The Blaze Burner Group Buy @£25 each (£50 Retail)

I also bought the DING front light on kickstarter but that's been delayed a few times. Nice to take a punt on a few things sometimes.

I still havent learnt how to play that attack the pack game i backed ages ago. Watched a youtube video explaining how to play and still havent figured it.

Recieved this today

Thanks for writing in. I just checked on your pledge, and your rewards are marked as ready to ship, but haven't gone out yet. Once the project creators have shipped your items, you should receive a notification with a tracking number.

Unfortunately, I don't have an exact timeline on when your package will ship; so sorry for the lack of information.

Let me know if you'd like to change your shipping address; I can do that for you if you include your new address in your reply.

Cheers,

Hi mate any word from these guys??

Received 3 days ago, in short, 2 more months of wait :(

Hello hellooo our brilliant Burner backers!

Final straight and a Burner hurdle!! We are SO close to the finish line, we can literally smell the white paint. It is truly agonising this end, but we have just had to make the call to delay shipping a little. So this is the email I really, really didn’t want to write, and trust me it is physically painful doing so! There are people working around the clock in Blaze HQ in London, in Salisbury and with suppliers in China and Europe to make sure we didn’t have to.

The long and the short of it is the decision has been taken to make sure we are delivering a better product and that over speed and rushing. Which I guess should always be the reasoning behind a delay, but I truly think this decision is an important one. We are just as impatient and excited to get you your Burners, we just want it to be the very best it can be.

Basically the major change is in the software - after we made the first few lights, we found ourselves wanting to make a couple of design changes to the PCB (printed circuit board) for the testing process. These changes allow us to test more parts of the PCB during the quality assurance phase of assembly. Which ensures an extremely robust quality check and allows us to ensure all electronic components are working perfectly on leaving the factory.

PCB testing means programming - so actually writing our firmware onto the PCB for how the light will operate, so needs to happen on every light. Hence taking a time to action such a change.

What this does mean is your lights have improved firmware, with superior flashing sequence and a simpler UX Design (the user experience and way it operates) we’ll hope you’ll love! And more subtle features such as the reliability and speed of charging the battery.

Another input into making this decision was the additional brackets. Because so many backers in the end wanted to have an extra bracket - and these were on a slightly slower delivery schedule, we decided we should take the additional time to get the firmware of the main manufacture tip top and then send it all out together.

The additional brackets (as mentioned before) took a little more man-power than anticipated, as they had to go through the DFM process from the prototypes we had during the campaign to a manufacturable solution. But we’ve done it! And to sweeten this very disappointing news, below are some pics of your new, snazzy, additional bracket solutions.

Another factor is our batteries - we use arguably one of the best suppliers in the world, for superior batteries across all of our products - the Laserlight, integrated devices into Santander Cycle Hire bikes, and have been delivered a 4 week delay by them. This is extremely uninteresting and hugely frustrating, proven nothing we can do about it, but it secured the decision to change the firmware.

Will be back with more detailed info on actual shipping dates, but the delay is sadly a few more weeks and we will now be delivering in July. I truly am aware of how disappointing this is and am hearbreakingly sorry!! You will receive tracking orders once dispatched, so please just hang tight for the moment. We’ll keep you up to date with every twist and turn in the race from here to the finish line!

Thank you, thank you for your ongoing support and patience. We cannot tell you how much it is appreciated while everyone is hustling hard this end.

With our love and thanks!
Emily + Team Blaze

almost in september now, any news?

Latest update 01/09/2016

Hello hello our trailblazing Burners,
I won't beat about the bush on this one. We've had everything we need for final assembly for a while, we've been awaiting our die cast casings from Asia... And they have not been up to scratch!! Literally. We got to T6 on the tool for the casings and now we are still rejecting pieces off the final tool. Im afraid I'm not going to compromise on this and approve sub-standard product.

We have just reviewed delivery of the first batch of selected perfect casings and have made these up into perfect final Burners, see below! We are testing these and once approved the next drop of 500 casings will be released. Expected Friday. There will be a gap between these 500 and the remaining 2,500 as we will be quality assuring each of the 500 and making any necessary changes before green lighting the bigger batch.

Please await your confirmation email when your package is on its way. We use different couriers for different countries, but you will each receive an email. That's it folks! Be back soon and the end is in sight.

THANK YOU for your patience and support, it will be worth it. We are so excited.

With love and thanks,

Emily + Team Blaze

Oh and Ps. Half the Blaze team have just arrived at Eurobike. They will have the first few Burners made up and put through testing with them to show - so go say hi if you're there and check them out... They're looking puuuurdy! Eeek.

More delay :(

Hi all,

As you may all be aware, the first batch of 500 lights were shipped two weeks ago and four major issues have been highlighted. I am going to briefly outline what these issues are and then what’s being done to resolve them.
Issues

1. Final 3 charge indicator lights not lighting to show 100% charged.
   
2. On super-bright mode, a few lights are turning off after approx 20 minutes.
   
3. The charge connection is too fiddly and weak.
   

4. The light is able to rotate while in its bracket.
   What’s being done

5. The final 3 indicator lights are not lighting up on a full charge because this was an error in a line of the code – it is technically near impossible for the light to reach true ‘100%’ charge. In a normal use case the numerical limit of a ‘full charge’ is a lot lower and the code has now been corrected to reflect this. The lights will now show ‘fully charged’ when the battery is functionally full.

6. 20 minute cut out. This was a safety feature built into the light so that if a Burner ever got too hot internally, it would turn off to protect the PCB. In real life use, this is only reached in its brightest, constant setting (and often in warmer environments – Eg. on a desk, not outside on a bike with air flowing over it). The limit for this was overcautious and set too low in error. It has now been changed and raised to reflect the temperature the light can in fact handle. We are now working to change the code so that if the light does ever turn off for thermal protection, it switches into a less power hungry mode, instead of completely off. We have only seen this in a very small number of Burners, which could be due to the sensitivity of these individual lights, but the changes we're making will ensure that it's not an issue going forward in any lights. If you’re one of the first to receive a Burner, we shall be resolving your light too.

7. The cable connection. This is the same cable that we use with the Laserlight, we have increased the strength of the magnet but otherwise it is the same cable. The problem is with the fit with the connectors. Although your light does charge, and even if it hopefully won’t need charging again for a couple of months, we agree the connection on these first lights is too fiddly and the cable is too easily knocked off. We agree this needs changing and have found solutions that involve a rework on the charge pins on either the cable or on the light. Eitehr vastly improve the magnetic connection, allowing you to gently pull the light across the desk by its cable and for the cable to automatically locate itself onto its pins. I do not currently have all the information on the timelines for these reworks but it will be done for all lights going forward. If you’re one of the first to receive a Burner, we shall be resolving your light too.

8. The ‘spinning’ lights – we believe there are two issues here: A light that can rotate and a light that spins freely. The former sees a light which if knocked or taken over very bumpy road, can move from it’s original position by the end of a ride. While we appreciate people find this annoying and the light may need straightening, the light is still firmly held and will not detach from your bike. Compounding this problem is that these first 500 lights had a rework where the magnetic sockets were individually machined further down (as mentioned in earlier update), which makes the connection looser and this rotation more likely. This process is no longer necessary and we fully expect the next batch to have a snugger connection and to see minimal rotation.

From this point the redesign and manufacturing and supply chain changes and testing necessary to reintroduce the pins is likely going to be too lengthy to include now, however we are exploring if this is an option. As background, the decision to allow the light to rotate beyond fixed vertical or horizontal, was in part to allow it to work with the saddle mounts that we had created due Kickstarter backers' request.

The second issue under this title sees a light being able to ‘spin freely’ in its bracket. We are only aware of two lights like this. We would ask these people to send their light back to us immediately. This affected a couple of the very first lights out the door, due to the connecting screw not having the specified amount of Loctite glue. This was immediately flagged and was corrected going onwards into production. So if your light is also doing this, please get in touch via support@blaze.cc straight away.
Other issues

• The light turning off in car headlights. This is only possible if a headlight is directly shining onto a Burner for a drawn out period of time – likely stationary at traffic lights (as there is an extended lag time before switch off). As soon as the car moves away and the light is returned to ‘darkness’, it will switch back on. In the above mentioned changes to the code, we have also taken the opportunity to amend the length of time required for the light to turn off, preventing this from happening.
  Burners appearing in retail

• We fully appreciate how irritating this is for those awaiting their lights, please do not believe this is due to any lack of respect, but an uncomfortable yet necessary business decision. We never envisaged shipping lights this late in the season, we had conversations with retailers back in March and are now contractually obliged to deliver them lights. However, we delivered the absolute minimum we could get away with – one or two per store, so they could at least see the product and allocate shelf space for a few weeks’ time, once the bike light season had started and Kickstarter had been delivered. These lights are 20-40% more expensive (depending if you’re an early bird) in retail and now that obligation has been fulfilled, our complete focus is back on sorting the above issues and making as many lights as possible.
  What this means for you

We will be offering a replacement light to all backers who have already received their Burner and are seeing one or any of the above issues. If you have not yet received your light, we are committing to resolve these issues and sending you a fully functioning light. We are working around the clock to fix these issues and deliver you a light with problems resolved and have come a long way in 2 weeks. The software changes have largely already all been made, it is the mechanical issues will take longer and we are working on a revised time line for this now.

For those of you who already have a light, we ask that as long as you’re not riding with it in ‘Bright Steady’ for lengthy periods, to keep riding with it if you want to. It does still work, it will charge fully (if fiddly), it will stay in its bracket... and so we ask you to hold onto it for now. We will be in touch with you all once we have new lights with problems solved. We will then ask if those with existing lights want a replacement and will pay for return postage. Just to reiterate, please do not return your light back to us, unless we have explicitly asked you individually to do so.

That’s it for now. I am so sorry these issues have occurred. Believe us we are doing all we can to resolve them as quickly as possible and we will be back in touch later this week, as soon as we have more detail on timelines.

Emily + Team Blaze.

Haha thanks for updating us

What gwan....?

we had conversations with retailers back in March and are now contractually obliged to deliver them lights

Not putting the boot into these guys specifically, but the number of times this happens to kickstarter products is really frustrating. Backers give you the capital to actually start production and then commitments to retailers are honoured in preference. It stinks.

because business

I'm down for front and rear in black also!

Interested in a pair of front and rear in black. How much?

Old thread this dudes. We paid a long while ago.

Ah shit. Cheers

The final 3 indicator lights are not lighting up on a full charge because this was an error in a line of the code – it is technically near impossible for the light to reach true ‘100%’ charge. In a normal use case the numerical limit of a ‘full charge’ is a lot lower and the code has now been corrected to reflect this.

LOL!

Backers give you the capital to actually start production and then commitments to retailers are honoured in preference. It stinks.

not everyone does this ;) https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/attackthepack/attack-the-pack-the-cycling-card-game

But I do agree, the commitment should be to backers first. However in order to absolve themselves of all responsibility Kickstarter have to declare that all backers are providing a 'donation'. So your contract is defunct because of kickstarter, not the project. I would like to see a kickstarter enforce delivery... but it won't happen.

what I am a bit miffed about here is:

1) a company with financial backing and a successful operation (how much did they get for the Santander deal?) using kickstarter to de-risk a new product line when they could simply raise within their existing funds/funders.
2) given the above the blatent fact that they have gone into production and promised product too early. Sorry but anyone with an error in code causing lights to shut down prematurely or to not 'charge' fully needs to take a step back. Esp as this isn't their first product and they now have a support structure there.

That said I have huge respect for Emily, I just dislike people who abuse kickstarter which should be a weapon of last resort, not a commercial de-risking engine. Pah.

My copy of attack the pack was a surprise- put in my 'order' and then trusted you guys would deliver. Still haven't played it yet though...

using kickstarter to de-risk a new product line when they could simply raise within their existing funds/funders.

Seen this quite a few times and yep, pisses me off just the same.

Anyway /derail

Are they the same people who made the green lazzzzzzzzzer light?

Anyone need or want a Blaze front Laserlight bracket? Don't have my light anymore so the bracket is surplus to requirement.