Weekly Update — Spark Is On The Move!

Spark Series
1

Hey Pixboomers,

Great news to kick off this week — some of you have already received your Spark from last week’s pilot shipment! Seeing units land in backers’ hands is a moment the whole team has been working toward, and it genuinely means a lot to us. Thank you for your patience and trust.  

 

Shipping Update

This week, we’ve shipped another 20+ units to backers across different countries. Tracking numbers will start rolling out around next Tuesday — just a heads-up that next Monday is a public holiday in Hong Kong, so logistics operations will resume the following day.

 

Image
Image1920×1080 486 KB

Image
Image1920×1080 371 KB

Image
Image1920×1080 365 KB

 

Looking ahead, we’re planning to ship another 30 units the week after. We’re scaling up production capacity week by week, always making sure quality comes first. It’s a gradual ramp-up, but a deliberate one — we’d rather get it right than rush it.

A note for our backers in Malaysia :malaysia: — unfortunately we’re currently unable to ship to Malaysia, as we don’t yet have the required local certification. The certification process requires a registered Malaysian distributor/agent, and critically, the agent must be able to provide a repair center. If any of our Malaysian backers happen to know a suitable candidate who meets this requirement, please DM me directly. We’d love to find a way to get Spark to you as soon as possible.

A note for our backers in Canada :canada: — Shipments to Canada are also facing a delay. During the certification process, we discovered that a French-language version of the user manual is required — something we hadn’t prepared for. We’re working on it, but realistically, Canadian shipments may be delayed by 2–3 weeks from the current schedule. If you’ve already received a confirmation email and would like to receive your Spark sooner, you’re welcome to contact us at support@pixboom.com to update your shipping country and address. We’re sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your understanding.

An update on Mount Adapters — We’re facing a situation that might feel familiar to some of you. The latest batch of mounts delivered by our supplier failed to meet our quality standards during inspection. Rather than compromise, we’ve made the call to send them back for rework.

To be clear, this only affects certain mount types — not all mounts are impacted. For those whose orders are affected, we’ll be reaching out to you directly via email to confirm your mount specification. If you’re open to switching to an alternative mount type that we currently have in stock, we can proceed with your shipment right away — no delay needed. All of this will be confirmed with you over email.

We know this isn’t the news you were hoping for, but we’d rather take the extra time than put something in your hands that isn’t up to scratch. Thank you for bearing with us on this one.

  

Spark Feature & Firmware Update

We want to keep you fully in the loop on where things stand with Spark’s current capabilities:

  • SDI Interface — This port is currently inactive. The earliest we can unlock it is July — we’ve moved SDI development to our highest priority and the team is pushing hard to get it there. We’ll notify everyone by email as soon as it’s live.
  • HDMI — Currently supports 1080P at 30/60Hz. 4K output will be coming in an upcoming firmware update — stay tuned for that one.
  • Wi-Fi Features — Because Wi-Fi functionality touches so many different modules across the system, the development timeline is naturally longer. According to our current roadmap, we’ll be rolling out web-based remote control first, followed by a dedicated mobile app down the line. We’ll keep you posted as each milestone gets closer. We want to be transparent about this rather than overpromise. 

A friendly reminder — all of these updates will be delivered via firmware. When a new version is available, simply head to our official website to download and install the latest firmware. Easy as that.:raising_hands:

  • Next Friday, I’ll be sharing a full breakdown of: 
    -  Features currently available
    -  Features not yet unlocked, with estimated timelines
  • Our R&D team is working hard right now to put that list together for you — stay tuned.

As always, if you have any questions, reach out to us at support@pixboom.com — we’re here. And if your Spark has arrived and you run into any issues at all, please don’t hesitate to contact us at the same address — we’ll make it our priority to get it sorted for you as quickly as possible.  

And if you’re loving your Spark — share the love! Tag us @pixboomtech on Instagram or share your experience on any platform you like. It truly means the world to us, and helps more creators discover what Spark can do.:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:  

 

Jing & the Pixboom Team :heart_hands:  

5 Likes
3

Thanks for the update Jing! Good to see some units in backers hands. Sorry, to hear about Malaysian and Canadian backers. : (

4

What an absolute bummer of a news! So at least another month before I get my camera, if not more. :face_with_steam_from_nose::exploding_head:

5

What mount is affected? I have picked PL.

6

Curious about this too.

8

Ugh, that’s sad news for Malaysia. I guess I’ll have to pick up in Hong Kong myself… 

9

Hopefully the French language version of the manual is the only roadblock for Canadian shipments!

2 Likes
10

Hopefully and I absolutely hate to complain but honestly, they have a french Canadian on the team and I think that this should’ve been brought up a long time ago. It’s not like having a bilingual user manual is a new thing in Canada. It’s been around for as long as I lived. Just really bummed out that this is the reason we get another delay. 

1 Like
11

Wow, that’s great news: a camera that isn’t fully working properly and even more delays !

12

I’m hoping that will lead to a quick translation… 

13

Pretty much every single Arri, RED, and Sony I’ve used has not had the full feature set when they started shipping. And they’ve been doing this camera thing a lot longer than Pixboom. Some unfinished things are a bit of a surprise (HDMI only, and 1080 at that), but many unfinished features are ones we’ve known would be updated after shipping (ProRes, Apps, 12-bit mode). Not surprising for a Kickstarter.

1 Like
14

I think the translation can be done very quickly especially with AI nowadays, you can probably do it in 5 seconds. The problem I think will be to print the manual again. It sucks because I never care and most likely will not even read the user manual. At this point they could just print it on regular 8 x 11 sheets, staple it and put it in the hardcase. I will most likely throw it out anyways once it gets here. 

2 Likes
15

Confirmation email received! I am #65 for reference. A hummingbird built her nest right in front of my house and every time I open the door she tries to fly into my house. Now I’m going to invade her space with this camera. little turd. 

1 Like
16

My personal view is get the sdi up and running with all the standard project frame rates and then later work on 4k monitoring as luxury if you want. 

4k monitoring is not very common in most environments even big feature don’t monitor 4k in big numbers.

I’m surprised hdsdi with 23.976 / 24 / 25 / 29.976 isn’t a minimum requirement before you decided to ship.

should never promise a date to ship unless the camera is already completed !

17

I’m sure many of us would be happy to receive the camera in it’s current state now rather than wait.
Personally I don’t even have needs for SDI, and not planning to use the camera much in those low framerates anyway.
Fingers crossed hardware is solid and most of the missing things can be fixed in firmware later.

18

Nice :slight_smile: Anyone more received the email? 

19

SDI is a critical output for professional workflow. It’s gonna be awkward having to explain to clients that it doesn’t work yet. Hopefully it’s resolved shortly. 

The framerates he’s mentioning are just for viewing, not recording.

1 Like
20

I agree that SDI output is very important and it looks like Pixboom also agrees with you since it’s been bumped up to top priority. At the same time, the competition in this space at these lower price points (Ember, Chronos) are HDMI only, with no option for SDI at all, so clearly productions have been getting by without it at all. Hopefully they hit that July date for getting it enabled.

1 Like
21

Agreed, I already have to adjust a few items to make the kit work on some upcoming jobs since native SDI isn’t available yet. 

It’s not the end of the world, however I would urge the hardware team to finish the SDI firmware ASAP, as most rental houses or professional workflow will need SDI rather than hdmi. 

In the mean time I am planning on rigging a BM converter onto the camera and hopefully the USB-C port is active so I can use it to power the converter, otherwise I will have to make a custom P tap cable. 

HDMI to SDI Mounting Kit or https://www.printables.com/model/1434973-blackmagic-hdmi-sdi-micro-converter-holder

22

Yea, agreed Ember does get by with only hdmi mainly because the ember is useless as anything other then a dedicated high speed… With Spark having more options, my guess is it will be more widely used… It just stinks to have to add more adapters in the signal chain but July will be here before we know it. 

However, I would have paid good money for my Red Komodo to have had a HDMI back up this week on set… I was filming a major product release for a well known shoe company and after 1100 hours of use on the Komodo my SDI port decided to fry after shot one, I had to limp that B cam on the Red App only the rest of the two days of production … So annoying… So in the end, a camera having both options is a god send. 

1 Like