In all of the activity over the last few days, we forgot to 1) write a blog post about it and 2) update the Indiegogo project status!
Well, the big news is that on Late Monday / Tuesday the 5th we shipped our first batch of RaceCapture/Pro units to the Indiegogo backers that jumped on the Data Junkie perk level! Here’s a picture of Kelley hauling boxes to the post office:
I sent a note to all of the initial perk recipients thanking them, providing some context around our project and letting them know where we stood on the documentation and software. It was a bit more emotional than I expected.
I’d like to share it with you here:
Hi early adopters-
Once again, thank you for backing the RaceCapture/Pro Indiegogo project. This is a very personal experience for me: representing years of work and passion, it wasn’t always smooth: setbacks around problems with early hardware revisions, other project distractions due to lack of focus, and various personal crisis in family, relationships and friendships led to moments where I decided to put this project on the back burner and languish.
It almost didn’t take off! Blaming everything else and just having memories of ‘what could’ve been’ would’ve been the safe thing to do, and thankfully that’s not where we are.
It wasn’t until the the dust settled in my life – especially with my wife (and co-ASL founder) Kelley steadfastly standing by my side – and then later with the enthusiasm, inspiration and encouragement from early team members like Scott Miller, Brian Lalor and Fred Schechter did the push occur to get RaceCapture/Pro past one of what would be many finish lines.
It’s exciting and also a tad scary to see our creation in your hands. It’s left the protected environment of our own testing and our generously-forgiving beta testers and now resides in your possession. You: who actually put money down with no guarantees and just your belief in what we stood for and promised. This is one of many amazing examples of what’s possible in this world, and is why we have been working so hard to honor our commitments to you. And, if something happens, we will communicate it to the best of our abilities.
While we feel pretty great about the current status of the hardware and firmware, the documentation is *currently* light and the associated RaceAnalyzer software *currently* has fewer features than we hoped. Emphasis on ‘currently’. We hope you will ride along and help us test, report bugs, be enthusiastic about frequent software updates, and most importantly, contribute the the community by helping other users get the most out of their RaceCapture/Pro units.
Thanks again for joining us on this journey,
Brent Picasso
Autosport Labs
Hi!!
Congratulations on getting to this point, really! I can’t imagine all the unexpected setbacks and disasters that you had to navigate, on top of all the hard work. I’m one of the people late to the party, and I didn’t make it in the first 25, which is too bad for me. But I am on Data Addict wave 1 list, and I can’t wait to get mine. I tried to contact you through indiegogo, but somehow failed: can I please have one more? Just let me know how to pay 😀
Thanks, and the best of luck going forwards, I’m planning on being a very good (post)beta tester for you guys, but I have a really good racing driver friend who I want to present this as a gift to.
Cheers!
Adi