Change Release Notes
Hello World! We at Synthiam have been working hard developing ARC and all the amazing features that make your robot smarter. We've been trying to keep up with developing feature requests as well! However, millions of lines of code takes a lot of time and effort - and it's not something we can afford to do for free any longer. We've been exploring a variety of ways to implement a financial compensation model around the ARC software that doesn't dent your wallet - which we've released today
.
Inspired by many conversations on the forum and in real life, we've identified a great model that serves us all. We hope you're excited to participate in the licensing model to help fund additional features! I can tell you that we're really excited as well.
You Can Do It!
Please do us a huge solid, visit the ARC product page and press that 'Buy' button while we start checking off feature request items to make your robots even more awesome!
And for those of you who can't afford to support us with a license, ARC can still be used with basic functionality for free.
New ARC Editions You may notice a few other changes, such as removing the ARC Beta. That's because we've implemented an internal beta program for testing bugs before they get to you (fingers crossed). This allows us to split ARC into two editions, for those who love immediate new features and bug fixes and those who want months before updating. They've been named ARC Pro and ARC Free respectively.
Premium Support In addition to the new licensing model - we've also implemented a premium support system. This is real cool because it allows you to directly work with one of us to solve a programming, hardware or design problem (over email, of course). You get 1 free premium support per month with a license, and you can purchase additional requests. Or, if you don't have a license, you can still purchase a request (but it costs more).
Let's Get Robot'ing! This new change allows us to focus our time where it counts - developing ARC software features! Now that we won't have to worry as much about keeping the lights on, we can spend more time programming! Beep bleep boop
Upgrading All of your preinstalled plugin skills will require to be updated. With an internet connecting during ARC’s loading, you will be prompted. Due to a number of improvements, the legacy plugin system isn’t compatible with the new ARC.
Sincerely,
- DJ, Jer, Valentin, & Amin
ARC Downloads
ARC Free
Free
- Includes one free 3rd party plugin robot skill per project
- Trial cloud services
- Free with trial limitations
For schools, personal use & organizations. This edition is updated every 6-12 months.
ARC Pro
Only $8.99/mo
- 2 or more PCs simultaneously
- Includes unlimited skills
- Cloud backup
- And much more
Experience the latest features and bug fixes weekly. A Pro subscription is required to use this edition.
Runtime
Free
- Load and run any ARC project
- Operates in read-only mode
- Unlimited robot skills
- Early access fixes & features
Have you finished programming your robot? Use this to run existing ARC projects for free*.
- Minimum requirements are Windows 10 or higher with 2+gb ram and 500+MB free space.
- Recommended requirements are Windows 10 or higher with 8+gb ram and 1000+MB free space.
- Prices are in USD.
- ARC Free known-issues can be viewed by clicking here.
- Get more information about each ARC edition by clicking here.
- See what's new in the latest versions with Release notes.
Compare Editions
| Feature | ARC FREE |
ARC PRO |
|---|---|---|
| Get ARC for Free | View Plans | |
| Usage | Personal DIY Education |
Personal DIY Education Business |
| Early access to new features & fixes | Yes | |
| Simultaneous microcontroller connections* | 1 | 255 |
| Robot skills* | 20 | Unlimited |
| Skill Store plugins* | 1 | Unlimited |
| Cognitive services usage** | 10/day | 6,000/day |
| Auto-positions gait actions* | 40 | Unlimited |
| Speech recongition phrases* | 10 | Unlimited |
| Camera devices* | 1 | Unlimited |
| Vision resolution | max 320x240 | Unlimited |
| Interface builder* | 2 | Unlimited |
| Cloud project size | 128 MB | |
| Cloud project revision history | Yes | |
| Create Exosphere requests | 50/month | |
| Exosphere API access | Contact Us | |
| Volume license discounts | Contact Us | |
| Get ARC for Free | View Plans |
** 1,000 per cognitive type (vision recognition, speech recognition, face detection, sentiment, text recognition, emotion detection, azure text to speech)
Upgrade to ARC Pro
Join the ARC Pro community and gain access to a wealth of resources and support, ensuring your robot's success.
Sure - rub it in Nink! We've been hit with a pretty big cold front... Don't worry, we'll be sending it your way soon
As for the topic of currency - it is a tough one and we dealt with it A LOT at ezrobot. But it's not fair to blame the company because we're at mercy of the retail software. In this case, Stripe. There's no easy way to have multiple currencies. We can display the amount in a currency, but can't actually charge different currencies easily. Also, if you think Stripe is bad - wait till you see what we had to deal with PayPal ugh.
What we have may not be perfect, but it's darn near close enough! And with the positive response from so many people who subscribed, it makes my heart warm to know we have so many supporters. The most interesting thing i find is how many people don't post - or - most likely don't even visit the forum at all. Remember, Synthiam has almost 40,000 users! We're approaching 3 million robot connections - wow
PS, i moved the community robot discussion here: https://synthiam.com/Community/Questions/Community-combined-robot-build-19949
Hey Ya Nink me too in Oakville all my Millionaire Neighbors are driving around still in their BMW's and Lamborgini's wearing shorts and T-shirts,LOL! I just went out in my old Fiero GT to get groceries(Trying to blend in LOL!) and it will be nice the next 2 days still. Hey Dave your statement reminds me of the Classic Conan movie "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" of course I'm a Terminator Fan so I also enjoy the classic Arnold Conan movies too.:D
Sorry about taking the thread off the tracks. Sometimes I just can't keep my mouth shut.
Firstly, I am thankful DJ Sures for your passion, expertise & overall input into my world. I've been around for a bit, since the early days when updates came daily and odd things broke unexpectedly. I appreciated your amazing efforts at implementing our individual requests at short notice. I thought it an amazing privilege to be mentioned in your posts and even more on occasion to have your personal attention.
I have been connected to the community since June 2012 and strongly supported the project but have not been very vocal in recent years as my focus has been more about enabling the next generation of robot builders. I have only given limited attention to the community, but noticed the upgrades in product and delivery but also realised that monetization of your work after the many years of development would become an eventuality.
Today I began recharging our minions ready for the final fun part of the school year - the term 4 home straight. The students were excited, knowing what's coming and decided to help with the software update. It's been our senior student focus in the final months of the year for quite a while now.
You see I have 15 little robots for my students in our small NZ school and a couple for myself at home to keep myself upskilled and just ahead of the students. It took me quite a bit of effort to get the boards into the country as our exchange rate was triple at the time, not forgetting to include the frightful freight and import duties to this part of the world. Overall it was an expensive little venture. Parents helped me cobbled together our small herd of bots over several nights.
I now have a problem. My teaching programme for the final term of the year revolves around EZ-Robot.... My students all sit in different seats each week, use different bots, and use different devices to work with their bots. Most have or are experimenting with different plugins. I've even had them talking to one another via MQTT.
What do I do now? I cannot now use our robots. The subscription fee is completely prohibitive for my small school and the budget was spent last month/ No more funds will March next year.
While I can understand that any future purchasers of boards should expect to have to pay for software on a subscription basis as is the trending model, to introduce this to existing well established and entrenched users leaves me at a loss. I clearly understood the hardware came bundled with software and that updates would not be forever but I am now hamstrung. I cannot go forward or backward it seems!
Tameion, you can continue to use the free version with the ezrobot projects. There’s a few limitations but it won’t affect the provided curriculum
. Talk with ezrobot as well, as they’re your product supplier and have access to work with you on bulk licensing IF that’s even required.
The only limitations to the free software is adding third party plugins and high number of speech recognition, etc.. The basic ezrobot features work under the free version. The third party plugins only require subscription - as they’re third party and it requires out software development efforts.
Not to dismiss the half a million lines of code that makes the free version run
haha. But we’re considering that to be ezrobot legacy usage, so ill absorb that maintenance cost internally. The add-on third party plugins is where most of the development effort resides.
Hmmmm so I thought someone mentioned paying with PayPal.but the monthly Pro price said only debit or credit,no Paypal option to be found?
robo rad
there is no paypal for the pro year membership .
I tried for the monthly Pro subscription, What does it mean by debit card,can I just try with what I have a bank card?