Dear Wakemate, WTF is up? | Hacker News Reader

Dear Wakemate, WTF is up?

34 pointskilian8 comments

Dear Wakemate,

Since I know you Wakemate folks frequents HN, let's talk. I really want to like you. I love your product and can't wait to get my hands on it. I recommended you to anyone that would listen.

However, we have a problem.

Your last twitter message was on march 19th, promising shipping details soon. Your last e-mail to me was on the first of April, telling me you are shipping (to who? not to me!) Your last blog post was on the 26th of April, promising us all more updates (and photos) and clarity. That means your last effort to communicate was almost a month ago, and you were claiming 'updates in the coming weeks', no less.

This is a reminder: You still have to do so.

I gave you 5 dollars on the promise of having the Wakemate in my hands in January. No, it's not about the money. It's about trust. Now, I understand hardware is hard, and I understand if demand requires you to retool some stuff. That's okay. Just let me know.

Let me repeat: we have a problem, now what can you do about it?

Yours, A disappointed customer

How about we just crowdsource a DIY WakeMate? The hardware part is just a microcontroller, bluetooth transceiver, and 3-axis accelerometer powered by a watch battery. Sure, the package will be kinda huge when you build it yourself unless you're adventurous enough to etch a PCB and wavesolder it. The firmware just needs to periodically dump buffered samples over bluetooth and let an external app do the heavy lifting.

I should make clear that I'm not knocking on the WakeMate guys at all. Making a production-quality product at scale is a lot harder than hacking something together in your basement.

I was actually looking for new updates from wakemate just yesterday. From their response to a comment on the latest blog entry ( http://blog.wakemate.com/2010/04/26/questions-answered/#comm... ), they don't have their app in the iphone app store yet, and are currently distributing their app ad-hoc (which apparently has a 200 phone limit).

I understand being back logged, but this means they haven't even shipped more than say 500 units yet. I know they said their original manufacture process was not scalable... but you can't make a couple hundred devices in 6 months?

Also, they claim they have shipped some devices, but I haven't seen a review or positive word about one yet. I believe they probably have a few (at least prototypes), but I am less and less sure that any real customers have one.

In the meantime they have announced new premium features (free for pre-orderers), and redesigned their online store. I know it's not the same guys who do manufacturing versus coding, but it does not look good when you have a major problem, and are spending your time improving your store (which sells non-existent products).

Just to continue this, you deleted your official Facebook page. Why?! Here's the only customer made Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=101242166584007

It's pissing off a lot of people who yet still continue to want your product. Listen to them, talk to them. And by them, I of course mean us.

From the order page: "We're not asking for a password now because your Wakemate isn't ready to ship.".

So apparently they are not shipping at all yet, or maybe they are, see:

http://wakemate.posterous.com/

That is their old blog:

   P.S. You’re not crazy — our blog has moved! The old blog is still available at http://wakemate.posterous.com — though it will redirect here for a couple days.

Here's the current one: http://blog.wakemate.com/

This Wakemate think is terrible fiasco. It's just ridiculous at this point.

I'd all but forgotten about WakeMate, and they too have my 5 dollars. Here's hoping they get their act together soon, because my sleep cycle is still quite bad.

In the meantime, if you have an iPhone try the "Sleep Cycle" app. It uses the iPhone's accelerometer to track your sleep cycle.

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