05
Jul
A Major Milestone
in blog
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On April 20, 2016, the iBubble project was officially started on Indiegogo.
After three years of hard work, two fundraisers and a big dream, iBubble has officially began shipping in March 2019!
Looking back on this great adventure, we can safely say that this project would not have been possible without the support of the diving and freediving community. Even though some people were not convinced that we would be able to achieve our goal (and that’s okay!), the diving community has been very welcoming and helpful to orient iBubble’s development in the right direction.
During iBubble’s development, we have taken in account the input of divers, underwater photographers, dive centers and freedivers in order to adapt iBubble to their needs. And we have met a lot of people during these years! We have journeyed across the world, from Europe, to the Americas and Asia, in order to introduce iBubble to this awesome community.
With their feedback and our own research & development, iBubble has evolved and changed. The original design changed deeply, from the design to internal capabilities. Indeed, we have made many changes throughout iBubble’s development: We have changed its design, making iBubble much more hydrodynamic, but we also have added new features. For instance, an internal camera, which is used by the drone’s artificial intelligence. This AI allows iBubble to recognise and locked on the shape of the diver holding the remote, thus guaranteeing a better follow and framing underwater.
And this is just one of the many improvements we have made to our drone. Of course, this came with a price. In order to have a sustainable economic model, we had to raise the retail price of iBubble a few times during its development. We made certain that anyone who backed iBubble during our crowdfunding campaign would not be impacted to this price change. However, we were careful not to raise the price too high, as we want iBubble to remain accessible for everyone.
In October 2018, we have reached the conclusion that iBubble was finally ready to be put out there on the market. Its behaviour and software had reached the crucial point where we could put it in the hands of our beta testers. iBubble was thus officially launched! But after development comes a very important step: industrialisation and mass production. With a complex product such as iBubble, it is costly operation, which we had to plan carefully.
This final step before shipping was done in early 2019 successfully, and we finally were able to reach the most important milestone of our company: Shipping!
As you may know, logistics is a complex system. And becomes even more so you take in account international shipping for a highly technological product with a Lithium-Ion battery! Being able to ship anywhere in the world was very challenging, but we found the best solution for everyone.
Throughout these years, what kept us going is our community. We dreamt of the day where YOU would send us the videos you made with iBubble, and this dream came true!
Watching your videos, pictures, and simply reading up on your experiences with iBubble has filled us with pride. We thank you for making our adventure so great.
But this doesn’t mean that we are going to rest on our laurels; we have plenty of projects for the future!
