Don’t be too upset with them, we’ve face planted multiple times this year with the Vidiot supply chain and shipping expectations – so it’s our fault, they’re likely just communicating what we told them. First, our initial production run with a 3rd party company dragged on months longer than was contracted. Then we brought production in house for the second run because we had to completely change our expectations. At that stage we stopped taking orders entirely to give us time to catch up. That second run crashed and burned because we weren’t equipped to handle an in house project as large as this with our in house machines – so we ended up with about 80 units which will probably never work. It took longer still to get a third attempt rolling, with two other companies helping us out – thankfully that effort has been fruitful and we’re cranking through them now. Some other details/context in the OP. Thanks for being along with the ride for us, and we really appreciate your patience.
Yes, we are on track to have all backorders (including Switched On) shipped before the end of September.
More numbers if you want them. We’ve got about 200 backorders going into this production run that started in late August when we received SMT assemblies – 20 have shipped already, and there’s another 120 units built, awaiting final testing, packout, and shipment (which we’ll be working on next week after returning from Knobcon.) Meanwhile the assembly team is continuing to assemble units throughout this week and beyond. Given that Switched On are near the front of the backorder list we’ll hopefully have them in the mail with our next outgoing round of shipments, a week from this Friday.
i ordered a shapechanger and a staircase late april, five month ago. Do you know when they ll be ready? thx
Hi guys! All our most current production updates/priority queue are in the OP (module production queue), as well as instructions on what to do if you’re tired of waiting.
@dni_br Your Staircase is being held until Shapechanger is ready to ship – it’s the next project up, since we now have Prismatic Ray going.
@7pip No, I don’t have an update for you at this time. Check back in a couple weeks if you don’t have your unit in your hands before then.
If you have a question about your order which has not been addressed in this thread or OP, please contact us via the form on the website. The purpose of this thread is to pro-actively communicate about production status to reduce the amount of individual correspondence we have to address, so we can get back to work!
They are too busy concentrating on new modules to be concerned with modules that were bought and paid for months ago. I wound request a refund if I were you.
You couldn’t be further from the truth. If you want to come over and see what things look like around here, you’re welcome any time!!
It’s not my intention to be a troll, but when you have customers that have been waiting nearly 6 months for an order while you are off promoting new modules at a convention, it comes off wrong. I realize a business needs to keep fresh irons in the fire, and maybe you have enough happy customers to meet your targets, but for those of us who are recent customers and have had to wait months for items we expected within a much shorter time frame, we are not happy.
For the Vidiot I ordered from Perfect Circuit, I don’t have an idea where I am in the queue. Only vague commitments from the vendor, which have stretched from late June to late July to the last week of August. Meanwile they are still taking orders for Vidiots (??!!) and pimping the Orion series on their home page.
When I read comments from customers who have been waiting for other items even longer, I begin to lose faith that the Vidiots will ship by the end of Sept, which you have stated here.
Absolutely, you’re right, we look terrible right now! We had a complete fall out of our supply chain at the most inopportune possible moment this year – while onboarding new customers, who have now had to wait several months longer than expected. Actions speak louder than words, which is why we’re throwing all available resources into resolving it, and have tried to deal with the issue in many ways since. We’d prefer to just stick our noses in the job until we can tell you your order has been shipped. When we’re done, some of you will just be so soured on the experience you won’t be customers ever again. Some of you are going to hate us until you’re holding your Vidiot in your hands, and then realize it’s been worth the wait. And some of you are happy to be on a journey that you know we’re all in together. We understand your position and share your frustration, no matter which camp you’re part of.
The reason I’m replying to this thread so quickly is because I do care, and a prompt reply is the best I can do until I can say “your order is in the mail.” My phone dinged in the middle of QC’ing a batch of Vidiots we are packing into boxes today (some of them may be to Switched On), so I stopped what I am doing to reply. And
after I’m done writing this, I’ll be getting back to it.
Orion series modules have been in development for 2 years; making them happen for the 4th quarter of this year is essential. Different people (engineers who are paid more than assembly technicians) are working on those tasks. Meanwhile we have an assembly team across multiple locations with multiple new hires tackling Vidiot and module restock projects. For me right now almost all of my dayjob time is spent administrating the team and ensuring successful production. In the evenings after I’ve put those hours in, or sometimes in the early morning before others arrive, I do what I can to make progress on the Orion series stuff – and our engineer in Sydney is likewise working on it in the evenings. A new release cycle at this time isn’t a reprioritization of our attention, despite how it may look. It’s an essential strategy for pulling our business out of our loss in supply chain and ensuring that everyone’s orders do get shipped. It’s all hands on deck right here. The only way out is through.
Your concerns are an ethical imperative to me, and I don’t ever mind providing an explanation. I also understand at anyone who’s disappointed or upset with us about the timeline of their order fulfillment. That’s perfectly fair and understandable. What I can’t do is refund your order, because that funding has already purchased components being used for production and given a job to the guy building it – and in the wake of our supply chain dropout, there’s nothing to spare. A refund would only delay us further, which hurts everyone. This is part of why we have a policy of no refunds for products willingly purchased on presale or backorder.
The good news is that being in control of our own supply chain and anticipation over Orion series modules is showing very good things in the numbers, and we expect to rocket permanently out of fulfillment woes sometime in the next quarter. I’m very proud of how efficient our team is operating together right now.
Thanks for reading. Back to work for me.
Fair enough, thank you for the quick and detailed reply.
I think part of the frustration for me is that I want to buy some of the Orion modules, the Bell Chamber and Memory Palace in particular, but I’m hesitant to invest more at this point. I’m a relative latecomer to hardware video synthesis, at least beyond pointing a camera back at itself.
I hope that you can get through this backlog as quickly and sanely as possible, and that I can look forward to buying more LZX modules in the future.
from what i understand, vidiot has been a pretty popular product. its also a pretty unique product in terms of manufacturing for lzx. its in its own hardware case, with some unique component mounting situations. so it’s taking time to get through for them, as lars mentioned the supply chain fall out. anyway, i imagine that once all these vidiot back orders are taken care of that future module productions should be breezy. of course, you can always wait to see what the supply situation is like for orion before purchasing. ask dealers if they have something in stock before ordering, etc. im saying all of this from the outside of lzx manufacturing, so take that for what you will. im just outside watching this stuff unfold.
@northerntao Your hesitation is perfectly fair, and I’d encourage you to wait until you see that “in stock” notice on the site and purchase with confidence. Most of our presales so far come from people who’ve been happy customers since long before the Vidiot supply chain woes we’ve experienced this year, so they know we can deliver. It is sad that Vidiot’s been so difficult because the R&D team really knocked it out of the park in Q4 2017. We hit every deadline and we had everything signed, sealed, delivered, by early December. We passed it off to the contract manufacturers on what was supposed to be a 6 week max lead time that drug out into 16-20 weeks. In any case, thanks for listening to me ramble. Good news coming soon.
That’s not too bad. I ordered my Shapechanger module November of last year (basically a year). Still waiting on mine unfortunately 
We currently have about 30 backorders for Shapechanger, and are building 100 in the upcoming batch. This project was queued up with our former CM right behind Vidiot, and has been subject to the same production queue whiplash as the delays in that project. If you’re tired of waiting, there are instructions in the OP about what to do.
I’ll continue with my back order on Shapechanger though. Really want one!
Have waited this long, so pulling out when back order restocks are just around the corner would be silly on my part.
Just a little longer wait than I expected when I originally made the purchase … That’s all.
I’ve actually had dreams about checking my emails and getting the Shapechanger shipping confirmation email from you guys lol
Thanks for hanging in there with us. It’s been a much longer wait than we expected as well. The new production batch is a revised version from the Summer 2017 release and we’re very happy with it.
No problems at all Lars. You guys are doing great things and I’m really happy to be along for the ride.
In regards to the new upcoming Shapechanger units. Would the revisions be noticeable in the performance or just the way it’s manufactured?
It’s mostly mechanical. The second PCB is lower profile, like the Marble Index assembly. There’s also a revised power entry circuit and we’ve switched to 4-layer boards on everything now. If you’ve got a great power supply in your system already, you won’t notice a big difference – but if your power is suboptimal you’d likely notice a significant improvement with noise floor and bleed. Functionally speaking there are no changes.
My order status for the vidiot shows that I am #326, and I started at #322. Does this mean I am moving further back in line?
I had the same thing happen a few weeks ago…reminded me of a scene in the Simpsons where the clock starts going backwards.
Could we get an idea of what the daily Vidiot output is? Do you have all the parts to build and ship them now? Are you prioritizing distributors or direct orders?