August 20 Update

Hey everyone, Ryan here with this week’s update.

Shipping Update

Good news on the shipping front overall. We continue to remain on track with our current shipping schedule. Our goal was to ship 7,500 units last week, and we sent 7,680 units.

The rest of the schedule remains the same per our last update. This is the schedule for those that backed or ordered before April 1, 2018:

Week of June 18 - 211 units shipped Week of June 25 - 338 units shipped
Week of July 16 - 578 units shipped
Week of July 23 - 4,098 units shipped
Week of July 30 - 7,166 units shipped
Week of August 6 - 7,680 units shipped
Week of August 13 - 7,500 units - WithArsenal.com orders began shipping
Week of August 20 - 7,500 units
Week of August 27 - all remaining confirmed pre-orders from prior to 4/1/18

Shipping Logistics Update

For those of you that have received a shipping confirmation and tracking email, we understand that it can be frustrating if you have not seen movement on your package for a few days (or even a week). However, please allow the full 14 days (from your shipping date) for your package to make it to the final delivery destination before contacting support. Most issues can be resolved by calling the courier delivering the package in your country. If your package has not arrived 14 days after your ship date and the courier is not able to provide any additional information, please contact us so we can file a claim on your behalf or help track down the missing package. If you run into any other issues, of course please feel free to reach out.

My Arsenal Still Hasn’t Shipped!

We’ve had lots of folks write to us that their Arsenal hadn’t shipped yet and should have per the above schedule. If you’re a Kickstarter or Indiegogo backer and don’t think your Arsenal has shipped, greater than 90% of the time this means either A) the tracking email is in your Spam/Promotions/Update/other folder, look for an email from no-reply@witharsenal.com) or B) we didn’t have your order marked as confirmed based on the emails we sent out back in April/May. If after checking your email you still don’t have anything, send us an email (help@witharsenal.com) and we can help you confirm.

If you’re a withArsenal.com order and you can’t find an email from no-reply@witharsenal.com, you should be shipping in the next two weeks per the above schedule.

Software Update

On the software side, our app release (v0.9.10) we anticipated pushing out early this week has been moved to Monday. We'll be pushing it to the app stores on Monday, and then the usual 1-3 day approval timeline. We completed our testing (after identifying a few issues and addressing them) and are really excited about what this latest release entails. It’s a really large release and it will have a big positive impact on user experience.

This release will include the WifiDirect support for Android phones, Sony camera support improvements, a new multipoint, whole scene, and focus stacking system, power management upgrade, handheld mode improvements, and additional reported bug fixes. If you want read the full app release notes for v0.9.10 and what’s coming next, you can access them here, but below is a quick snapshot of what’s included:

WifiDirect Support: the Android app will now be using WifiDirect to connect Arsenal to your smartphone; this will address connection issues reported by Android users for future firmware updates. To do the upgrade to v0.9.10, you’ll still need to either change some settings on your Android or update via a desktop app. We’ve included better workflow procedures in the app, and links to articles to help you with each step (if you’re having trouble performing a firmware update, see these instructions). Once done, you won’t have to do that again and the firmware updates will complete over Wifi, enabling a much better experience.

Sony Camera Improvements: fixes for live view lag, speed improvements to exposure bracketing, triggering, and setting changes; also fixes for a number of Sony models (all of our supported Sony cameras should be functioning well, except the A77, A77 II and A99, which we’re still working on). New Multipoint, Whole Scene, and Focus Stacking System: the new system is able to leverage the camera’s autofocus system to more quickly determine optimal focus positions

Power Management: 20% longer battery life

Handheld Mode Improvements: added a blue LED animation to indicate when Arsenal is running in handheld mode

Customer Support

I also want to address the longer than normal wait times customers have experienced when trying to reach out to the Customer Support team. The team has been working extremely hard to troubleshoot and assist customers with technical issues and the many shipping update requests. We understand that some folks have been waiting for responses for a few days. This is something we are working to improve on our end in a number of ways, including better/more recommend articles, a helpful chat bot, clearer instructions for Android and Sony users, improvements to the Android messaging in app (referenced above), and more. Additionally, we kindly ask your help with two small things that will allow us to provide more timely responses and better support.

First, if you have opened a support ticket with us (either by sending us a chat message on the website, PM on Facebook, or an email via help@witharsenal.com), please do not open another ticket via an additional channel. By only writing in once, we can quickly address the ticket and not have to track down information from multiple discussions. This will also help to ensure that we don't spend time answering the same inquiries more than once. We, of course, want you to write in if you have questions or need help, but please keep it to one thread. We are committed to responding to every inquiry and want to make sure you are receiving a response in a reasonable amount of time.

Second, please avoid sending follow-up emails if you have already emailed us the first time. Once you open a ticket with us, our system assigns it a timestamp. The team is working on the oldest tickets first. If you send an additional message after your initial one, the system resets your timestamp and makes your ticket appear to be “new” in our system. Apologies for any inconvenience these wait times may have caused, but we assure we are working to improve this system and are confident we can get there with your help.

Wrap Up

Thank you to everyone that continues to share their images #withArsenal as well as share their personal experiences in online forums and with us directly. For those that are still waiting on your units to ship, we are so grateful for your patience. Please keep sending us your feedback; it drives us to continue improving Arsenal.

-Ryan