GENKI: Bluetooth Audio for the Nintendo Switch

Joy-Con Color Matching
over 6 years ago – Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 10:59:09 PM

Let's talk about stretch goals.  We all like stretching but...

• Stretch goals take a lot of planning and forecasting that can screw up a project
• We're seriously committed to delivering on-time
• It sucks when you sell out your friends and it seems just within reach...
• Everyone is going to complain about how we prioritize each level
• And we think we have a better alternative...

So with that in mind, we're just going to keep making sensible improvements that we can confidently deliver. We think this is a win/win and we think we'll delight everyone rather than use it as a sales tool.

So the first win is we’re able to consider more color combinations - yay! But alas I don’t think we can serve every single color combination out there so we want to hear from you what you want so we can best plan accordingly. More than likely if there's enough demand for a color its likely going to be a Kickstarter exclusive. 

So please click the graphic below to vote, it shouldn’t take more than 20 seconds. Please vote even if you just want our default neon red/blue so that we can at least get a fair representation of all voices!

Great, all done voting? We're not going to say there's only going to be one winner, we just want an indicator to best tackle the problem. We’ll close the voting at the end of this week, so hop on it.

Hate to leave you on a cliffhanger, but we’ll save the detailed mic update for next week. Basically, we have spent this week literally identifying all the potential options to go through and we’ll share a more detailed update next. We’re operating under the principle of not delaying shipments while also covering those who want/need voice chat so I’d say overall we think we’re onto a solution that can satisfy both parties, but in the meantime, more testing is needed.

As for power pass through - the good news is we’ve learned it is possible to charge the Switch while using GENKI with a jungle of adapters that basically looks like a fire hazard (sort of like what you see on the right side of the above photo). 

For now we recommend using the dock for charging with the dock adapter - there isn’t a practical way for us to add passthrough charging without (at least) doubling the size of the Genki circuit board, as we would need to include a variety of controller chips to manage USB data, and a power delivery systems (which honestly is scary as some of those power delivery hubs get really really hot when used with the Switch). We'll try to identify some options for you guys and maybe a good starting point for building a portable dock for us someday - but let us focus on delivering our first product before our minds wander!

Okay, just one more thing - and this probably would've been a stretch goal but we're starting to prototype a packaging that you won't just throw away, but actually be used as a case as well. We want to minimize waste but I can't make any promises right now as this honestly requires a huge upfront order commitment (custom packaging etc).  Anyway, stay tuned!

Thanks from Eddie and the GENKI team

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PS - since we've been staring at Kickstarter all day and made some friends and scouted some good treasure that we'd like to share:  

LIMBO | The Magical Top That Spins For Hours!

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SMART BELT 2.0 - The most crowdfunded fashion accessory in history!

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Putting the Last 36 Hours into Perspective
over 6 years ago – Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 08:22:05 PM

There’s a few major events in your life that come up when you know everything in your life is about to change. Seriously, you guys have allowed what started as a passion project to become something much more. This post isn’t going to have pretty graphics and tech demos (though we’ve hidden a demo link in the comments section) - those will come later - I’m going to let our incredible designer and engineer rest this weekend after putting together an incredible launch. Here’s some figures we can all high-five over:

• In under 20 minutes, 100 backers strong
• In 2 hours you helped us blow past our funding goal
• And in the first 24 hours you have propelled us into Top 10 Gaming Hardware Project on Kickstarter of all time (and top Nintendo accessory ever!)

In the meantime we received over 200 messages from Kickstarter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and email. I think we tackled them all but here’s what we’re hearing you REALLY want:

• Audio Input / Mic Support (Fortnite!)
• Joy-Con Color Combos
• Pass-Through Charging

We’re both super excited about these opportunities and nervous because they introduce uncertainty in a lot of the things we thought we had pretty much finalized. So our promise to you is that we’ll prioritize and dive deep into these three opportunities, communicate all the things we uncover about each, and get feedback from you along the way.

I’m also debating whether to do smaller more frequent posts or meatier bigger posts. I know everyone gets enough spam out there but at the same time we also want to make sure that we’re keeping the community up-to-date. With that said, we’ll try to balance it enough so that we’re making the content relevant and at least worth a read.

Game on, Eddie

GENKI funded in less than 2 hours!
over 6 years ago – Fri, Jun 15, 2018 at 03:39:47 PM

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