As many of you already know, to meet our late August delivery to our Kickstarter backers and other folks we have been working flat out on the development and manufacturing of our LoPy…. and we have indeed made good progress.
However, unfortunately, there will be a slight delay…yeah, trust us, we’re just as upset as you!
There’s no good way of conveying bad news so we’ll just opt for honesty: It’s been completely outside of our control.
The delay is caused by the ESP32 chip not being available for volume production until middle of September.
We will get the first batch of production grade chips in time to start the FCC/CE certification this month, but the volume chips will take a few more weeks to reach us.
Our manufacturing partners and suppliers have pulled out all the stops to shorten the supply process for our new LoPy modules and we are deeply grateful.
We always knew we had a bit of risk in developing alongside Espressif’s own ESP32 development and honestly, they have done an amazing job keeping us posted and supporting us in parallel during their own manufacturing and development process (Thank you Teo and team!).
We continue to work closely with them to ensure we get maximum performance from this absolutely amazing chip including the fact that the LoPy will have a 1KM WIFI RANGE… did we forget to mention that? and did we also forget to mention that this will be available on all Pycom boards going forward? Yep, we’re pretty excited about that too!
LOPY KITS SHIPPING
We will get all Kickstarter kits out to all of you shipping from both Netherlands and UK on the 26 September and we expect to have all European orders fulfilled within 48 hours of receiving the LoPys. If you ordered a Pycase then we will contact you shortly to confirm choice of colour (Clear, Smoke, Blue or Green).
A FEW OTHER MILESTONES
This Autumn, we’re launching the Pymakr IDE for 3 proficiency levels: Enterprise, Lite and Starter (Linux, OS and Windows).
18th August: Pymakr ENTERPRISE which offers the richest feature set, configuration options, and a detailed project view and it is aimed at (surprise surprise, enterprise developers).
1st September: The Pymakr LITE version has a simpler GUI and a somewhat cleaner look.
19th September: The Pymakr STARTER version which integrates Blocky, a powerful and super friendly visual tool that lets you build your App using interlocking, graphical blocks to represent code concepts like variables, logical expressions, loops, and the hardware peripherals of the LoPy and WiPy.
All 3 versions of the IDE have a built-in REPL and will let you configure and upload your scripts to the Pycom boards with just a few clicks.
8th September: we launch Pymate mobile app for IOS. It lets you control all your Pycom modules from the convenience of your mobile phone. Besides having a broad set of widgets to visualize data and control any Pycom powered devices, Pymate gives you a configuration wizard that gets you from step1: unpacking your LoPy, to Step x: your first dashboard in less than 2 minutes – and this is without having to write a single line of code. Awesome, right?
24th October: Launch of the Pymate for Android.
We will have a few more uber exciting pieces of news (yes, more manufacturing of new products) for you in Q4 so please do make sure you and your mates subscribe to Pycom’s news on our Blog here. That’s where we’re posting everything about our news and products going forward.
We are confident that you, our Pyoneers, have many exciting applications to build using your LoPy and while doing so, each and every one of you will help us disrupt a little more…and for that we Thank You!
Fred and the Pycom Team