MacArthur HAT production

[Opie91]

This is the kind of problem to have! Too many sales!

Congrats, obviously this is a huge success and speaks to the popularity of OpenPlotter.

[svRipley]

Maybe a pre-sale would have worked better, that way you'd have a very good idea of number that needed to be produced, and the server wouldn't have gotten slammed so hard.

I was out sailing today, so I missed the whole thing. Hoping the US store will get a larger allotment soon.

[Sailoog]

Yeah, we will probably do that for the next batch that is on the way.

[rszemeti]

Yeah, we will probably do that for the next batch that is on the way.

Just for info,  I have run similar operations (guitar industry) and having so many people suddenly arrive on the server is indeed an issue, we ran Magento, which was good, but struggled under heavy load.

What we did in the end was get people to sign up to a Mailchimp mailing list for notifications of product releases ... and Mailchimp has a great feature where you can set the mailshot to be sent in multiple small batches over a period of hours or even days ... helps spread them out and prevent a sudden rush!

[Sailoog]

Thanks for the tips. We use Prestashop at OpenMarine which is also ready to manage large shops and has lots of modules for mailing, campaigns... but the problem is that the hosting is a shared machine in Germany that was not prepared for that traffic and defenses against DDoS attacks were activated.

In any case, this is not our main activity and we do not intend to be a store with many products and customers. I do not think we will invest more resources in the store, we will simply better prepare the strategy for these specific moments. The intention is to stabilize the stock of MacArthur HATs soon so that there is not much or no wait.

[reeferjon]

+1 here for the pre-sale approach. Very keen to get a MacArthur HAT / RPi 5 / OpenPlotter install on my sailing yacht!

[rovinggecko]

A simple solution could be to pick a slightly more unpopular time.eg 5am.
not everyone will set alarm

[Sailoog]

As you already noticed, we greatly underestimated the demand for the MacArthur HAT.

We plan to place a new order with our factory early next week when it reopens after Lunar New Year holidays. To ensure we order enough for everyone to get their MacArthur HAT this time around, we decided to open pre-orders in our stores. We plan to start shipping pre-orders by mid March, when new stock from a batch we already ordered is expected to arrive, and our goal is to complete fulfillment of all pre-orders by mid April. We will also order extras to ensure quicker restocking from there on.

A few people asked us about the electronic design files for the MacArthur HAT. The schematics and a 3D model are already available on GitHub. We will publish the full KiCad project including PCB layout by the time we start shipping pre-orders in March.

You can now place your back orders at the OpenMarine (Catalonia) and Wegmatt (USA) stores. Shop at your nearest store to get products sooner, cheaper and in a more sustainable way.

[Iska]

Fantastic! Thank you and everyone involved so much for this amazing piece of tech. Very much looking forward to installing the HAT + MAIANA kit

[steved]

Alright, thanks for the update -> I'm in the queue, Christmas comes mid-March!

I am a little confused with the IMU. I recently purchased a pypilot hat, (damn, that stings a bit since its obsolete before I put in on my boat -> that's the fastest technology upgrade I have had to absorb -> all for a good cause though!)

Does the MacArthur Hat come with an IMU or do I need to purchase an additional daughter board (or desolder the one on pypilot hat)? The instructions are not that clear to me.