Hello again, makers!

It's been quiet here the last few weeks on Hackaday, but let me assure you that things haven't been slow! I've finished moving into a much larger space, tweaked my shipping needs a bit, and I have great news.

The first batch of Lixie displays will be available for sale tomorrow on Monday, April 3rd, at 6 PM MST! (UTC-7)

At first I will be assembling and selling in batches of 60 - leaving my day job once things pick up so that I can fulfill Lixies full-time. I must warn you though - if you want a Lixie now, you're going to have to be ready when it goes live. As of writing this, there are 658 units on the Tindie mailing list, and it grows by about 8-10 units a day. I'll be reaching out to the Tindie staff after launch for confirmation whether or not I've listed the most desired product in Tindie's four-year history. I'm dying to know! Also, I'm going to limit orders of this first batch to 6 units per address to make sure nobody buys half the stock in one go or something strange. (There's a user on the waiting list who wanted 36 digits, sorry man hang in there!) If you order more than 6, I will cancel the order. This restriction will ease up next round, but for now I want to make sure as many people get to try some as possible.

So - to get you completely up to date with how the Lixie works and how to get one, let me list out some details:

• Lixies will sell for $38/each for single units, $35/each in batches of 4-5, and $32/each for batches of 6 or more.
• They can be purchased at MY TINDIE STORE at the time/date above.
• Lixie has an official Arduino library for control, which is fully compatible with standard Arduino/AVRs, Teensy, and ESP8266. (I highly recommend the latter!)
• The Lixie control library has a work-in-progress port for Python, allowing use with Raspberry Pi, CHIP, BeagleBone, or any other embedded Linux system that can directly drive WS2812B leds.
• Lixie, out of box, can be used as a clock, weather station, system monitor, live website visitor counter, and anything you can think of.
• Lixies are extensively tested before sale, and assembled with nitrile gloves in a clean environment to prevent fingerprints and surface damage to the panes.
• The boards are reflow soldered with proper temperature profiles for both the solder and LEDs, to ensure maximum LED lifespan.
• While the Lixies are free of any fingerprints, they may accumulate dust during their travels. The clear section of the display is separately wrapped in polyurethane, just spray an air duster through the side once it's unwrapped and you'll be good to go!
• They are shipped wrapped in 1 sq ft of anti-static polyurethane foam (plus the foam wrapping the display section) and sent in ULINE "Indestructo" mailers, which are double-walled!
• For those buying 4 units, they come in four mailer boxes, snuggly fit into a larger 7x7x7" box. Orders of 6 come in an 7x7x11" box, and any other quantities will be a mix or multiple of these.

Tomorrow, I will be writing a full "Getting Started" guide on Github and sharing it here so that you can get started as soon as it arrives!

I'd like to thank Katie Stockton for her never-ending support and patience for stacks of Lixie pieces all over the house, David Madison for his extensive work improving the Lixie Arduino Library with me, Hackaday writer James Hobson for sharing my work on the main blog, Donald Bell of Maker Update for the YouTube coverage, Lisa Horn, Content Manager at Ponoko laser cutting for reaching out to get the story, and the 18,000 viewers of these Hackaday.io logs for their supportive interest these last 4 months.

THANK YOU!

-Connor Nishijima