Reviewing their comms, they talked about an issue with the initial design back in March 2019, in a trio of releases, until mid-April when they announced they finally understood the issue, and promised a solution in a week or two, stating “it will have quite a significant impact on the product”. On May 3rd, they dropped the completed bomb - the details of why the initial product was never to work, and a detailed view into the new product. This release was titled, appropriately, “Redesigning the iQsquare Power Meter”.
This said, anyone who bought in a product that could be used with any pedal (Speedplay users, anyone?) got a major shift under their feet, so to speak. And those were not happy campers.
I’d also note that the average Kickstarter-funded startup would have either folded and run with the remainder of the cash register content, or just shipped the not-really-functional original products, once it was found not to really work back in March.
I wrote them on facebook messenger, reminding them that the last update is almost a month old again. They sent back this canned response pretty much instantly (emphasis mine):
Amidst the late stage of the mass production, we have encountered minor alteration in the injection molding which we are thankful that we caught it so the proper and permanent fix is going to be applied. The good news is that everything else is functioning properly. We still cannot determine the exact shipping dates but as we always guarantee, once we have the confirmation, you along with everyone else will be informed accordingly.
I nor we really cannot speculate on when the delivery is going to be especially that the mass production is ongoing. We understand that this caused frustration as we are also eager to start the deliveries as we want to try the power meters ourselves. It’s just that we are taking things one step at a time and we will definitely inform everyone once we confirm the specific shipping dates.
What we can truly confirm so far is that we are going to deliver the Road Pedal versions first and then deliver the MTB versions at a later time due to a more complex production process.
So on one hand they say they are in the late stages of mass production and that everything works, but then they seem to admit that they haven’t even tried a finished product themselves? I’m not an expert when it comes to bringing a physical product to market, but isn’t there usually a few steps before “late stages of mass production” that involve testing the finished product from pre-production runs?
At least they seem to have learned to not give out any unrealistic shipping dates anymore…
I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but let’s say I have quite a lot of experience. And the answer is yes, there are a few steps before “late stages of mass production”, whatever that is supposed to mean. It’s called validation and qualification, and happens even before pre-production, in the prototyping phase. You design, prototype, validate that the protos meet the specifications, modify the design or its execution as required; then you enter pre-production, at which stage you are supposed to be validating the production process (and not the product anymore); then you can enter “mass production”.
The tendency in single-product startups is to collapse the development, validation and production process in order to “get out there” as fast as possible. It’s a good recipe for schedule (and development budgets) blowups.
Another anti-climactic update. They found another niggling issue they have to fix. Imagine if they prototyped and pre-production tested this. Predictably, the pitchfork and torches response was immediate.
Semi-educated guess is that they are finally getting down to the last few things. Baseless prediction is they will find one more small issue and it’ll be March-April 2020
I wonder how those prices will change since they’ve likely incurred a LOT of unplanned costs due to having to go back to the drawing board several times.
Their value proposition is they found a different way to manufacture the strain gauge measurement to significantly cut the cost to manufacture and test and that part hasn’t changed. The current prices are already reflect the switch to pedal-based so assuming that this venture continues, that should be the retail price.
I’m really curious to see some test results if/when they finally have a real product, and how they will compare to other players in the market. I’m not saying that a newcomer to the business (cough* favero *cough) can’t make a great product, but there’s always a bit of doubt.
You, me and a couple of thousand backers! There is an air of arrogance with the way they are doing it as complete newbies in the space, and yet they have run into so many “classic” product development issues. Look at the time to market of now established brands like Garmin and Favero and their teething pains once they released the products.
This whole situation just rubs me the wrong way honestly, I know I used the word shady before, and maybe that was a bit much, but definitely not good business IMO. I’m all for competition in the market, but I don’t like when a company sets out to do something, raises funds from interested parties, and then proceeds to change their product because they were too arrogant (you said it well) to do their homework ahead of time. It’s like me saying “I am going to hit 350w FTP in 6 months” before I’ve established any kind of base to even hit 300w.
Another vague update, sounds close, but then again maybe not. Not sure what “adapter” they are talking about. Shane, Ray- what do make of the analyzer plots they posted?
Hi everyone,
Our last update was a month ago. In the meantime, we’ve fixed the battery contact issue and have been further finetuning our production runs. As you know, the main challenge for iQsquare is not to make just a power meter, but an affordable and therefore reproducible one. The road to that goal lies in our production machines, lines and assembly —> they need to produce consistent parts that leave no room for deviation.
To this end, we found over the Christmas holidays that we needed to make one last alteration to the adapter. It is now symmetrical, strongly reducing the amount of calibration steps for us.
We’d like to invite you once again to DC Rainmaker’s analysis tool to see the results of our power meter output compared to Tacx Neo and Infocrank, some of the most reliable and accurate power meters on the market:
Next week we’ll present our video installation guides on iqsquare.com. As soon as possible after that, the first products will be delivered to our first supporters and experts like GCN and DC Rainmaker for review.
I am neither Shane nor Ray but…posting a plot of consistent power readings is not a meaningful deliverable. Numerous other companies got that far and failed because it wasn’t reproducible across a wide range of users and scenarios.
That’s without mentioning the possibility of fraud - who is to say what that data actually came from and under what circumstances?
Not to say it isn’t some amount of information, but without context and being reproducible it is meaningless
I think to call GCN “experts” is quite funny… especially in the same sentence as DCRainmaker
don’t get me wrong, I love those guys, but GCN is and entertainment/paid infomercial channel, far from independent experts
I’ll call this one safe for now. They are continuing to work on this project and producing an update( may be a month late). I would say, it would be very disingenuous to use some other device to produce data and go through the effort of relabeling. Most companies may have gotten this far, but most have also collapsed and not made. I have been keeping on eye on this project, definitely hoping they succeed.
Maybe they excluded you form their prestigious ‘expert list’, because after all these delays, they’re drained of money and simply can’t afford the shipping fee to the LamaLab anymore.
Get it together and be realistic and if not possible, be as up to date as you can be. If you don’t take the time to check and update your shop, your source of income, what else do you neglect… ? (I have a few ideas about that looking at the history of issues )
So in my opinion, they are not worth spending you money on until the product has been on the market for at least a year without issues.
They are simply drowning and don’t have their sh*t together
Ok, I’m late here. I blame @gpl - he’s been dragging me up 20% hills here at the TDU.
I haven’t chatted with them since…god I don’t know - a year? A long-ass time. Either way, I took a look at the set.
Like Shane, the quirks with the Infocrank are actually somewhat surprising. That’s unusual. But no biggie. The test protocol they did is actually a pretty decent job of that. Relatively similiar chunks as Lama Lab test. Of course, indoor testing is the easiest compared to outdoors for things like handling road vibrations/temps/etc… Still, the data they had - even if cherry picked - is promising.
Like Lama, I’ll wait till I’ve got one in-hand on a bike and out on the road to see how things handle. Remember that most power meter companies can produce 1 or 2 or even 10 units that work well. Where most power meter companies have the most trouble is mass production of such devices. That’s what usually ends up delaying things most times (or killing them, such as the case for Brim Brothers and others).
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