WakeMate: The Home Stretch

[drewcrawford]

A brief history of ship dates:

January 22, 2010: "We've tentatively planned for the first batch of WakeMates to be shipped as early as next month."

March 11, 2010: "the first run of units will go out on March!"

March 31, 2010: "This is the last day of Q1 and we will be shipping out the first units today." (Maybe they did ship out a few? but I was a very early pre-order and didn't get one...)

April 1, 2010: "The next batch of units will ship no later [sic] July 30, 2010. Based on your pre-order date, you should expect your WakeMate no later than 07/30/2010, but probably significantly sooner. This is a conservative estimate; we want to provide you with a firm date. We are confident we can deliver many orders sooner and will continue working night and day to ship yours as soon as possible."

July 20, 2010: "We may not hit the July 31st date at this point, but we’ll come close. We’ll post an updated ship date (measured in days or weeks at worst, not months) when we have a better idea of when it will be"

[subwindow]

I believe they did ship a few dozen units out in Q1. I don't believe they lied in any of those quotes- at worst it looks like they'll miss their July 30 ship date by a week or so. That's not all that bad.

[utku_karatas2]

A concept also known as Valve Time (http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Valve_Time) ;).

[plusbryan]

After spending 8 months wading through the MFI program myself, I concur that it's messy and poorly managed - I'm not surprised that this is part of the reason for the delay. Keep at it, I look forward to mine!

[hop]

Wakemate: I could design you a silicone bracelet and have renderings today, a rapid prototype tmrw, a prototype silicone part made off a cast of the RP in a few days, make changes as desired, then get them tooled and start shipping parts by next month. Just, you know, if your into that sort of thing :)

[spydertennis]

Haha thanks for the offer! We've been thinking about offering different models of wristbands down the line. If you could send me an email (contact[at]wakemate[dot]com) we'd love to talk.

[c1sc0]

What kind of silicon bracelet are you talking about? Something like the LiveStrong? Just curious, what's the cost of these things?

[replicatorblog]

Hi Hop, Curious about your background. Mfg/ID/MechE? Always nice to meet another "Atoms" person here. Shoot me an email at [email protected].

[covercash]

Sometimes I'll forget to turn the A/C on in the summer and I'll wake up drenched in sweat. The new wristband looks like it will soak up an awful lot of sweat and probably start to smell rather funky after a while. Is it washable?

If not, is the monitoring device removable so I can fasten it to my own elastic wristband? I'm thinking along the lines of a FitBit style component that I can clip to my LiveStrong bracelet?

[jordyhoyt]

I am very, very curious about this as well. It is something I hadn't thought about until you mentioned this, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they haven't though of it either. At the very least, giving early adopters a free upgrade to the washable version when it is available would be good.

Luckily, there probably won't be a significant amount of summer left once we get the thing.

[redorb]

http://wakemate.com/tour/

which is still on their site..Is nothing like the final shipping product

http://blog.wakemate.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/wristban...

I would say its a multiple of degrees less 'designed' or 'professional' ...

I still want my pre-order as long as it will ship working with android.

p.s. You need to use your current iteration on your homepage photo; cause the one you have on there now and your current iteration have very very low correlation imho.

[gnemeth]

Original wristband: too big, too heavy, not something I want to wear to bed and the electronics bulge out too far. New wristband:much smaller, much lighter, made of "pillowy" material and hides the electronics.

Overall it is a much more comfortable wristband and a much better user experience.

While the original may have been a little "flashier" we did not want to sacrifice UX for looks, especially when you are only going to be wearing this to bed.

As for our homepage - we need to get the final version of the wristband photographed and then we will be implementing a full design change of our homepage.

[michaelfairley]

The pictured wristband and the concept drawing are not what I would describe as "relatively close". Other than that, I'm excited to get my Wakemate.

[spydertennis]

Good point, post edited. We've learned during the industrial design process that concept drawings can be difficult to realize. The wristband is close to being something we are very happy with.

[mrduncan]

I'm not one of the pre-order customers, but I'm curious if the bracelets are washable, or how they can be cleaned. It seems like it'd need to be laundered just like sheets if you're wearing it every night.

[ryanwaggoner]

So, you're reasonably confident that you'll hit your deadline or come close to it, but your shipping schedule depends entirely on the actions of another company (Apple) who is known for being slow to approve things like this? How does that work?

[roel_v]

Correct. If it's really true that 75% of the dev time has gone into the Apple chip (i.e., iPhone compatibility if I understand it correctly), they could've shipped... what, in March? Screw iPhone then for the first version.

[donaldc]

When WakeMate is finally released, I'd be interested in reading a retrospective by the founders on what they learned, and on what checks/changes to their development approach they have made for version 2. As they are discovering, development with a physical, hardware component can be very different from pure internet startup development. Hopefully any other YC startups with a hardware component are taking note.

I'd still like to buy a WakeMate, once it's proven itself, but I'm rather glad I didn't pre-order.

[asmithmd1]

"As far as we’re aware, no commercial product has made use of Apple’s authentication 2.0B coprocessor chip over Bluetooth yet so we’re not surprised by the number of strange issues we’ve encountered."

Is this why there is a dearth of iPhone/iPad accessories? How much can they talk about their experiences given the fact that the protocol is under an NDA?

[joe_bleau]

Yes! I'm interested in developing i* accesories too. There doesn't seem to be much out there about it. (I have seen the Microchip and Cypress dev kits; probably going to pick up a few.)

[chasingsparks]

I (and many other HN readers, I'm sure) have had this idea plenty of times. If you wake up in one of those bad regions, you really are so much less productive. I'm glad someone is building this. Once it looks like the kinks are out, I'm ordering one for sure.

[jrockway]

A similar product has already existed for years; the Zeo.

[axiom]

Is there some specific reason they worked so hard to make it sync with the iPhone over bluetooth? as opposed to, say, syncing with your laptop over bluetooth, or just make the thing log data and then sync to a computer via USB. Is it purely the sex-appeal of having an iPhone related product?

[clewiston]

when iphone users make up the majority of your preorders (and supposedly market), then yes it does matter. if we had just launched for Blackberry and Android, we would not be having these delays...

[gridspy]

Congratulations WakeMate on making it this far. I fully understand how very hard it is to create a hardware product, it takes much longer than you expect to get to the great quality level that hardware requires.

[mcritz]

I'm also really interested in the product and I can't wait to hear what the early adopters have to report.

I'm also really interested to know what was learned about working with Apple on a hardware interface.

[SoftwareMaven]

Anybody use one yet (outside the WakeMate guys)? I am VERY interested in this product, but am not quite willing to be on the bleeding edge. :)

[pclark]

So with WakeMate I'll have to wear a bracelet and keep an app running on my iPhone whilst I sleep?

[swolchok]

Unlike the ship dates, that aspect of the product has been very consistent for months, yes. (It's not entirely clear whether you have to keep the app running, but you probably do, and the bracelet is the whole point.)

[mcantor]

Plans for an Android version?

[itsandrew]

http://blog.wakemate.com/2010/06/25/wakemate-android-demo/

[clistctrl]

I definitely would order this if they come out with support for WebOS.

[catch23]

Hah! WebOS is dead.