After receiving much attention over the past few days, the aforementioned Eye3 Drone project on Kickstarter has been officially pulled on account of photoshop shenanigans and overall shadiness.
From IEEE Automation Blog:
"At first glance, the eye3 drone seemed like an incredible deal. For US $2500, you could get yourself a beefy hexacopter capable of lifting over 6.8 kilograms (15 pounds) with an included autopilot that would take all of the hassle and stress out of flying the UAV...
People on the Internet, being people on the Internet, did some digging and found out several things. First, the pictures of the kit on Kickstarter are just pictures of this kit (from cnchelicopter.com) with the attribution photoshopped out. Also, the founders of eye3 allegedly owe a bunch of people money (or a product) on another project."
Comments
Just to let you know, this Drones Kickstarter is not a hoax! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/511329223/drones
Hope the printrbot guy, hasn't skipped town, an lying on a beach sipping margaritas.
He's going to need some help printing and assembling those printrbots. He should be able to buy a few industrial SLS process printers to do it faster, and cheaper.
Somebody succeeded anyway with Open Hardware:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/printrbot/printrbot-your-first-...
http://printrbot.com/
http://reprap.org/wiki/Printrbot
Waiting the NetStore Opening ;-P
eye3 was so close, but ...
This is clearly the second round of egg on the faces of those behind lumenlab.com. I wouldn't send them any of my money.
I decided to start my own blog on this topic: http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/make-your-own-kickstarter-eye3
I find the whole Kickstarter business model a little "loosy goosy". The idea of paying money for nice media presentations, with no controls, to ensure delivery is just too risky. People think twice about buying stock in a corporation, because they're afraid of loosing their money. But somehow people don't seem to have that inhibition on Kickstarter. At least with corporate stock, you can always ask them to send you a stock certificate.
Not to add flames to this already scorched topic, but what the heck…
Hoax /hōks/
Using a photosopped image of someone else's work to represent your "project" without even mentioning the kit to begin with - places this squarely in Hoaxville territory. THe added buffoonery of these guys having unpaid debts for past failed "projects" seals the deal.
I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't even built and flown this hexrotor.
Like so many Kickstarter "projects" this was really nothing more than a nice idea articulated in blog form. IMO, there is no project until your hands get dirty.
If I were a crotchety old man (some think I already am even though I'm young - ha) I would say "this is the problem with America today." Too many kids think they deserve to get paid for just having good ideas. I was raised to understand that creativity is rewarded only after the hard work gets done. BTW, I thought Kickstarter was just for hipsters, failed artists and indie game designers? Real men bootstrap their businesses, pansies ask for handouts. ok i'll stop now
Yeah, I also got the impression that they're not bad people (charlatans), but just that they have dreams which are bigger than reality. Is what they are doing really that much different than any other entrepreneurial enterprise which fails? 90% of new business startups fail. I think the only difference in this case is that normally it's landlords and bankers are left holding the bad credit when a startup fails. Nobody cares about them. In this case however, it appears to be the customers who lost their money. Optically, it looks bad.
"We have spent the last 2 years testing, programming and flying these computers and we have the knowledge, configurations and programs you need to get in the air NOW." Yes, "these computers" is awfully vague and doesn't specifically say the APM2 even though the previous sentences in the same paragraph are talking about the APM2. It could have been their attempt to deceive or this Kellie Sigler character doesn't really know what she's talking about (which isn't good news either).
It is my guess that this was an attempt to make some money off people who don't know better, which happens ALL the time. Lumenlab.com (which seems to be overloaded with traffic right now) seems to have created a CNC lazer cutter of some sort in which they were delivering 8-10 months after originally promised. So if they're ok doing business this way, then the March 2012 timeframe would simply come and go. If APM2's don't ship until October, who cares. They already got their money. As near as I can tell, the people who ordered their "micro" laser cutter did end up getting the product, just months and months later.
Bad business, yes. Lies about delivery dates, absolutely. Charging people more than they need to spend just because people are stupid, heck ya! A scam? Not sure I'd call it that. Would I buy one from them? Not a chance. Would other people? Apparently so as some still want one.
It's hard to know what is in a person's heart, but after reading through alot of the posts and links and forums dedicated to Grayson and Kellie Sigler, I would like to believe that if each of these many projects had "maxed out", they would have been financially successful and been able to bring these projects to fruition.
On the other hand, it seems obvious that they were all just pipedreams waiting for the full financing to come from people placing orders and trusting they would get product. (much of which would only exist if the complete project was soldout)
If not for some underperforming projects and poor health, this couple may have been hailed as marketing geniuses rather than the charlatans many are branding them now.
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