Hi Everyone!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It's been a long year, with many ups and downs, for me at the beginning of this year I was working at Embark Trucks full-time as an Engineering Manager. However, this was not to be, instead it was time for me to go full-time on OpenMV. Since then Ibrahim and me and have been able to start building up OpenMV again. So, let's recap the big things we were able to deliver this year!

#1 - Launching the OpenMV Cam RT1062

It was an was an incredible amount of work to design the new OpenMV Cam RT1062 platform. We had to port all our software to run on a new non-STM32 based processor. This meant new drivers for almost everything. Furthermore, the OpenMV Cam RT1062 is our most advanced OpenMV Cam with multiple high speed interfaces so you can actually get data out of your OpenMV Cam to the world. We're super excited for 2024 and how we can build on the platform in the future with new shields and camera modules.

#2 - OpenMV IDE 4.0

Launching OpenMV IDE 4.0 took months of work to update the IDE from Qt 5x to Qt 6x and QtCreator 4 to QtCreator 10. As you can imagine, it took more than a week before the code would even compile. However, we got it done! Also, by embracing GitHub actions we're now able to build the IDE in the cloud off of any commit greatly accelerating our ability to delivery bug fixes and new features to customers.

#3 - A Fresh New Website

Like OpenMV IDE, we hadn't updated the website in 7 years too. Since then so much has changed. So, it was time to get onboard with a new Shopify 2.0 website. If you haven't taken a peak yet, we've got a lot more videos now to tell the OpenMV story. Wow!

#4 - OpenMV Cam H7 Plus Back In Stock

Like mana from heaven, we finally got our order of 5K STM32H743IIK6 chips to build more OpenMV Cam H7 Pluses this year - our best selling OpenMV Cam. A lot of things came together to make delivering more OpenMV Cam H7 Pluses possible. I want to give a huge shoutout to Etonnet, our contract manufacturer, for working with us on delivering more OpenMV Cam H7 Pluses.

#5 - And Finally, Shipping, lots of Shipping

While not externally visible, we had a huge backlog of orders on our books. Some that had been languishing for literally years. We are incredibly happy that we were able to wipe this out thanks to being able to get back in stock. Last month we shipped hundreds of orders completely clearing out our backlog so we can start fresh in 2024!

Now for some Metrics

I was looking around in our analytics last month while dealing with our shipping backlog and I saw a very interesting number. There are over 80,000 registered OpenMV Cam's in the world! Woah! It looks like we're going somewhere with this idea. After you add in all the clones of our product out there we're talking about over 100,000 OpenMV Cams running around in the wild!

But, it makes sense, we passed the 10,000 threshold mark on our email list. It's crazy hitting this number. People want OpenMV. So, we're going to continue to work hard to bring it in 2024.

So, here's what we plan to get out the door early in the new year:

#1 - OpenMV IDE Viewer

Have you ever wanted to use OpenMV IDE as your product's user interface? Well, we hear you! We're going to be rolling a stripped down version of OpenMV IDE soon that just includes the viewing features in OpenMV IDE. This will allow you to deploy an application based on your OpenMV Cam and have desktop software for Windows, Mac, and Linux to talk to it.

But, wait, there's more!

We're also going to be rolling out configurable user settings built into OpenMV IDE Viewer (and OpenMV IDE) which will allow you to share .json config files back and forth with your camera and the IDE. The .json file will tell the IDE the schema for config settings and whatnot to display via a GUI in OpenMV IDE Viewer (and OpenMV IDE). With this new feature you'll be able to easy create user interfaces!

Note, this feature is for editing static config settings loaded by your OpenMV Cam powered product on startup.

And Finally - White Labeling OpenMV IDE Viewer

This is one of those non-obvious ideas. But, it's clear what folks want. To be able to deploy a product based on the OpenMV Cam with your own user interface. So, we're going to make that easy for you by allowing you to White-Label OpenMV IDE Viewer with your own logos, and etc. This is going to be a game changer for folks building products based on the OpenMV Cam.

#2 - New Camera Modules

We announced this before. But, we're going to bring new camera modules based on OnSemi's AR sensors to the market. We've prototyped six modules as we said we're going to do. We just need to get the driver software done before we can bring them to market.

#3 - New Shields

We also announced this before. We've got a bunch of new shields for the OpenMV Cam RT1062 designed and we're just waiting on sample protypes that we should get early next year before we can start bringing them to market. We've already worked through pricing with our contract manufacturer and we'll be ready to pull the trigger soon on production after we verify the samples work.

Finally, and more!

Of course, we've got a lot more cooking behind the scenes too! What I just mentioned were lagging items we wanted to delivery in 2023. We're working on a lot more for 2024. Anyway, I don't need to make this email any longer. So...