The Campaign Passed $1.2 Million - Free AI Model Suite Unlocked! Onward to $1.5 Million with 12 hours left!
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 02:51:53 AM

We passed $1,200,00!

Wow, the final push from you all has been amazing. New backers, backers increasing their pledges, thanks everybody! We've now unlocked the $1.2 million dollar goal, a free professionally-created AI model suite for backers.

Now that we've passed that, there's only on goal left- the final Mystery Goal... Spatial AI Competition II. 

If we keep up the momentum through this last stretch I know we can still pass $1.5 million. Let's do it!

OAK-Mania Runs Wild With 18 Hours Left! We Hit $1.1 million and unlock a Wifi/Bluetooth module. Plus: An In-Depth OAK Tutorial, Spatial AI For Good, and The Week Four Infographic
almost 4 years ago – Thu, Aug 13, 2020 at 01:08:39 AM

Welcome back, community. We’ve got less than 20 hours to go in the campaign! Yesterday we passed $1,000,000 raised, announced the huge new addition of a Deep Learning Course to the campaign, and today we’ve flown past the $1.1 million dollar stretch goal. About that goal…

18 hours to go: Wifi/Bluetooth Variant of OAK-D Unlocked

One Mystery Goal down! This morning you unlocked a version of OAK-D with Wifi/Bluetooth built into the board, which we introduced a few weeks ago. This is going to be a fun project for the team, and will greatly expand the potential for OAK as an embedded system on its own.

Training OAK To Recognize Chess Pieces On A Board

Community member Jacob Solawetz has written up an in-depth tutorial showing the full process of going from unlabeled images to a fully functional solution that recognizes chess pieces on a board. It runs at 15fps right now, without much optimization.

Thanks for the awesome work, Roboflow team! Backers can expect to see more tutorials like this in the coming months. By the time OAK modules ship in December there will be a vibrant community of tutorials and walkthroughs ready to help those of you new to CV and AI.

Spatial AI For Capital-G Good

One of the things the team has talked a lot about internally (and in these updates) is the potential for the OAK platform to enable “Capital-G Good.”

What we mean by Capital-G Good is, not simply “good for business,” but Good for the World at large. This has informed everything we’ve done so far- from OAK’s beginnings as a human safety project to the large number of visual and physical assistive devices in the OpenCV Spatial AI Competition.

We believe the Good potential for OAK is very strong, and that’s why we (and a lot of you out there) are working on it. That's also why the $1.5 million goal is a new competition for the community- we want to help stimulate these awesome projects with as much help as we can give. You can look for another update soon on this theme.

Thank you for taking this trip with us- we can’t wait to see the Good we can do once modules ship in December.

Pledge Management System & Pre-Orders Coming Very Soon

Backers will be sent the Backer survey on BackerKit in approximately 2 weeks. This is where we’ll get your address, you’ll be able to select add-ons, and where you’ll pay the final shipping price for your combined pledge and addons.

Non-backers will be able to Pre-Order OAK modules (at prices higher than the campaign versions) soon, too. Watch the updates for an announcement of pricing and availability.

Community Voting: OAK-D Wifi/Bluetooth Module Form Factor

Like the sweet tutorial mentioned earlier in this update, working directly with the OAK community is super exciting for all of us on the team. We’e got something else we could use your help with, now that we’ve passed $1.1m.

Our engineers have already put tother three options for the layout of these new OAK-D with onboard Wifi/BT, and all three work great for the product, but they’re different enough that we wanted your input. Please take the time to vote in the survey we’ve created if you have strong feelings about this!

Oh, and voting is still open in the OAK case color poll!

The Four Week Infographic

The campaign phase is almost over, and it’s time for the 4 week infographic summary. The total keeps going up so fast today I’m sure we’ll need to update it before we stop accepting pledges tomorrow morning, August 13th at 6:01am PDT.

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Just 18 hours to go! Keep the pledges coming, and let's hit $1.5m together! This is our last Daily Update. It's been swell. You can expect to keep seeing updates here, but at a reduced frequency. We are planning to continue Community Friday! More on that soon. We'll still be here answering questions in the comments section as usual. Thank you!

$900,000 with 3 Days To Go! Plus An Announcement Regarding The Pledge Management System, Case Color Voting Is Still Open
almost 4 years ago – Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 11:37:35 PM

Howdy OAK community! We're burning the midnight oil to prepare for the end of the campaign and the beginning of pre-orders for OAK. We've still got some cool stuff to show you before it's over.

 We Just Passed $900,000!

We are (as of this writing) under $100,000 away from the next Stretch Goal- aluminum cases for all of the campaign OAK-1 and OAK-D modules. We've seen quite a few of you increasing your pledges- thank you! It's great to see the momentum for OAK is still going strong, even on a Sunday.

We Will Be Using BackerKit For Pledge Management Once The Campaign Ends

As we’ve mentioned before, all backers will be invited to a pledge management system once the campaign has closed and you are charged for your pledge. Today we're officially announcing that we will have chosen BackerKit as this pledge management system.

We’re hard at work getting the BackerKit add-ons and pre-orders set up for all of the campaign hardware, merchandise and Stretch Goal modules already unlocked (and soon to be unlocked, we hope). Using this site you'll also have a chance to update or change your shipping details, update payment info, get customer support, and so on.

Backers will get special pricing on adding additional modules to their pledges, so if you’re on the fence, pledge today to make sure you get an invitation. You don't have to do anything but back the campaign at any level to get invited- it will happen automatically.

 
You Can Still Vote For The OAK Aluminum Case Color 

With the $1,000,000 stretch goal within striking distance, here's a reminder that the poll is still open to vote for the OAK case color. So far 708 community members have voted for a color- why not take a couple minutes and vote yourself this weekend? The poll is pretty close and could still go to practically any of the available color choices.

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Have a great Sunday, folks. Don't forget: the campaign closes August 13th at 6:01am PDT. We'll see you tomorrow for more OAK-y goodness as we sprint toward $1m and beyond.

Under 72 Hours Remain! Add-On Pricing Revealed, Plus How To Get Them!
almost 4 years ago – Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 11:37:28 PM

Happy Monday(s) folks! The team can hardly stand the excitement. We’re under 72 hours to the close of this campaign and the good news + pledges keep coming in. Since our last update even more of you have upped your pledges, and it's awesome to see. Less than $75,000 to go to $1 million. Keep it up! OAK was featured on Hackaday this weekend, we encourage you to check it out. 

Add-on & Change Pricing For The Pledge Management System

Since we talked about it this weekend, even more of you have reached out asking how to add additional OAK modules to your pledge before campaign close. Good news: It’s simple. Here’s a list of what you need to do to add campaign and unlocked modules:

• To add a single campaign OAK-1 add $99 
• To add a single campaign OAK-D add $149 
• To add a single OAK-1-PoE add $149 
• To add a single OAK-D-PoE add $199 
• To add a 3-pack of campaign OAK-1 add $280 
• To add a 3-pack of campaign OAK-D add $425 
• To add a 10-pack of campaign OAK-1 add $920 
• To add a 10-pack of campaign OAK-D add $1400 
• To add a single t-shirt, add $20 
• To add a GoPro-compatible mount add $20 
•  To “switch” your OAK pledge from a non-PoE to PoE edition, simply add $50 to your pledge total for each OAK module you wish to replace with a PoE version of the same one.

Yes, you can mix and match these, and yes you can have multiples of each add-on! As an example if you want to add two OAK-1s and also add a 3-pack of OAK-D, you’d increase your total pledge by: (OAK-1) $99 + (OAK-1) $99 + (OAK-D 3-pack) $425 = $623.

This will make it easy to simply add the modules you want in the BackerKit pledge management system. All Backers will be automatically invited to it after the campaign closes.

OAK Goes To Low Earth Orbit

Shout-out to new community members AmbaSat. We heard on twitter that they backed the campaign and are planning to put OAK into their DIY low earth orbit satellite kit! This is clearly awesome.

We’ll be following the project closely and you can expect to see more about this in future updates. Good luck, out there!

An Early Thank You Gift To The Community

Early in the campaign we contracted 3D artist Ericsson Santos to create some beautiful photo-real 3D models of the OAK-1 and OAK-D modules. We didn’t get to use them much in the campaign materials, but you’ll recognize it from the TechCruch article:

 As a thank you, and as a way to help folks get a head start on visualizing their OAK solutions, we’ve decided to release these specific 3D models to the community. You can find them with 4K textures in the Press & Sharing Assets folder in Drive, and we’ll be putting them in a more permanent place soon. Thank you, everyone!

OAK is 5000 Backers and $1,000,000 Strong, plus: Semantic Segmentation Demo!
almost 4 years ago – Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 11:37:21 PM

It's Tuesday, and there's less than 48 hours to go in the OpenCV AI Kit campaign. When we started the campaign we had big goals- but your enthusiasm and drive made us dream even bigger, which is why we added the Mystery Goals, and it’s why we’ve made sure to post useful (we hope) updates every week day. Well, we've passed one of the bigger goals today:

It’s our humble honor to announce that the campaign has now raised over $1,000,000 dollars from over 5000 different backers. You have now unlocked precision aluminum cases for the OAK modules you’re getting as part of your reward for backing the campaign.

One million. From everyone working on OAK to everyone out there: Thank you. Now let’s keep going so we can hit the $1.1 (An version of OAK-D with onboard Wifi and Bluetooth!), $1.2 (A free neural network model collection for backers) and $1.5 million dollar goals and throw an amazing new competition.

Community Semantic Segmentation Demo

Like the pose estimation video demo we shared with you in an earlier update, semantic segmentation is a feature we promised you in the campaign. Unlike pose estimation, a community member beat us to the punch!

Part of the huge power of OAK is that the software is open source: you don’t have to wait for us! Thanks, Slack Community member (and Phase 1 Winner in the Spatial AI Competition) Pierre Mangeot, for the sweet demo and video. Additional shout-out to PINT0, whose sample code was particularly useful here. There's no substitute for a strong community, and together we are one of those!

In Case You Missed It: PPE Detector With OAK

Since the campaign is ending in less than 48 hours, it seemed like a good time to look back for the benefit of backers both new and old. Today we're looking at training custom neural networks, which we covered a few weeks ago.

Remember when Joash trained a Personal Protective Equipment detector from scratch? It was one of the first updates we posted, and still one of the most-liked by backers. Check it out in the archives.

A Little Something Extra...

Those of you who are interested in Deep Learning should watch for a surprise campaign update dropping in about... 4 hours. Don't say I told you. Be cool. The last 36 hours of the campaign are going to be awesome.

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We've just passed One Million Dollars, but it's still the Final Countdown, folks! OAK is going to hit $1,500,000 if we keep this up! Please keep letting people how about OAK however you do it. If you're wondering how to get add-ons, see the instructions in yesterday's post.