Thanks to David Hobby of Strobist for the blog love - including a link to a great review of the P1’s from band photographer David Bergman. If you haven’t seen it - you’ve got to check out Bergman’s work. Some inspiring outside the box stuff.

SportShooter Review, written by David Bergman

David Bergman’s Blog

http://www.davidbergman.net/blog/2008/08/04/radiopopper-review/

And of course, let’s not forget the Man himself…. Strobist Speedlinks Thanks David!

It has come to our attention that some P1 users are experiencing a sinking feeling when realizing their buttons are sinking. That can’t be good, and that doesn’t make us happy.

The P1 circuit boards are press-fit into the plastic enclosures. Most are set with plenty of friction force that they should be quite secure. However, it seems the friction points were machined a bit small in some random enclosures. This hasn’t been traced to a single batch of units, but rather an overall observation.

To remedy the situation, all units shipped since mid June have included locking nuts around the antenna connector which snugs everything together and makes future movement impossible.

IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING THIS, most likely with your P1 Receiver unit(s) - we’ve got a quick and easy fix you can apply yourself with little hassle. Just shoot us an email with your original order number and your current address (if different) and we’ll mail you out the required locking nut the same day - no charge, no worries. Check the graphic along with this post - just press the board to insure it’s snug, then apply the locking nut around the antenna connector to easily remedy this issue.

We’ve had a very few P1 Transmitter units exhibit this behavior, but they are very rare. This is usually experienced only on the P1 Receivers. If you do have this problem with your Transmitter unit(s), give us a call as we will need to setup a return. The Transmitter fix is similar but requires an internal component to be added. This fix is same day turn-around so you won’t be without your units for very long. (We get your return when UPS delivers in the morning, and when they pick up that afternoon, your unit(s) will be on the way back to you).

Email us: info ** at ** radiopopper ** dot ** com if you’re experiencing this and we’ll mail you right out the required locking nuts.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE NOTIFIED…. please shoot us an email to: canada at radiopopper dot com Note that is “radiopopper” singular. You should receive an auto-responder confirm - if you don’t see the responder, you’re not on the notification list.

It’s a good time to be Canadian.

That’s right. Put it on your calendars now. The P1 units will ship to Canada in 4 to 6 weeks!

We’re happy to announce just a few days ago we passed all our testing required to ship P1 units into Canada. We need to wait about two weeks for our test lab to send the reports to the Canadian government, and it’s expected they’ll reply with an official okay in two to four weeks following. The minute they say okay, we can start shipping over the border. Best case, that’s 2nd week August, worst case, late August.

And we already have stock. How cool is that? It turns out we’ll be able to ship the exact same units we’re shipping the the US with the addition of one extra sticker on the side. That’s fine because we like stickers.

We’ve got an additional large delivery due from manufacturing first week of August to handle demand.

Stay tuned for details as to how it’s all going to work out. We will probably take pre-orders for those shipments, but having positive inventory we don’t expect the back-order situation that developed for a while with US orders.

For those waiting for European and Australian shipments - we’re still working on the testing.  No worries about passing anything, there’s just a whole lot of it.  We’ll update you when we know more.  We haven’t forgotten about you.

So there we were, just about complete with the Jr. project when we began placing orders for our initial production parts. Several months prior we’d talked to the manufacturers involved and got various promises regarding lead times and availability.

One of the primary components it seems has had the lead times extended, and promised quantities reduced. We’ve come to realize the manufacturer of this particular component will not be reliable in delivering parts in the quantities we require nor at the rate we require.

We’ve made the call to push the project back a few weeks and do a slight re-design with a different component. This requires a bit of re-work but the delay won’t be significant. We’d rather take a short pause now and produce a device that can be delivered in quantity, than to release a device that stays in constant back-order for yeas to come because we’re waiting on one part that can’t be reliably sourced.

The initial design did not include a hot-shoe, and we came up with an inventive way to not include an actual plastic enclosure to save on costs and keep your price down, but we’re re-thinking all that in this small redesign.

As it stands now we are probably going to back to molding an enclosure that will include a hot shoe mount and increase the overall appearance and durability of the product. As this is a low profit margin product by design, tooling costs can get in the way of those plans, but we’re moving forward.

As long as we’re on the subject - I’ll go ahead and throw it out there - if anyone reading has solid connections to the plastics molding process - be it tool makers or those who handle the entire process, we’d like to hear from you. We’re in process with a few companies along those lines with our P1/P8 line, but as that’s not something we’re experts in, we’re open to options and suggestions. If you have specific contacts or experience, please shoot us an email. If you know a guy who used to have a roommate who’s cousin ‘knows a guy’ in China, then we’ll politely pass on your suggestion.

As for battery, we’re still on the fence between AAA and 9volt. The AAA is smaller but the power regulator and filtering for that regulator cost a bit more.

The device will almost certainly have a mono plug on it to attach a PC-sync or other adapter, and on the receiving end, you’ll probably have a single mono plug you’ll use to trigger an output to your studio lights, or via one of those mono plug to the hot-shoe of a flash to trigger your stand along flashes. We’re also considering manufacturing some mono-plug to female hot-shoe cords for this purpose that would be a little more affordable than the currently available offering.

So that’s the update. Remember that once we put up some pictures for the big reveal, we’re not going to take months to get them out the door. From announcement to ship, we’re probably not looking at much more than a month. The parts will all be available in 24 hours - the lead time will be the tool time for the plastic.

Thanks for being patient on the updates - if you haven’t heard from us in a while, it’s because we’re busy working on something.

Oh yea!

It’s been a long road over the past few months trying to keep up with the demand, but we’re very happy to announce we shipped the last set of back-ordered units today! Just getting the huge number of orders out has kept us pretty busy - now we’re glad to begin moving forward on some of the side projects we’ve got lined up

“The next 10 orders will ship within 24 hours!” - Get yours now.

So they are indeed “in stock” - a few of them anyway. We got the last order out just as we neared the bottom of the box of our most recent shipment of product. We’ve got enough units on hand right now to fill maybe 10 orders. We’ve got another huge shipment of product arriving in the next week or two. We expect to dip back into “back order” later this week for that reason but that should be the end of it for US orders anyway. For this reason, the store will still note the same “Pre Order” with a 4 week expected ship time - but we’ll clear that as soon as we have stock on hand for a couple hundred orders again.

Side projects? Like what?

We’re working up two side projects related to the P1’s - the first is a photo contest. Get your creative gears turning now. The contest will open for submissions of images shot using your RadioPopper P1 units. You’ll need to describe the lighting and “why” you couldn’t have made the image without your RadioPopper units - either due to time saved in setup, use of high speed sync by radio, etc. We’ll pull together our favorites then put them up to a public vote. Grab all your photographer buddies to come and vote for their favorite image.

We’ll run this contest every so often with some sweet prizes. Once or twice a year, we’ll add up the votes to a “grand prize” which will be something of high value that’s worth having. We’ll post up a “prize list” and the winner will be able to select their prize off the list. We’re talking some high end stuff here - new lenses, SpeedLite units, free websites from FloSites, free ablums from Kiss Wedding Books, as well as various educational DVD sets.

Did we say “Educational” ?

We’re also starting production on a set of short video instructionals to help you better understand ETTL and the automatic side of using flash. We think ETTL has gotten a bad name. Used correctly it can be very powerful - you can dial in your “perfect” exposure and fine tune your lighting quickly and in most cases very predictably. We’ll take you through the basics of setting up and shooting while letting your flash think for itself. Each lesson will be short - just a few minutes. They’ll build on eachother to unlock the mystery that is “creative lighting” using your hand held flashes. Sweet.

Here is a first public note about the current slated development of the RadioPopper Jr.  We welcome the user base to complain, er “provide constructive criticism and respectful requests” as to the final development of the Jr. product by commenting to this and future posts.

Design Concept:
We are starting with a high performance radio system that has been used in other applications and has demonstrated high reliability in those applications.  We are then going to add as little as possible to the radio itself to achieve a practical and usable end product.  We’re going to step outside the box a few places along the way which may concern some people, but in our effort to deliver maximum use with minimal cost, we’re leaving off the extra coat of polish.

And that’s okay.  Don’t interpret the design as “cheap” by any means.  We’re using top of the line components and high quality manufacturing - we’re just going about it in a way that makes the unit easy and inexpensive to manufacture without compromising on performance.

More after the jump….

The RadioPopper P1 product is now alive, well, and shipping. As planned, it’s now time to begin the R&D project on our second product for which there seems to be much anticipation - the RadioPopper Jr.

What it is:
The RadioPopper Junior is designed to fill the need in the amature and prosumer photo market in need of an affordable yet reliable standard manual radio flash triggering system. With the Jr., we plan to get the job done without any extras that push up costs. We’re starting with a high performance radio and adding as little as possible to it to achieve a usable and practical triggering system that won’t brake the bank.

What it is not:
The RadioPopper Jr. likely will not sport any of the extra features you’ll find on more advanced radio systems. You won’t find lots of channels and advanced features going far beyond the simple task of activating your flash system. Most notably - what the Jr. is “not” is “high priced”. You won’t be paying $100 to $200 each - which may translate to the best news the amature and prosumer market has heard in a long time.

As we design:
The Jr. is now officially “in the design stage”. As the Jr. is much simpler than the highly engineered P1, the path from development to public release should be quite short. We welcome feedback from the user base as we design the unit. Follow along on the blog as we put the pieces together - check the keyword “RadioPopper Jr.” in the bar for the most recent updates.

Want to be famous?  Sort of?

For those of you taking delivery of the first batch of P1 production units, we would very much appreciate if you would write a review for us!  Please write the review and post somewhere on your own website or blog along with some images.  Feel free to have some fun with it.  Send us the link and we’ll share here and in the Product Reviews section of the main site.

Your review can be short or detailed - whatever makes you happy.  The idea is to get real world feedback from real photographers using the system to expand their work.

You’ll get a big “Thank you!” and some web traffic out of the deal, plus Google loves that kind of stuff when it comes to search engine optimization.

Thanks in advance!

It’s finally up! Yay! Big thanks to Ross from floSites for making it happen.

The blog should be a bit easier to read now. We’ve also got a super cool (and functional!) Search feature on the blog over in the side bar to the left. Back on the Main Website, we’ve got a clean new design with some room to grow. We’ll keep that home page updated under “Important Stuff” with whatever we think is most pressing at the time.

Also check out the new RadioPopper P1 product page - complete with a graphic and HTML comparison table. Oooh. Ahhhh. We’re getting pretty fancy now. You’ll also notice we’ve finally got a link on the site to order the product. Imagine that.

Feedback welcome. Thanks everyone for being patient on this - I know the new site was long overdue. The previous site was put up from a template in an hour as a “temporary” living space that saw little improvement for six months.

This is one of the most complete reviews we’ve seen yet.  I’m sure many more will follow.  I think Ed gives a pretty straight and legit overview of his experiences thus far with the P1 system.

If you haven’t seen Ed’s work, Check Him Out!

Here’s the review:
http://edpingol.blogspot.com/2008/04/radio-popper-review.html

Thanks for taking the time to write this Ed (and Monica for not letting him slack on it!) - much appreciated!!