Have you supported a Kickstarter campaign? Would you do it again? Was the quality of the reward what you expected?
Have you supported a Kickstarter campaign? Would you do it again? Was the quality of the reward what you expected?
Hi David,
I've only supported one Kickstarter with a reasonable sum of money (and I did get a reasonable product back, although severely delayed).
However, I've been referred many KS projects by friends and colleagues for an opinion, and most of the KS projects I have seen were quite bad.
Here are some engineering-related ones that are memorable:
(All photos/images cut and reduced in size and quality for fair use).
30 seconds rechargeable battery - More like gone in 60 seconds, effectively ran off with the money!
It was a flawed project anyway, Dave Jones from EEVBlog did warn people, but people nevertheless invested supported invested gave this guy more than $18k.
Tardis in Space - They attracted more than $88k funding and played with an Arduino and a Monsters Inc balloon in one of their videos, in an effort to design an inflatable tardis! to fit a coke-can sized tube that cost $6000 (they clearly never had a functioning prototype), and not much has been heard since.
Pixeom - A network storage device (i.e. a NAS) that tries to differentiate itself from a NAS by allowing you to play games with and sell things to the small pool of other Pixeom owners (of which there are none today). Delayed by more than a year, of which apparently more than six months was due to shipping problems since January 2015 (and still not shipped at time of writing). The project was advertised here.
Kings Assembly - A keyboard project delayed by more than a year, still not delivered. This comment by the creator is interesting:
OpenPi - A Kickstarter aimed at those wanting to start their own businesses based around the Pi Compute Module. However it is delayed - and often businesses won't have the time to wait. Maybe delayed because they had to spend time redesigning the board. Valid points were raised on Element 14 about the design. Here is just one of the points raised:
(I wonder, did they not spot these issues before burning through £12,000):
We didn't get any thanks for it!
Anyway currently they are blaming a third party (Stickleback).
A very entertaining response shabaz. Thanks. 
There certainly are some "interesting" campaigns out there, this one always stuck in my head:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/779686749/pckeylock-physical-data-protection
And who can resist free energy!
There was a lengthy discussion about this one on EEVBlog
http://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/ifind-another-moot-energy-harvesting-gadget/
You have represented perfectly what I think of Kickstarter projects. The first, is the one where everything shows crap and sensless. Why? Because it is sensless 
The second is the most insidious, I think, there are lot of projects that can "wow"investors and founders: no product (or product without content it is the same) with a super clean marketing image. Can't be missed a 3D model (rotating please), a great promo video where users can't live without the produce, not technology explained buy what does it matter? No matter at all...
Frankly what leave me without words in these projects is how their creators can trust in themselves ... This is a mystery for me.
You have represented perfectly what I think of Kickstarter projects. The first, is the one where everything shows crap and sensless. Why? Because it is sensless
The second is the most insidious, I think, there are lot of projects that can "wow"investors and founders: no product (or product without content it is the same) with a super clean marketing image. Can't be missed a 3D model (rotating please), a great promo video where users can't live without the produce, not technology explained buy what does it matter? No matter at all...
Frankly what leave me without words in these projects is how their creators can trust in themselves ... This is a mystery for me.
