looks like so far.  It's ever evolving so there is a good chance it will not look exactly like this in its final form.

The Current and Future Builds in General:
 

We built up 12 circuit boards with their associated plastics (as seen in the Circuit Board Section).   The boards had a couple of very small problems but that's why we did such a small build.  These small issues are to be expected!   With minimal modifications, the boards are functioning like we want them to.

Future Builds:   Once we hash out any bugs, make adjustments, and get our first samples of injection molds in, we will be doing a 100 piece pre-manufacturing beta test build.  When we start that build (it could be a 2-3 months away depending on how long the molds take), we want to send most of those units out for people to test.   When we do that build and we're ready for feedback we'll ask for volunteers and we'll pick who gets those units by need than by backer number.  While those are 100 units are being tested, the main fulfillment manufacturing build will start.

Future, Distant Plans for Hedgehog Gaming:
 

While we are fully focused on fulfilling this current mouse, our minds wonder sometimes.   Some future projects we have thrown out there are: 

• A smaller version of this mouse with many of its features that are targeted towards a wider audience.   
• We want to, some day, develop custom 3d printed mouse shells that go over our mouse base + circuit boards.  While Hedgehog Gaming isn't a non-profit business, we want to work with non-profits like the DAV (Disabled American Veterans) and AbleGamers to help some of our friends and fellow gamers out!

Hard at work! --- February Hedgehog Update (Backers Only)
about 1 year ago – Fri, Feb 17, 2023 at 12:27:11 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Getting ready for an engineering build with the new microcontroller!
over 1 year ago – Fri, Jan 06, 2023 at 09:46:07 PM

Hello and Happy New Year to those of us on the Gregorian calendar!

We are spooling up for an engineering build with the new microcontroller.   We are just finalizing some circuit board work and work on tweaking the plastics.  We are anticipating this build to be in our engineers hands for testing by early February.

Parts order status:

• Some new switches:  The thumb buttons and pinky buttons now have a switch choice.   These have short lead times so we'll order them in quantity after the pre manufacturing run starts testing.
• New, taller, rotary encoder:  Same status as the new switches.
• LEDs:  Same status as the switches and rotary encoder.
• The microcontroller is now 7 weeks into the 22 week lead time.
• The mouse sensor, in quantity, should arrive by the end of this month.

Here is a taste of what the circuit board looks like with the new micro on it in the engineering software:

After this engineering build, expect these steps in future updates:

• Engineering/software/firmware testing on the engineering build.  
• Pre safety certification testing.
• Corrections to circuit boards and plastics (after testing)
• Another engineering build (if necessary)
• A larger pre-production build of 50-100 pieces
• More testing and safety certifications on production quality parts
• Full production build

 We are taking these steps to make sure to deliver a quality, awesome product. Thank you so much for your patience and support through this process!

-Branden