It’s been a while, but we’re about to make the biggest shipment of Slimes so far.
2889 sets of Slimes are ready to be picked up by UPS in the next few days!! After which, they will need two-to-three weeks to be delivered to Mouser for fulfillment, sorted, and sent to the backers!
These sets include all the rest of the orders from 2022, as well as a lot of orders from 2023 (especially in purple color). So, if you made your order in 2022 or 2023, please check your shipping address in your account! If your address has changed since you ordered, please contact Crowd Supply support as soon as possible to prevent any shipping issues!
Assembly Improvements
We’re once again terribly sorry for the late update and for the late shipment compared to what we promised. But we didn’t spend this time idly! During the last few months, we’ve been working out a way to assemble, pack, and ship Slimes as fast as possible to eventually make SlimeVR Trackers be available for immediate purchase. For this to happen, we still need to catch up on all backorders, which are way more than our small team could ever assemble by ourselves. That’s why, a few months ago, we asked a professional assembly company (Chain Assembly) for help. They’ve been assembling Slimes for a while, including some of the previous shipments, but there are still a lot more Slimes to be made.
In the last couple of months, we improved the overall processes and reached an agreement with Chain for an increased capacity to help us clear the backlog. They also took on the task of packing the assembled Slimes into sets. Since they have a lot more experience and people to handle tasks like that, they’ve been incredibly fast! Most of this shipment was assembled and packed by them.
We still need a lot more Slimes assembled though! For example, the rest of the orders from 2023 require 13756 main trackers to be assembled and 2160 sets to be packed. For all of the outstanding orders, we need 29870 trackers and 4869 sets. The good news is with the new capacity, we’re on our way to clear this backlog in a month or two! Which is very exciting, because that means no one would need to wait for their Slimes for months and years anymore. Let’s hope nothing goes wrong.
Is My Set in This Shipment?
You might ask if your set is in this shipment or not. Sadly, we can’t give you a precise answer to that yet. If you ordered in 2022, and there are no problems with your order, your set should be in this shipment for sure. If you ordered a purple set of Slimes (vast majority of the orders) in the first half of the 2023, your set might be in this shipment too. You will know for sure when you get a shipping email from Crowd Supply!
When Will There be More?!
If your Slimes aren’t in this shipment, we’re sure you want to know when they will come. Right now, we and Chain are assembling the rest of the trackers to cover the rest of 2023 orders (13756 trackers required). The tracker assembly should be finished in a couple of weeks, and then we will pack them and ship them to Mouser & Crowd Supply, and from there to you. We’re still waiting on the new shipment of packing boxes, which should arrive in the next two weeks or so, but we have all the rest parts on hand. So, if your orders is from 2023, you can reasonably expect us to finish the assembly and packing before the end of June. Of course, remember that things happen, and also the need for the Slimes to go to the USA, to be sorted by Mouser and shipped to you. So expect them to be shipped mid-July.
If your order is from 2024, we can’t say for sure when it will be shipped, but we aim for the end of summer. For most of the 2024 orders, we have the parts on hand, but for some and for the new orders we’re waiting on some parts in the next month or two. Stay tuned for the updates! As usual, frequent (weekly!) updates are posted in our Discord server.
Other Improvements
There have been other improvements we made during this time, to make Slimes better and the assembly faster. On of these is a new PCB tester design! It’s way more reliable and fast compared to the last one we had - it can test the whole panel of 20 main tracker PCBs in one go in ~90-120 seconds, and one person can operate two at the same time. It also doesn’t require us to have the second stage of testing like we used to, so it’s at least 4 times more time-efficient.
We mentioned new poly-carbonate cases in the previous update, but we also made other improvements to the trackers! One of them is the Revision 14 of the Main PCB. The new version is easier to produce since it doesn’t require us to solder the module ourselves anymore, and it has additional protections from static and other electrical problems, so it also should be way more reliable!
Another issue people who already received the Slimes have experienced is the breaking of the extension cables. During the development and life of SlimeVR, we went through a few revisions of the extension cables, and all the new sets now ship with the latest revision - V4. These cables, compared to V3 in past few shipments, have a bit of epoxy glue on the connector to improve their reliability and longevity. So far, we see that they’re way more reliable than the previous versions!
Warranty
Did you experience any of the issues mentioned in the previous section? Blue light of death, broken case loops, broken extension cable, or strap? Please reach out to our support for warranty! All Slimes come with a 2-year warranty from the date you receive them and you can ask for the warranty replacements by filling out the form our our site. We ship warranty replacements with higher priority, but it still can take a couple of weeks before we can get to it. We will do our best to solve your problem!
SlimeVR at Teardown!
Teardown is a yearly event held by Crowd Supply in Portland, Oregon where makers come to show their projects, give demos, talks, workshops, and more to the audience. And this year, SlimeVR will be there too! Sadly, the main team is from The Netherlands, and couldn’t attend this year, but some of our contributors - PlatinumVsR and lmore377 (a duo behind an amazing MoSlime project) - are hosting a live demo of SlimeVR! So if you’re interested to check it out and try some Slimes for yourself, consider attending the event. More information can be found here!
See Ya Soon!
We will try our best not to take too long before the next good news! Stay tuned!