A few weeks away from shipping the world's most powerful and creative robots to over 100 countries! Here is your June 13th 2014 Revolution shipping update! :)
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Excellent production and great information. It's exciting to see how it's all coming along and how much work and time is going into the "little things" like packaging. I love the detail.
Hehehe, yeah the assembly will take some time. Our little assembly elves have thousands of robots to build. It's crazy when you think about how many pieces need to be assembled. There are well over 15,000 to be assembled in the next month! EAK
Also we are waiting on our FCC and CE certifications - that is super important to us to demonstrate how this product is 100% legit consumer grade quality! This is what separates us from the all hobby and maker products. We care about energy consumption, radio interference and ultimately the reliability of our robots
Packaging is crazy - there is a shipping measurement called "Volumetric Weight". And that is what shipping companies do to identify costs based on size, even though the package weighs nothing. There are specific weight ranges between sizes of the parcel.
For example, with some of our boxes if we make it 1 cm larger it will cost an additional $30 to ship! The level of detail required to design a box from scratch is quite complicated. There are also details to consider with product placement and storage on shelves of retail centers.
A Best Buy or Microcenter uses math to calculate product revenue vs shelf space as well!
Also international support for languages is mandatory for some retail outlets and distribution centers. We are designing sleeves which fit over the boxes for a variety of languages as well.
Amazing to think that even packaging is a huge process!
Wow that seems like a lot of work to do within one month's worth of time. Assuming that you guys start shipping Monday from the last week of July, it's like assembling about 484 robots a day. Not including the ez-b kits. Anywho I really like the packaging it sort of reminds me of the packaging from Darwin op (I don't know if you guys have seen it) only we get to put our robot together :-)
There is a huge team behind our manufacturing It's not 484 robots per day - it's parts per day. What a lot of people do not know is the actual size of EZ-Robot is much larger than the staff employed in our r&d facility.
It makes sense to keep the core team small, while contracting services to companies which they do best. For example, we have two contract companies in Montreal. One handles our manufacturing project management and Chinese relationship. The other is a CAD firm who takes our plastic designs and creates engineering documents with tolerance specifications and details required for mold creation. We have a few companies in China which manufacture and source our components - even the screws for the EZ-Robot parts are custom made and are 100% unique to our requirements. There is also a company who creates the custom gears for our Roli robot. There is one company who creates our molds, and they outsource to another company for assistance because we have many molds. Then there is our electronic manufacturer who builds the PCB's.
We also have a company who handles all of our electrical components supply. They work in both China and North America. This ensures the electrical components we use are of highest quality and meet FCC and CE certifications.
There is yet another company who creates our boxes and laser cuts the high density foam of the packages.
We also have a company who assembles all of the components, tests and packages them.
Finally, we have a shipping and logistics company who stocks our inventory and drop ships directly to your door and retail supply chain.
On top of all that, we have legal help to ensure insurance and contracts are in place for retail distribution.
For education, we have two companies which represent our product in schools. One is in Texas and works directly with the state, who is replacing Lego Mindstorms with our product in schools. The other is in Canada and is an ex-employee of EZ-Robot who deals across North American schools and institutions.
The core design and quality is engineered at our facility in Calgary Alberta Canada by our amazing staff. We then hand the components off to respective 3rd party contract relations. The end product is then reviewed and authenticated by us.
This is a product which will make history - because of that, we know it must be the quality you expect from us
Its awesome that you have the Texas schools going to your platform. That has to be a HUGE order. Congrats on that and even more congrats on the progress you are making. I can't wait to get my hands on the products. Great video and thanks for the update.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone! Packaging has definitely been quite a process, but an AWESOME process. I can't wait to open the revolution prototypes!
it sounds like ez robot is very diverse with many parts spread across the globe. Subcontractors seems to be the best way to go nowadays to be stay in business and save money. You guys are kinda like that Swedish group "The Borg Colective"!
Thank you for adding finger holes, that was my one gripe with the V3 packaging, no finger holes so getting the parts out was a bit of a pain (the servos more than anything else).
I do love the magic box lid that turns the right way up when zoomed in to
So like when will EZB finally have its stockroom full of hardware ready to ship? Id like to order, but
only if it can be expressed overnight shipment to me.
robohappy, sadly if you're not on the pre-order it will take a while for us to catch up with the number of pre-orders and school boards. But if you are patient, we'd love to see you join the revolution
Working on your packaging and getting electronics proofed. These sound like things that could and should have been done 9 months ago for a product that was promised to be delivered in December 2013.
@raygeeknyc.... Ray, Ray, Ray.... now, now... It's talk like that... that will get ones order put at the end of the line for shipping.... Kinda' like complaining about food in a restaurant...you know they are taking it in the back to spit in it... At least wait until you order ships before dumping on EZ Robot...
Edit Not going to change my original post here, but I want everyone to know, I am just yankin' Ray's chain a little.... I am just joking around.... (someone thought I was serious so I am setting the mood straight here.... See, smiley face...
not one product comes out on the wanted date.the sooner they come out,the more change you got errors in.and then you be twice dissepointed.
take for excample the NAO robot,was never intented to come out for public.and look what happen,
bam not one but two robots came out.
zoomer dog came out soon.and all had problems whit charging.you dont hear off zoomer no more,
aldo not much.i see prizes drop more then half.
in a way dj&ream are also newbie's ,how it all must be done corectly.you have only one chot,
to make it right.so that the product keeps selling for many years to come.
do that doesn make the waiting easier.dj&team where wrong in the dilivery date.
but that allreddy in the past.
on one point am not agree whit you.if a person made an pre-order,he chould get his order ,
on that date that was set for him.no matter he's wright or wrong.
if you put this person at the bottem off the chipping. list for that .thats abuse off power..
i hope dj&team will never torelerate this kind off abuse.sorry
@raygeeknyc - The Power base and EZ-B shell changed a bit in the last months, so we held off finalizing the packaging mockups until everything was final. We knew there are always minor tweak so we saved the packaging for last so it would not be done pre-maturely. The electronics on the other hand were 99% designed many months ago but we were putting the final tweaks on them now as we were testing internally. Now we are receiving fully built ones from our facility overseas and must go through an approval process to ensure nothing was lost in translation So far everything is looking great and we are impressed with their workmanship!
@raygeeknyc thanks for your feedback There had been delays in our plastic manufacturing - which prevented us from shipping a reliable product in December. Firstly, we had investigated on how injection mold was created and used the 3D Printers for prototyping. Turns out there is a much greater level of discipline to producing parts for injection mold. We ended up hiring a third party company to modify our plastic designs for the injection mold process - and in turn, educate our staff for the future.
we have nearly 20 physical molds because there are so many parts. Most of the complicated electronics in your life can be manufactured on a single mold with multiple cavities. We have nearly 20 times that in size. This was one of the biggest endeavours to create Revolution that the world has seen in robotics to date. Not only with the number of plastics to fulfill the creative requirements of building custom robots with Clip'n'Play ....
I'm not sure if you have monitored some of the posts with videos of customers who have already received their EZ-B v4 - but it is a revolutionary piece of electronic hardware. Yes, we could have had the electronics manufactured and sitting on shelves waiting for the plastics many months ago with a huge sacrifice to features.
Have you noticed in the ARC Release Notes since December how many new features have been added to the physical electronic design of the EZ-B v4? Not only that, but also the Camera and RGB Block? Every week or so there had been physical electronic design changes with new features for those components. While we were waiting on the plastics to be DFM (design for manufacturing), we did what made sense - give our customers an even more powerful product than they first imaged!
So yes, we sure could have had the electronics completed in December while they sat on a shelf waiting for plastics. But then you wouldn't have as many features on the EZ-B.
The number of tasks and the size of this project is vast - and I mean huge. The EZ-Robot Team has been absolutely amazing in what we have achieved with such a small headcount. Out of tens of thousands of supporters in our endeavour to provide the world with a revolutionary robot product that will literally change the industry
PS, I would absolutely never modify the order of shipment. Mainly because I obviously believe in karma and doing the right thing - but also because it would be difficult to manipulate the Point Of Sale system! I designed it too well! Haha
@nomad18.08 we would never move a person's order on the pre-order list over a post. the community is meant to be a forum for both positive feedback AND criticism. It matters a lot to us what you guys think, both good and bad. In the end it will make us a better company with a stronger product. Diamonds are made under pressure ;-)
Additionally as a salesman...I am like an attack dog at the end of his leash ready for the Revolution to begin!
Just to back it all up and confirm things, I made a post a few months back openly stating my disappointment and frustrations with the delays and lack of information regarding the delays yet I was amongst the first to receive the V4 board (I believe mine was the first to be shipped out) and updates and answers have been regularly given. So it's certainly not held against anyone if they give constructive criticism or justified complaint/disappointment.
So, as Richard has said, he was just kidding and as everyone else has said, order of dispatch remains unchanged. If EZ-Robot was like that I certainly wouldn't have stuck around let alone helped out on the forum as much as I do
Also, over the last 18 months that I've been an active member here I've noticed that they (EZ-Robots) take community feedback very seriously and value all feedback both positive and negative, take it on board and, when possible/required, do something about it. As I said, we now have regular updates on the Revolution even when it continues to remain on track, after the initial flood of "What, more delays? What's going on?!" posts Jason Z almost immediately started an "ask me anything" topic for any questions or concerns.
@Stika I think we are all like that aren't we? I know I can't wait for revolution to hit, I can't wait to see what people do with their Six, Roli or JD.
We definitely appreciate all the feedback. I'm really happy to see our products getting so near to completion. It's really exciting! And, as Jake and DJ said, we're not going to bump anyone's order down, that's silly!
I think we all get that Richard R was kidding. I didn't mind that joke at all - I think it's easy to understand and I hope the fact that it's just a joke was clear to everyone. If it wasn't, it should be now.
Sorry, guys... As you know, it's hard to express "tone" in written posts.... I'll try to "tone"' (sorry about the pun) it down a little in future posts...
However, I am pretty sure my Roli order is at the back of the line now....
Man, this forum is going to explode with posts in the next few months....
Here is a thought... Since apparently a lot of people who ordered are not regular participants on the forum (for instance, this was @raygeeknyc's first post), and we know that a lot of EZ-Robot's email updates have wound up in spam or junk folders, maybe you could post a summery of the product updates, and the most recent product update video on the "orders" page, so when someone goes to check their order status, the first thing they see is an explanation of why they are still waiting and an expectation of when orders will start to ship.
@Richard, as punishment I think you should be required to remotely operate your Roli over the internet and guide him on his journey from China to Canada (that would make an awesome video!)
End of July for revolution robots? Noooo haha oh well it's almost here am feeling exited
Excellent production and great information. It's exciting to see how it's all coming along and how much work and time is going into the "little things" like packaging. I love the detail.
Hehehe, yeah the assembly will take some time. Our little assembly elves have thousands of robots to build. It's crazy when you think about how many pieces need to be assembled. There are well over 15,000 to be assembled in the next month! EAK
Also we are waiting on our FCC and CE certifications - that is super important to us to demonstrate how this product is 100% legit consumer grade quality! This is what separates us from the all hobby and maker products. We care about energy consumption, radio interference and ultimately the reliability of our robots
Packaging is crazy - there is a shipping measurement called "Volumetric Weight". And that is what shipping companies do to identify costs based on size, even though the package weighs nothing. There are specific weight ranges between sizes of the parcel.
For example, with some of our boxes if we make it 1 cm larger it will cost an additional $30 to ship! The level of detail required to design a box from scratch is quite complicated. There are also details to consider with product placement and storage on shelves of retail centers.
A Best Buy or Microcenter uses math to calculate product revenue vs shelf space as well!
Also international support for languages is mandatory for some retail outlets and distribution centers. We are designing sleeves which fit over the boxes for a variety of languages as well.
Amazing to think that even packaging is a huge process!
Wow that seems like a lot of work to do within one month's worth of time. Assuming that you guys start shipping Monday from the last week of July, it's like assembling about 484 robots a day. Not including the ez-b kits. Anywho I really like the packaging it sort of reminds me of the packaging from Darwin op (I don't know if you guys have seen it) only we get to put our robot together :-)
There is a huge team behind our manufacturing
It's not 484 robots per day - it's parts per day. What a lot of people do not know is the actual size of EZ-Robot is much larger than the staff employed in our r&d facility.
It makes sense to keep the core team small, while contracting services to companies which they do best. For example, we have two contract companies in Montreal. One handles our manufacturing project management and Chinese relationship. The other is a CAD firm who takes our plastic designs and creates engineering documents with tolerance specifications and details required for mold creation. We have a few companies in China which manufacture and source our components - even the screws for the EZ-Robot parts are custom made and are 100% unique to our requirements. There is also a company who creates the custom gears for our Roli robot. There is one company who creates our molds, and they outsource to another company for assistance because we have many molds. Then there is our electronic manufacturer who builds the PCB's.
We also have a company who handles all of our electrical components supply. They work in both China and North America. This ensures the electrical components we use are of highest quality and meet FCC and CE certifications.
There is yet another company who creates our boxes and laser cuts the high density foam of the packages.
We also have a company who assembles all of the components, tests and packages them.
Finally, we have a shipping and logistics company who stocks our inventory and drop ships directly to your door and retail supply chain.
On top of all that, we have legal help to ensure insurance and contracts are in place for retail distribution.
For education, we have two companies which represent our product in schools. One is in Texas and works directly with the state, who is replacing Lego Mindstorms with our product in schools. The other is in Canada and is an ex-employee of EZ-Robot who deals across North American schools and institutions.
The core design and quality is engineered at our facility in Calgary Alberta Canada by our amazing staff. We then hand the components off to respective 3rd party contract relations. The end product is then reviewed and authenticated by us.
This is a product which will make history - because of that, we know it must be the quality you expect from us
Wow that's amazing what's also amazing is the complete kit is shipping in the end of June. Can't wait. Just a few more weeks
Its awesome that you have the Texas schools going to your platform. That has to be a HUGE order. Congrats on that and even more congrats on the progress you are making. I can't wait to get my hands on the products. Great video and thanks for the update.
Still six weeks before shipping of robot kits!
So it will be August before I get my robot kits!
J
That is great feedback. Thank's for the info. Really appreciated
Thanks for all the feedback everyone! Packaging has definitely been quite a process, but an AWESOME process. I can't wait to open the revolution prototypes!
it sounds like ez robot is very diverse with many parts spread across the globe. Subcontractors seems to be the best way to go nowadays to be stay in business and save money. You guys are kinda like that Swedish group "The Borg Colective"!
count down has started.1 month to go.
Thank you for adding finger holes, that was my one gripe with the V3 packaging, no finger holes so getting the parts out was a bit of a pain (the servos more than anything else).
I do love the magic box lid that turns the right way up when zoomed in to
Rich, leave it to you to catch that! I notice everything, but that's my OCD perfectionist side
So like when will EZB finally have its stockroom full of hardware ready to ship? Id like to order, but only if it can be expressed overnight shipment to me.
robohappy, sadly if you're not on the pre-order it will take a while for us to catch up with the number of pre-orders and school boards. But if you are patient, we'd love to see you join the revolution
Working on your packaging and getting electronics proofed. These sound like things that could and should have been done 9 months ago for a product that was promised to be delivered in December 2013.
@raygeeknyc.... Ray, Ray, Ray.... now, now... It's talk like that... that will get ones order put at the end of the line for shipping.... Kinda' like complaining about food in a restaurant...you know they are taking it in the back to spit in it... At least wait until you order ships before dumping on EZ Robot...
Edit Not going to change my original post here, but I want everyone to know, I am just yankin' Ray's chain a little.... I am just joking around.... (someone thought I was serious so I am setting the mood straight here.... See, smiley face...
not one product comes out on the wanted date.the sooner they come out,the more change you got errors in.and then you be twice dissepointed.
take for excample the NAO robot,was never intented to come out for public.and look what happen, bam not one but two robots came out.
zoomer dog came out soon.and all had problems whit charging.you dont hear off zoomer no more, aldo not much.i see prizes drop more then half.
in a way dj&ream are also newbie's ,how it all must be done corectly.you have only one chot, to make it right.so that the product keeps selling for many years to come.
do that doesn make the waiting easier.dj&team where wrong in the dilivery date. but that allreddy in the past.
richard R
on one point am not agree whit you.if a person made an pre-order,he chould get his order , on that date that was set for him.no matter he's wright or wrong. if you put this person at the bottem off the chipping. list for that .thats abuse off power..
i hope dj&team will never torelerate this kind off abuse.sorry
@raygeeknyc - The Power base and EZ-B shell changed a bit in the last months, so we held off finalizing the packaging mockups until everything was final. We knew there are always minor tweak so we saved the packaging for last so it would not be done pre-maturely. The electronics on the other hand were 99% designed many months ago but we were putting the final tweaks on them now as we were testing internally. Now we are receiving fully built ones from our facility overseas and must go through an approval process to ensure nothing was lost in translation
So far everything is looking great and we are impressed with their workmanship!
@raygeeknyc thanks for your feedback
There had been delays in our plastic manufacturing - which prevented us from shipping a reliable product in December. Firstly, we had investigated on how injection mold was created and used the 3D Printers for prototyping. Turns out there is a much greater level of discipline to producing parts for injection mold. We ended up hiring a third party company to modify our plastic designs for the injection mold process - and in turn, educate our staff for the future.
we have nearly 20 physical molds because there are so many parts. Most of the complicated electronics in your life can be manufactured on a single mold with multiple cavities. We have nearly 20 times that in size. This was one of the biggest endeavours to create Revolution that the world has seen in robotics to date. Not only with the number of plastics to fulfill the creative requirements of building custom robots with Clip'n'Play ....
I'm not sure if you have monitored some of the posts with videos of customers who have already received their EZ-B v4 - but it is a revolutionary piece of electronic hardware. Yes, we could have had the electronics manufactured and sitting on shelves waiting for the plastics many months ago with a huge sacrifice to features.
Have you noticed in the ARC Release Notes since December how many new features have been added to the physical electronic design of the EZ-B v4? Not only that, but also the Camera and RGB Block? Every week or so there had been physical electronic design changes with new features for those components. While we were waiting on the plastics to be DFM (design for manufacturing), we did what made sense - give our customers an even more powerful product than they first imaged!
So yes, we sure could have had the electronics completed in December while they sat on a shelf waiting for plastics. But then you wouldn't have as many features on the EZ-B.
The number of tasks and the size of this project is vast - and I mean huge. The EZ-Robot Team has been absolutely amazing in what we have achieved with such a small headcount. Out of tens of thousands of supporters in our endeavour to provide the world with a revolutionary robot product that will literally change the industry
PS, I would absolutely never modify the order of shipment. Mainly because I obviously believe in karma and doing the right thing - but also because it would be difficult to manipulate the Point Of Sale system! I designed it too well! Haha
@nomad18.08... I was totally kidding dude... I was trying to make Ray laugh a little...
richard r ,& dj thank you
@nomad18.08 we would never move a person's order on the pre-order list over a post. the community is meant to be a forum for both positive feedback AND criticism. It matters a lot to us what you guys think, both good and bad. In the end it will make us a better company with a stronger product. Diamonds are made under pressure ;-)
Additionally as a salesman...I am like an attack dog at the end of his leash ready for the Revolution to begin!
i better watsh out then,ggggggrrrr blush
its good to know,thank you
Haha that came out wrong...poor example Jake. I didn't mean I'd attack you guys, I meant I'd attack the market...sigh stress
Just to back it all up and confirm things, I made a post a few months back openly stating my disappointment and frustrations with the delays and lack of information regarding the delays yet I was amongst the first to receive the V4 board (I believe mine was the first to be shipped out) and updates and answers have been regularly given. So it's certainly not held against anyone if they give constructive criticism or justified complaint/disappointment.
So, as Richard has said, he was just kidding and as everyone else has said, order of dispatch remains unchanged. If EZ-Robot was like that I certainly wouldn't have stuck around let alone helped out on the forum as much as I do
Also, over the last 18 months that I've been an active member here I've noticed that they (EZ-Robots) take community feedback very seriously and value all feedback both positive and negative, take it on board and, when possible/required, do something about it. As I said, we now have regular updates on the Revolution even when it continues to remain on track, after the initial flood of "What, more delays? What's going on?!" posts Jason Z almost immediately started an "ask me anything" topic for any questions or concerns.
@Stika I think we are all like that aren't we? I know I can't wait for revolution to hit, I can't wait to see what people do with their Six, Roli or JD.
We definitely appreciate all the feedback. I'm really happy to see our products getting so near to completion. It's really exciting! And, as Jake and DJ said, we're not going to bump anyone's order down, that's silly!
I think we all get that Richard R was kidding.
I didn't mind that joke at all - I think it's easy to understand and I hope the fact that it's just a joke was clear to everyone. If it wasn't, it should be now. 
Sorry, guys... As you know, it's hard to express "tone" in written posts.... I'll try to "tone"' (sorry about the pun) it down a little in future posts...
However, I am pretty sure my Roli order is at the back of the line now....
Man, this forum is going to explode with posts in the next few months....
Cheers Richard
Here is a thought... Since apparently a lot of people who ordered are not regular participants on the forum (for instance, this was @raygeeknyc's first post), and we know that a lot of EZ-Robot's email updates have wound up in spam or junk folders, maybe you could post a summery of the product updates, and the most recent product update video on the "orders" page, so when someone goes to check their order status, the first thing they see is an explanation of why they are still waiting and an expectation of when orders will start to ship.
Alan
@Richard, as punishment I think you should be required to remotely operate your Roli over the internet and guide him on his journey from China to Canada (that would make an awesome video!)
A slightly longer version of @jasonh 's video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IreUCKTxbbg&feature=youtu.be
richard r
you kidding again,
@Rich... LOL... Ez robot needs a 4th robot then... EZ Boat.... I grudgingly accept my punishment... stress