Greetings snickerdoodlers,

Please read on for the latest snickerdoodle updates…

Sorry for being a few days tardy on this one.

First, you’ll notice the new pricing has been posted to the campaign page. Some quick comments:

snickerdoodle black has increased by ~$50. Non-negotiable part prices, low-volume manufacturing costs, distributor margins, and other factors have forced us to increase pricing to achieve near- and long-term sustainability. Quite simply, it became evident that without taking this measure, fulfilling everyone’s preorders in a reasonable amount of time simply lacked practicality (even taking into consideration the delays we’ve experienced due to lack of capital).

Ultimately, snickerdoodle black is a premium, uniquely differentiated product and a key piece of the snickerdoodle ecosystem. We are continuing to grow an active and powerful developer community around snickerdoodle (see below) and snickerdoodle black - via supporting hardware, software, IP, and distinguished projects - and we expect it to only get stronger going forward.

On the bright side, we have eliminated the connectors down upcharge and have an exciting snickerdoodle black announcement coming out later this week, so stay tuned… Should you have any questions in the meantime around snickerdoodle black OEM pricing, availability, customization, or anything else, please don’t hesitate to reach out at hello@krtkl.com.

Second, you’ll also notice that the snickerdoodle “status” has been updated to SOLD OUT.

We started this whole journey with the mission of making the kind of ‘high-end’ technology and innovation embodied by snickerdoodle more accessible to more people than ever before. We’ve (perhaps expectedly) hit a whole bunch of roadblocks along the way, but we refuse to let these deter us and we are still 100% committed to making this dream become a reality.

As a result, rather than gradually (see: abruptly) raising the entry level price of snickerdoodle to accommodate nonsensical silicon vendor pricing structures, costly manufacturing ramps, and other frustrating issues that are completely out of our control, we’ve instead decided to temporarily hold new snickerdoodle orders to allow us time to devise a new plan - one that has been brewing for quite some time.

We can’t share a ton of details right this second, other than: when the new plan comes to fruition, the new snickerdoodle offering will be more affordable and more “open" than ever…and will of course be 100% compatible with the rest of the ecosystem. As far as timing goes, we are expecting this to roll out sometime around Q1 2017…

For the current snickerdoodle (with the 7010 Zynq), we will work with people on an individual basis regarding future support, availability, etc. We are not discontinuing this product.

Note: none of this will affect outstanding crowdfunding campaign backers/pre-orders.

Third, here are some NEW offerings you can find on the campaign page:

giggleBits sDN card (giggleBits “replacement”): A plug-in software-defined networking card (or "snickerdoodle-defined networking" card, if you will) for piSmasher. As previously mentioned, existing giggleBits pre-orders will be replaced by one piSmasher + one giggleBits sDN card at no additional charge. And because this new design will work with piSmasher, existing piSmasher backers/pre-orderers can add this to existing orders to get two more (or four more with snickerdoodle black…) GigE ports, if so desired.

wall wart: We now have an international 12V/36W wall-mount power supply available on the campaign page. This wall wart is compatible with all snickerdoodle baseboards and is the ‘officially recommended’ snickerdoodle power supply.

Now…onto delivery schedules:

snickerdoodle & snickerdoodle black – Our offshore fabs hit an unexpected snag (shocking…), with delays coming as a result of our transition to a new vendor, China being shut down this week due to a national holiday, and some other ridiculous issues. We’re working with our CM on bringing in the first delivery of at least 500 boards this month, but if that doesn’t work out, we do have a backup plan…

We are tentatively planning on getting 500 fabs produced locally and building the first 500 snickerdoodles over the next couple of weeks so we can get something out the door this month, as promised. These will most likely be snickerdoodle blacks.

breakyBreaky – We’ll be building these things onshore to cut down on potential delays in manufacturing/delivery time. These should turn around pretty quickly (~3 weeks) and we’ll be sending them out with the first snickerdoodles.

piSmasher – As previously mentioned, piSmasher is getting a makeover. The upside is everyone will benefit from the upgrade (even if you ordered yours when it was $59). The downside is we still have a bit of work left to make this happen. We’re pretty budget- and resource-constrained right now, but we’re pressing forward on this as quickly as we can – a ‘be quick but don’t hurry’ kind of thing…

Probably not the answer you were looking for – especially considering it’s everyone’s favorite baseboard – although, as a compromise, we’re looking at shipping out everything we can as it’s ready. This might be a little tricky with international shipments due to the high freight costs, but we can work with those who would rather break up their orders into multiple deliveries to get products sooner rather than wait to receive everything at once.

cookieJar – Still figuring this one out…hopefully more by the next update.

SD cards/jumpers/housings/headers – good to go.

That was a long one…

As always, please feel free to reach out with any questions: hello@krtkl.com

Yours truly,

the krtkl crew