You tell me that when my annual trip to Edmonton was last week.
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and youre willing to pay an extra $260 before customs
What about pre-orders like Vex used for the Falcons? They shouldn’t need any investment, they should have the money already. I honestly don’t know why they aren’t taking pre-orders, it doesn’t make any sense to me unless there’s something I’m overlooking.
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Note that you are looking at Canadian dollars there, not American. While that’s still about $100 markup, it might be worth it for some to have a unit it in hand.
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Unfortunately we just tried to purchase it and they dont ship to the United States but this does bring up a good point that there may be other websites that might still have it in stock
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Hey everyone, I wanted to chime-in here.
- There will be sufficient inventory for the 2020 season.
- We seriously underestimated off-season demand. We had surprise non-frc orders that threw off our estimates even further.
- I am often reluctant to re-stock in the off-season when an upgrade is possibly around the corner. I placed a hard-stop on restocking LL1 at the end of the 2018 competition season, for example, because LL2 was such a significant hardware upgrade. I did not want teams who were fundraising specifically to purchase our product to find themselves stuck with an LL1. More teams than we initially realized program in the off season, and we will adjust our restocking schedule to accommodate this in 2020.
Thanks,
Brandon
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Not that I think this applies to Limelight, but for the record based on my reading of the rule a product that at one point was sold as COTS by a VENDOR can never become non-COTS (as long as it isn’t modified). The definition of COTS from the 2019 manual:
Many rules in this section reference Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) items. A COTS item must be a standard (i.e. not custom order) part commonly available from a VENDOR for all teams for purchase. To be a COTS item, the COMPONENT or MECHANISM must be in an unaltered, unmodified state (with the exception of installation or modification of any software). Items that are no longer commercially available but are functionally equivalent to the original condition as delivered from the VENDOR are considered COTS and may be used.
(emphasis mine)
If the item was at one time sold by a VENDOR, it was then COTS. Even if the company selling it loses it’s VENDOR status, buying a new one gives you an item that is functionally equivalent to the item in the original condition as it was delivered by the company when it was a VENDOR. Therefore, the newly purchased product is also COTS. As long as the company doesn’t make new products after they lose their VENDOR status, their products will continue to be COTS.* It’s the same reason why you can still use Spike relays even though you can still buy them, just not from a VENDOR.
* Not saying that any FRC vendor would purposefully bend the rules like this to gain a competitive advantage, but in theory as long as the company was once considered a VENDOR, they could stop selling to everyone and only sell to one or two specific teams. At first it wouldn’t matter because everyone had access to the product (because they were once a VENDOR). But eventually as everyone else’s stock gets used up, the company would be able to choose which teams can get the product and it would still be COTS.
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Are you referring to the switch from LL1 to LL2, or is there a potential upgrade beyond the LL2 in the near future?
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If there are I would love to know! What got me worried is that I’ve been checking Limelight’s own website, AndyMark, and West Coast Products and the Limelight has been out of stock on all three when I have checked in the last month. That coupled with the AndyMark estimated restock date made me think nobody will have it in time for build season.
Pre-orders could help, but if production capacity is the restriction it won’t make a huge difference. In the case of Limelight or any electronic (motor controllers, IMUs) I would imagine the firmware loading and possibly the system assembly is done in house, versus a machined mechanical part where the part manufacturing can be hired out to a supplier and the vendor just needs to perform quality checks on what they receive. That doesn’t mean electronics can’t be completely done by a supplier but the supply chain is more complicated to setup.
Thanks for the reply in here Brandon! Would you say the current AndyMark restocking estimate is conservative and we could expect some of the Limelight suppliers to have inventory before February? That is I think the main concern for teams that are new to the product.
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Thank you for the info. However, to clarify, will the Limelight’s be available before January? Being available in February, for instance, is NOT enough time to say “available for 2020.” Teams needs to know for sure, as we fabricate space and holders for vision and as our programming teams build their skills.
We have been burned badly before by a vendor saying they would be available for the season, and then they showed up in mid February. If you can, please clarify your best estimate of availability.
They will absolutely be available before February. I believe the information that was listed on AM was auto-generated, and it isn’t based on any information we provided. More information is coming soon.
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Great! Thank you!
I kind of don’t expect a Limelight 3 until the Pi 4 compute module comes out. Until then, I don’t really know what improvements there are to be made to the hardware itself that can’t be done with software.
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It is extremely dissapointing to me that NO vendors are taking pre-orders for the limelight, ESPECIALLY limelightvision.io. I don’t give 2 cares that the limelight will be in stock during build season because it still doesn’t mean I’ll actually manage to get a vendor to take my money to buy one. If I could just pre-order and have the knowledge that I don’t have to rush to purchase an item within the 25 minutes from when it comes in stock, I wouldn’t care if it got to me as late as February 25th, or even later. Come build season, if I don’t have a guarantee that I can actually purchase the darn thing, I’m going to have to just say screw it and spend my money on building my own inferior solution.
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can we get some more info now? I’ve got kids literally chewing my head off because we don’t have a fancy $400 camera with software that all the “good teams” use.
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We kind of hope to show our team can get “good” this year with an RPi camera or two and some decent software. I officially give up on doing Limelight, we have other priorities and I don’t need an aneurysm over 20 minutes of availability
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Is there any update on the lead time to the restock of Limelights? Personally, we wanted to test our LL (that we planned on purchasing) before the season, but since it’s 29 days to kickoff I have a feeling we won’t be able to. Is there going to be an option to purchase one - either a new version or the LL2 - and hopefully ship before kickoff?
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10 days later, we’re 20 days till kickoff and there’s still no sign of any availability of Limelights before or even after kickoff. @Brandon_Hjelstrom, is there any chance to get an update on anything regarding the LL?
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After mulling it over this offseason, we’ve just had our programming crew look at building a version ourselves since we don’t think that there will be sufficient stock anytime soon. Right now we have sourced a wide angle lens webcam part, a raspberry pi, and a green LED ring. It’ll lack that turnkey vision we were looking for, but it will give our coders and hardware enthusiasts a fun project during build.
I’m bummed that we weren’t able to get one already, but our PO hurdle is just a barrier that we can’t get over fast enough before they run out.
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