Earlier today, we shipped all Bean preorders made with us prior to Monday. We do have a few preorders that are outstanding that have been made in the last two days, and we'll be shipping those out next week as we transition to a regular shipping cadence for the Bean.

In other words, the Bean preorder is concluded! All Beans will ship out on our regular shipping cadence from now on.

What's next?

Phil and I have something that we're incredibly excited to share with everyone. It's a project that's been cooking for almost three years, and it's awesome. We're still tying up some loose ends with it, so I'm afraid that I can't give any more hints than that, but it's coming. Very, very soon.

When we're ready to announce it, you'll find the first mentions of it in this community.

Stay tuned!

We've shipped out all Bean preorders that were put in before May 12th. I'll admit that doesn't sound like significant progress considering we launched on May 6th, but that represents the majority of the preorders that we received. Our expectations for fulfillment are as follows:

• Week 11: shipping out all preorders made prior to May 25th.
• Week 12: shipping out all remaining preorders.

There may be a bit of variation in Week 12, depending on how many additional preorders we receive in the next two weeks, but that's our expectation at the moment.

We're grateful for everyone's patience as we work to get these out the door.

In other news: Denmark and Luxembourg shipping resumes!

Our logistics provider managed to sort out their issues with shipping to Denmark and Luxembourg, so we're resuming shipping to there. We're not anticipating any shipping interruptions in the near future.

If you're looking to feed your dog homemade food that:

• follows scientifically-established guidelines for nutrient and mineral content,
• has nutrient and mineral contents of ingredients that come from reputable sources, and
• is auditable for the purposes of peer review,

then I have something that might interest you!

Here's an example of a recipe that I generated:

Ingredient	Weight (grams)
Beef, variety meats and by-products, liver, cooked, braised	50
Fish, salmon, Atlantic, farmed, cooked, dry heat	50
Chicken, broiler or fryers, breast, skinless, boneless, meat only, cooked, braised	450
Rice, white, long-grain, regular, enriched, cooked	300
Mollusks, oyster, eastern, wild, cooked, moist heat	50
Spices, basil, dried	15
Egg Shell (see supplemental information)	3
Salt, table, iodized	2
Pacific kombu	1
Oil, wheat germ	10
Oil, canola	15
Peppers, sweet, red, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Carrots, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Sweet potato, cooked, boiled, without skin	50
Beans, snap, green, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Broccoli, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Brussels sprouts, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Squash, winter, butternut, cooked, baked, without salt	50
Cabbage, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Cauliflower, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Squash, summer, zucchini, includes skin, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Celery, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Peas, green, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt	50
Pumpkin, canned, without salt	50

This recipe is not only safe for adult dogs, but contains all of the nutrients and minerals they need to live healthy lives.

And here's the best part: you can verify that for yourself! You don't have to just blindly trust that I know what I'm doing. It's fully auditable.

What "scientific standards" are you using for nutrient profiles?

If you're running across this and are new to pet ownership, the Association of American Feed Control Officials, or AAFCO, sets strict guidelines for minimums and maximums of various nutrients and minerals for dog food. You can find these guidelines here.

These are the guidelines I used when constructing the nutrient and mineral profiles for dog food. These are the same standards used for commercial dog food.

What "reputable source" did you use for ingredient nutrient and mineral content?

The United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, maintains a list of nutrient and mineral profiles for various foods. The "SR Legacy" database was used to generate the nutrient and mineral profiles in this use. Once again, the USDA's database is considered the standard for commercial use.

The SR Legacy database has not been updated since 2018. The USDA has more recent and thorough data, but for a much smaller subset of foods than does the SR Legacy database. For that reason, the SR Legacy database was selected.

And it's auditable?

Yes! The easiest way is to do this is to use the USDA's FDC food search function. For instance, you can look up the ingredients that I used in the recipe above, find all of the nutrient and mineral content in each ingredient, and tally everything up. So, you can verify everything yourself, completely independently of my work.

Why did you do this?

As near as I can tell, nobody else had created a 100% free and open-source version of this type of calculator. There are lots of things that are close, or aren't auditable, or are locked behind paywalls. This work addresses all of those issues.

Where can I find the work?

Right here. It includes:

• a Python script that converts the USDA's Food Database Central "SR Legacy" database into a usable CSV file
• a CSV file that I generated using that code, so that you don't have to run the code yourself
• a spreadsheet that organises AAFCO's nutrient and mineral recommendations into something usable

It's all 100% free and open-source, so feel free to use it as you please.

And if you see mistakes or think things can be improved (hint: they definitely can be improved), please submit pull requests!

Questions, comments and suggestions are welcome!

All remaining Tier A Beans shipped out earlier this week. We already have our next batch of Beans ready, and they'll be shipping out next week as part of the first wave of Tier B units.

Everything is running pretty smoothly now. We're forecasting that we should be able to get through all of the Tier B units within the next six weeks or so. Immediately after that's done, we'll be tackling the Tier C preorder units.

More updates to come!

We shipped out half of the outstanding Tier A Bean preorders earlier this week. We're hard at work manufacturing additional PCBs - right now, as a matter of fact; I'm taking a short break to write out this update. We'll be shipping the remaining Tier A preorders out next week, and the week after that, we'll begin shipping out Tier B preorders.

Things are moving a bit more smoothly now, so we don't anticipate any additional roadblocks as we continue shipping out preorders.

You may notice that there wasn't a preorder update for Week 4. That's because I fell ill last week (I'm feeling much better now), which not only impacted our ability to make more boards but also limited our ability to communicate. We're putting up a few new workflows to make sure that communication remains steady even when part of our team goes down.

We're already in the process of making additional Bean boards. We're aiming to have around half of the remaining Tier A preorders shipped out next week, with all the rest of the Tier A's going out on Week 7.

After that, we'll begin shipping Tier Bs on a regular basis.

Thanks for everyone's patience as we work through this.

We're feeling more confident about the hardware for the Bean and don't think that large-scale changes will be needed. Therefore, we'll be shipping out the first batch of Tier A preorders next week, with more going out in the following weeks.

We do have a few additional firmware changes that we'd like to get done, but those will roll out as time goes by, and won't delay shipping.

In other news: new official soldering guide now available

We've also compiled a fairly comprehensive soldering guide that is now available, which you can find here. It includes a lot of things:

• General soldering tutorial
• Common issues when soldering Ploopy kits
• Overview of our testing process
• Electronics troubleshooting and options if everything is broken

For those of you happily using your Ploopy kits, there isn't any real reason to read over the guide (unless you're curious).

We've been working out a few bugs, all with the firmware. We've published a new firmware that addresses an issue with the cursor drifting, as well as introduces an acceleration curve after a few users reported that it had favourable performance over the previous firmware. Flashing the new firmware is easy; just hold down the bottom-left button while plugging the device in. Your computer should recognize a USB mass storage device was just plugged in. After that, copy and paste the firmware onto the device, and you're done.

We'll probably hold off on shipping out more units next week, but I'm fairly confident that we'll be shipping out units the week after that to our earliest Tier A supporters.