Kickstarter update #16 — EU/UK/US/CA batches en route, delays risk, international backers up next

Nov 22, 2024

Update: #16

Author: GLORB Team (SNRGY Studios AB)

Date: 2024-11-22

What’s in this update

📦 EU + UK batches on the way and as expected
🚨 USA + Canada batches shipped with risks of freight delays
🌏 Rest of the World batch on schedule
📰 Some extra news

DEAR GLORBIANS!

As you know production is in full capacity and containers for EU + UK are approaching the redistribution center in Czech Republic and USA + Canada are on their way. Next up is international backers. This is a short information announcement.

1) 📦 EU + UK batches on the way

Production of EU and UK orders was completed on November 4th and the products are already on their way to the distribution centre in the Czech Republic. Once they arrive, the containers will be unloaded and orders will be sorted. From there, they will be registered for distribution and you will receive tracking numbers.

Non‑EU European and Middle Eastern (Israel, Turkey, UAE and Saudi Arabia) customers’ orders are also in these batches but might not have received a mail. We have to shuffle some orderlists around and you will get the tracking number when they arrive at the distribution center.

2) 🚨 USA + Canada batches — risk of delays

We have shipped out all GLORBs for our US and CA backers, split into 2 batches. One departed the factory the 14th of November and the second left the factory 21st of November. Once they arrive to the US they will be sent to our distribution center in Utah for individual orders to be repackaged and sent from there. Tracking numbers will be sent during the redistribution process.

🚨 Shipping complications for US + Canada

The delivery time for forwarding those containers was originally 5 weeks, well within time to bring them to your hands before Christmas. Due to complications that are out of our control (US port strikes), the delivery time might end up being in January instead of December as planned. Backlogs in the LA harbor are due to port strikes on the East Coast, pushing shipments to redirect to the West Coast instead. We understand that this may cause frustration. There is a chance the backlog will be ironed out on time though — while we hope that is the case, it is impossible for us to know or do anything about.

3) 🌏 Rest of the World

We love you and haven't forgotten about you, the rest of our backers! Your units will ship directly from our factory, and we expect them to ship before the end of November and be delivered before Christmas.

With that, we expect all production to be completed and shipped in November and delivered on our promise. We are very happy about this.

4) 📰 Some extra news

📱 iOS app out now

Our iOS app is now live on the App Store. Have in mind that it is very fresh — it will be improved upon and updated with new features, animations and color palettes.

📲 New cross-platform app development started

We are working on a cross-platform app in Flutter to become our main app. The benefit is one code base for all platforms, which saves time and resources versus maintaining multiple native apps. This will take some time; more updates will come.

🤖 App for other devices

For those of you that do not have an iPhone, there is at the moment a bit of a process to control your GLORBs. To control your GLORB, visit: /pages/app

On Android, there’s the WLED native app and also WLED+ which can offer a nicer interface: WLED+ on Google Play

💻 Working on new website

We are soon launching a new and improved website. The old one was a Shopify website and its builder didn’t give us the freedom we wanted. Now we are using Svelte with Shopify as a plugin, which gives us more control of the experience and better ways to communicate more clearly going forward.

🧠 Smart-home integrations

GLORB uses WLED firmware, an open-source community-driven project. We’re not actively developing these smart-home integrations ourselves, but we use and test the integrations the community builds. If you’re wondering about a specific smart-home application, it’s often best to search whether WLED is integrated and follow community tutorials.

WLED references: Home automation and Remote access / IFTTT.

As always, our dear community, we are so proud and grateful to have you all with us on this journey. We could not have done this without you! And very soon you will all have your GLORB orders — it is an incredible feeling.

If you have any requests for specific updates or any questions or feedback in general, please drop a comment. We’d love to hear from you.

/THE GLORB TEAM