Mµ Thermal Imager - real or fake?

[tom66]

You mean the house? I think you're reading the timeline upside down. It was bought for $600k some years ago, put on the market again recently at more than double that, and the price has been dropped steadily for a while because it's obviously not selling.

LOL. I am not a smart man. 

[cloudscapes]

I wouldn't be surprised if he mentions NDAs as an excuse to not put things open source (whether legitimate or not)

[callipso]

This is precisely what I predicted.

Since in every. single. update. they piled more and more BMS on top of their claims -

- started with claims of an imager that's ready and just needs to be packaged (and that is unexportably well spec'd)
- several times they claimed to be in differrent production phase, but in an erratic manner, first the case, hen something about P'n'P assembly, then shutter, then case again, then preproduction units, wave NDAs around to cover everything up
- they failed to appear in the first trade show (what was it?) claiming their wireless didn't work, but otherwise their product is done
- a long time later they started pulling images off preproduction boards again
- they posted an image with an unidentified unit and a phone with (quite oviously, no moiré pattern) doctored-in image
then they appeared at a show where NOONE would go to see a TIC, piggybacking on another company
  -with something that Mike could build in a few days, far from original specs and in a shoddy case


My opinion is that the plan was:

1) collect as much as possible in IGG campaign (flex funding)
2) store this money in a fund, or invest it well
3) feed the backers (mostly gadget people I'd say) lame arse stories to stall those who would otherwise pull out
3.1) refund those who ask to avoid charges and suspicion, counting on that most/some backers won't
4) build a "prototype", or rebadge something and show it somewhere as to avoid fraud charges
5) when someone announces a "competitor" product, call it a bankrupcy, keep what's left + the interest

1-5) do all that while continuing with their real work, the video stuff

The house? Ours was for sale two years ago, we moved into a better one.

(underlined are steps taken to avoid fraud allegations)

[MacAttak]

Interesting...

Hello everyone,
We are in contact with Seek Thermal and FLIR about discounts on their products to be provided to all the contributors to Mu Optics.  I hope to have concrete news for you in the next few days.
Thank you,
John McGrath

[Rasz]

Interesting...

Hello everyone,
We are in contact with Seek Thermal and FLIR about discounts on their products to be provided to all the contributors to Mu Optics.  I hope to have concrete news for you in the next few days.
Thank you,
John McGrath

it just means John wants to make more money by selling a list of potential clients to either Flir or Seek.

[MacAttak]

Interesting...

Hello everyone,
We are in contact with Seek Thermal and FLIR about discounts on their products to be provided to all the contributors to Mu Optics.  I hope to have concrete news for you in the next few days.
Thank you,
John McGrath

it just means John wants to make more money by selling a list of potential clients to either Flir or Seek.

Yeah, quite likely. I didn't think of that. Although such a list can't be worth much to them.

[Rasz]

Although such a list can't be worth much to them.

[EEVblog]

Yeah, quite likely. I didn't think of that. Although such a list can't be worth much to them.

Monetary wise it's worth practically zero to them.
If they give discounts to backers it's purely a marketing PR thing.

[MacAttak]

Hello everyone,
My conversations with Seek Thermal and FLIR continue towards both offering some type of discount to Mu Optics Contributors.  I hope to have something concrete to share next week. 
Mu Optics is not selling the Contributor's list or our unpaid Pre-Order list to either company.  My efforts are towards gaining IndieGoGo contributors the highest discount that either manufacturer will offer.  The Pre-Order list is simply added incentive.
I will not be providing either company with anyone's email address.  Should this happen, everyone will get a single use discount code from Mu Optics to use when ordering from either FLIR or Seek Thermal.
Thank you,
John McGrath

So some type of unique discount code given to each backer.

[Fraser]

FLIR already offer discounts (I keep being approached with new discount offers by my local FLIR agent !) and SEEK is already so competitively priced that I very much doubt that they can provide very much discount whilst they recover their investment in the product. If you shop around the FLIR cameras are being offered at various levels of discount. PASS in the UK discounted my E4 and offered the same to fellow EEVBlog members long ago.

I don't really see why either FLIR or SEEK would even bother to talk with John as he is not someone with a good reputation at the moment. FLIR and SEEK are the only alternatives for most potential buyers at the moment anyway. they simply do not need John to make sales.

It will be interesting to see what discount John achieves, if any. Discount on RRP isn't really discount if lower prices are already freely available 

Aurora

[MacAttak]

I'm wondering if maybe his bank account isn't entirely dry and he might be trying to arrange some form of subsidized discount.

If he had any legal culpability to backers, then I would think that would absolve him of it and maybe repair some of the damaged reputation. Maybe that's what he's after now.

[CanadianAvenger]

This just in:

Hello Everyone,

Seek Thermal has been gracious enough to offer a 10% discount on their camera to all of the contributors to the Mu Optics campaign.  Although it's not the camera you signed on for, the Seek Camera is a leap forward in what we were going to be able to deliver.  If you're interested in picking up a Seek Thermal Imager, go on over to Thermal.com and use discount code: xxxxx

We want to thank Seek Thermal for making this discount available to you all.  It is a very generous and gracious offer. 

We again apologize for our failure to bring our camera to market and to provide you the perk you signed up for.

Cheers,

-MuOptics

[firewalker]

Did they revealed the sensor they were talking about?

Alexander.

[FrankBuss]

Well, looks like now they have completely thrown in the towel, as they phrased it earlier. Probably they gave some of the remaining money to Thermal.com for the discount codes and now backers have to pay even more money in sum to get a thermal imager. Would have been better to refund the backers.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Well, looks like now they have completely thrown in the towel, as they phrased it earlier. Probably they gave some of the remaining money to Thermal.com

Probably just gave them the customer list.

[firewalker]

Even muoptics.com is dead.

Alexander.

[Rasz]

Well, looks like now they have completely thrown in the towel, as they phrased it earlier. Probably they gave some of the remaining money to Thermal.com

Probably just gave them the customer list.

gave^^^^sold

Even muoptics.com is dead.

covering tracks before the next con

[Sparkey_500]

I got an interesting email directly from indiegogo a few days ago. The survey contained three parts.
1. How likely are you to recommend indiegogo to a friend (1->10)
2. Did you receive your perk. (Yes/No)
3. Any other comments (Text)

I guess indiegogo has finally taken some interest in the failed campaign, but it seems too little, too late.

[Fraser]

Looks like a standard survey to me, not a specific 'investigation' into Mu. I love the term 'perk'...... that infers that you throw money at a project and that ANY output in terms of a product is just a perk and not to be expected. That certainly describes the Mu project.

Aurora

[PlainName]

I love the term 'perk'...... that infers that you throw money at a project and that ANY output in terms of a product is just a perk

To be fair, they do describe the returns on a project as 'perks' so it's not as if you didn't twig when you gave them your cash. It is just a perk and it's rather disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

[EEVblog]

No mention of Mu on his LinkedIn profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-mcgrath/41/352/6a7

[kaz911]

I got an interesting email directly from indiegogo a few days ago. The survey contained three parts.
1. How likely are you to recommend indiegogo to a friend (1->10)
2. Did you receive your perk. (Yes/No)
3. Any other comments (Text)

I guess indiegogo has finally taken some interest in the failed campaign, but it seems too little, too late.

IG have sent out surveys on lots of the projects lately. But how like I am to use IG again ... ZERO..  Compared to KS I have 95% delivery - where on IG it is about 50%

[Corporate666]

No mention of Mu on his LinkedIn profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-mcgrath/41/352/6a7

Guy is a total scumbag.

He bailed out and essentially gave the middle finger to backers.

If he gave a shit about what he did to those backers, he would at least have open sourced what they had achieved, or answered the questions put to him - like what sensor they were using.  He never did.