Looking for update on Hydration device?

Yes; the actual kickstarter sight is horrific, just pages and pages of complaints...

I haven't heard from them for a bit either but I will reach out and update this thread.

Thanks,

That sucks, I was a guinea pig for them last year at their offices as they tested some of their preliminary technology. Seems like a cool concept.

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2x Deca-Ironman World Cup (10 Ironmans in 10 days), 2x Quintuple Ironman World Cup (5 Ironmans in 5 days), Ultraman, Ultra Marathoner, and I once did an Ironman.

yeh, i mean we understand it can have hiccups but 6-7weeks no comment...

Following. I preordered the band for my GF back in April. She was/is stoked, as she feels as she is struggling with hydration.

Of course, developing a whole new gadget in a way that nobody has done before is going to be challenging. I have high faith in the BSX guys, since they've done it already with the BSX Insight, which is a functional and cool device.

I would however, like TS, enjoy some more frequent updates. As said, I dont think they've cashed all the kickstarter money and moved to a remote island, but any update on their work would be much appreciated.

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Endurance coach | Physiotherapist (primary care) | Bikefitter | Swede

I'm in for 2 myself... patiently waiting. I visit the Kstarter site maybe once a month and read the complaints. BSX insight works.. so I have faith.

This is probably a winter ship item for them

but it doesn't bode well for any future backing, they need to show themselves on the various communication sites to let us all know where they are at... a few months is to go over, but the lack of communication just doesn't sit right with me.. im in for 2 aswell

>pls respond

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Endurance coach | Physiotherapist (primary care) | Bikefitter | Swede

I guess Tony5 is also facing the same situation, they are either not replying or replying with standard emails...

They are really failing at kickstarter. So many companies do. A three line post once a week or so would alleviate so many fears.

Spinn coffee could learn this, too.

A reply earlier to All backers

Dear Backers,
The most appropriate place to begin is with an apology. I'm sorry. I write to you this afternoon not as the LVL team, hiding behind an amorphous entity without name or face, but as CEO, founder, a person and father, and a man who is deeply passionate about the work that we are engaged in.
When our team started the Kickstarter campaign, we pledged transparency and regular updates. Something you each deserve. Something we have failed to deliver on. Why you may ask? Honestly, it's because you deserved regular updates of substance, not salesmanship; full details, not fluff.
This was something we did not have in recent months as other pieces were coming together we knew would have a material impact. We didn't want to tell you something we didn't ourselves believe in or believed had a high likelihood of changing. And so we chose to say nothing, focusing instead on the milestones that would bring the universally desired certainty. I recognize in hindsight that this was the wrong decision. I am sorry.
With that being said, I am personally committing to August 11th when we will provide delivery timelines and details.
- Dustin

That was weird. Do any these people know basic business or how to interact with people or anything? Are they lab geeks locked away from the world?

This is not their first KS... I don't know how late they were on the original insight... but I waited for v2 anyways.

Yeah very strange.
I haven't paid anything but the product is very interesting and i want one. I assumed the project was dead as there's been little to suggest anything was still happening with its development.

I guess these nerdy engineer type people can be socially retarded at times, get caught up in their work.

That is the same BS answer they gave with lack of responses and such with the bsx insight. They are just full of it and don't know how to run a company or deal with customers. I would stay away from anything they are trying to sell.

sure... but the insight came to market...

And wasn't the v1 a giant piece of shit?

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

hey dont shoot the messenger..

if you havnt backed, then its cool...

in short..... next summer

Hello Backers,
We’re here with the update you’ve wanted and deserve.
We have some big news to share on multiple fronts. Firstly, we’re excited to be able to finally announce that LVL has just closed a Series A funding round led by Samsung and other top tier strategic investors in the semiconductor, wearable and manufacturing industries that will help us bring LVL technology to market.
This is a tremendous milestone for the company (and all of you), bringing not only financial security but also technical expertise, networks and resources that will help us succeed.
Many companies (on Kickstarter or otherwise) have great ideas but suffer from flawed execution or insufficient financial and/or team resources to transform the idea into reality. Hardware especially is complicated and small mistakes–if not caught early–can have crippling effects. We deeply understand this, and refuse to be another failed crowdfunding statistic.
That is why this financing is such an important achievement. If there is one thing we’ve learned from hardware development through our collective experience, it’s the value of partners. And we firmly believe the team now backing LVL is the absolute right one.
You all are the first to hear this news! We’ll be doing a formal press release early next week to share the news officially with the general press and public at large.
PRODUCT UPDATE
First things first. The development of LVL is delayed and the earliest we could likely ship is next summer. The validation studies prior to our campaign were done on science-grade prototypes. The past months of engineering development and concurrent work with our partners has shown that the previous designs were not capable of both delivering the experience and value we demonstrated in our campaign and also being manufactured at scale; the combination of designs, components and sampling techniques (while functional) were simply too complex.
Bringing a novel consumer electronics product to market is a delicate dance between design ideals, manufacturing limitations, engineering performance, component cost and (of course) time; thus there is no single reason for our delay but rather a multitude of minute complications which forced us to rethink our entire approach to the product.
The LED packages and components that drive the diodes and photosensors are an excellent illustration of just one of the trade-offs we’ve recently encountered. LED’s used in earlier prototypes came in large ceramic packaging that took up significant board space. These packages had the advantage of being able to be hand modified and also allowed us to customize diodes and distances in multiple rows. Because of these configurations, we had then designed analog front end circuitry that was highly customized and comprised of numerous discrete parts. Unfortunately, what we found is that this configuration was prohibitive from the combined perspectives of cost, board space, power consumption (battery life), system stability and supply chain. Working with our partners, we have now identified a hardware configuration and substitute components that can be manufactured at scale.
When these types of discoveries are made, care must be taken to ensure that hardware changes do not drive unexpected changes in the user experience, performance, manufacturability or other interrelated aspects of product design. Therefore, with these improvements, we’ve gone back to doing systems testing and additional research trials to validate our hydration measurements on the new hardware.
This all comes at a great cost–resources well beyond the amount we raised through Kickstarter–and impacts timelines by weeks (to months) with every hardware revision. Furthermore, the timing of some of these decisions, changes and builds were impacted by the timing of financing, which we had hoped to wrap up by early in Q1 but did not fully conclude until Q3. With strategic financing now in place, and the team several revs into our updated hardware and sampling techniques, we have a clear path to support the maturation of LVL technology and demonstrate its capabilities in a fully manufacturable state. We have furthermore employed the supportive assistance of additional contract engineering firms to reduce technical risk and timeline impact.
Next steps are as follows:
In the next three months, we will continue development and implementation of the required hardware changes with design input from our partners. Simultaneously we’ll continue to run large scale field testing with volunteers from the greater Austin community. These include conducting running and biking trials in our thermal chamber (which constitutes some of the most demanding environments for physiological sensors) and completing indoor/outdoor trials in real-world “in the wild” settings (which represent the most common use cases).
We expect hardware development for the reference platform and initial internal validation to be completed in October with external validation from independent, third party academic research institutions to be completed in December. With these validated platforms in hand, we will begin working with our technology and manufacturing partners to begin the steps necessary to bring the technology to market.
Concurrently, we will begin working with financial partners to ensure that the company has sufficient resources to fully support the go-to-market strategy. In light of all this, the next several updates (through EOY) will focus on the specifics of platform and technology development. As these activities conclude, we will then begin gradually transitioning to the milestones / timeline of commercialization activities.
At that time (similar to now) we will provide a high-level overview of the steps and anticipated timing with the greatest specificity being devoted to the nearest activities that are most immediate. Please accept our sincerest apologies for the recent lack of communication, and our recent failure to deliver regular updates. We hope this update helps shed light on the challenges we’ve faced, obstacles we’ve overcome and our commitment to continue getting past them.
We’re grateful to our team for persevering, our investors for their support and our backer’s patience and understanding as we continue this journey.
Our commitment extends beyond delivering product to also delivering on the transparency originally promised. Moving forward, we recommit ourselves to regular updates of substance that represent the successes and setbacks we will experience on our journey together building LVL technology.
– The LVL Team

FYI. I never got a reply back either besides the PR circulating for early investors.

http://www.businesswire.com/...6.75M-Series-Funding

I can confirm: yes it was.

BSX Insight ... one of my "lessons" with sports electronis. I could have spent the money so much wiser.

I also went through v1 and then to v2. Still waiting for all the great promises BSX had made, none of them became reality. Only this hydration kickstarter email. I would have never backed them again. Not after my experiences with the Insight.

I've given up that they would reintroduce a proper AeT estimate (which was basically the main reason for getting an Insight). According to BSX users were too dumb to do step tests properly, that's why they dropped it (silently).

I've given up that they would provide more information on how to use SmO2 in training. Instead they announced the great partnership with Matt Fitzgerald. you can get generic training plans totally unrelated to SmO2. That's all. Apart from that silence for a long time. I actually don't know if the device-website-interaction still works, haven't used this little useless device for a very long time.

So much learned with this.