It’s ironic.
I’ve been a techy my whole life, yet I have found myself with a lot of manual processes. My “simple” business has spawned many inefficiencies, and bits of tech that should be coupled together, just aren’t. Running this business has simply become more complex over the years as well. What worked well many years ago has morphed over time and simply isn’t desireable anymore, by me or my customers. These inefficiencies have caused longer than expected turnaround times for orders getting kicked out the door and therefore has delayed many new long awaited projects / products for way too long.  Simply put, my daily processes absolutely suck, and it delays everything.
These issues are typically most prominent early in the year during busy season. Like right now. The effects are then historically compounded by being away for KoH and also historically getting sick afterwards (Hammer Lung?). It’s time to make fixing this glaring issue a priority and get this reoccurring speedbump of inefficienes out of the way.
At the beginning of the year I mentioned my momentum. Once the speedbump is handled, I’m confident that the momentum will run even stronger into the forseeable future which includes showing up to more events in 2024 while having faster shipping times and spending more of my time developing lots of cool stuff.
I’m just about caught up on lingering orders (Thank you for your patience, it and your business is much appreciated) and the TrailMark will get some attention in the coming days. Last weekends slated time for TrailMark development was pushed due to some life surprises… Afterall, I am still human.  I asure you I’ll take a day to trade my keyboard for a soldering iron very shorly.

I have a plan, stay tuned.

-Steven

P.S.
If you want to be notified of when the TrailMark gets released, see the info here:
https://ruggedroutes.com/trailmark-lowrance-off-road-gps-waypoint-keypad-integration.html

It’s gone on for too long. Technology simply hasn’t kept up in this industry. A few weeks ago, I mentioned a KoH project that I (with help) was pivoting into. That project was the new live tracking map that you may have seen this year. I know it wasn’t perfect but considering that it was built in 14 days of long days + late nights and it served it’s purpose, I consider it a win. It bridged the gap between live car position on course and the live video feeds coming from both in-car cameras as well as the KoH production crew and drones. This cracked open the window to a whole new version of off road motorsports. It’s been said that “There is olymic level s*** happening out there, and no one knows about it”. It’s not just the spectators that are missing out, it’s the pit crews sacrificing logistics, and even the event organizers from a scoring and accountability perspective. This lack of technology doesn’t only affect racing, it is also affecting recreational riding.

Many of us simply don’t want to lose track of our friends and we want reliable real time position updates without signing up for yet another subscription service. I had something like this working about 10 years ago (it’s actually nostalgic and sad that it’s been that long). It’s called APRS and runs over ham radio. The system is old these days but it does work. It has it’s caveats by todays standards, but was a fun experiment. Proof.

Apparently trying to bring the concept into the offroad world back then was too early and now it’s one of the top questions I get asked about at shows. It’s on the list, and I wish It would move faster. As I type this I can’t believe that I started mapping and lowrance accessories started literally 10 years ago this year. It’s been a great endeavour however I wish I had accomplished more in that time. Retail / Ecommerce and customer service are the daily priority. I never know when the phone is going to ring or when an urgent order will pop in. This makes it difficult to set time to focus on big stuff during the day, therefore it happens at night. It takes a toll but I enjoy it. (AlthoughI feel like I’m due for a snowboard trip) I’m happy to say that I’m back at a place in my life where I can work this way. There were many years when life took me in a direction that limited my time to develop. I’m back, I’m happy and I’m motivated. I’m inching towards a new implementation to scale-up and streamline order processing which will create more time for development. However, it is a nerveracking leap. In the end, I really just want to help people have fun, stay safe and build cool stuff.
There are a lot more pieces and features involved in closing the technology gap. It’s all really exciting but you’ll have to wait to know more. I’ll keep you updated as things develop further. For now, another KoH is behind us. I didn’t get to spend hardly any time talking tech or meeting many of you as intended, but hopefully we will have the opporitunity at another upcoming event.

Moving forward, I’m catching up on orders that are running a bit behind and I’ll be back on soldering the TrailMark this weekend. Hopefully the new TrailMark software can be written pretty quick and smooth as well…. I know there are many of you that are really itching to get your hands on these things. I’ll get it to production as fast as I can.
In the mean time, for more of an inside scoop, check out the Snail Trail Podcast that I had the opporitunity recording with Tyler while were were out in Johnson Valley just last week.
https://www.snailtrail4x4.com/474-steven-lutz/
Thanks for reading these e-mails and staying tuned as I pull back the curtain on the things going on behind the scenes.
-Steven

I’m really putting in an effort to pull back the curtain on the momentum behind the scenes. It’s 2am, so I’ll keep it short…
First a brief update on the TrailMark. It has been exceptionally awesome hearing back from those of you have not only read my e-mails, but are just as excited as I am to get the final version produced and released. I did have to do another slight revision of the circuitboard. There were some overlooked space tollerance issues that both myself and the PCB manufacture. we made some corrections and now it’s reasy to get hand assembled. Hand assembly of one of these boards usally takes me a full uninterrupted day, which I only do for protoypes. Becasue it’s so time consuming, I often set aside a saturday or a few late nights to knock it out, which I’ll do as soon as possible. I had originally planned on assembling this latest version last friday, but there has been a temporary change of plans.
I pulled in some help for a project involving King of the Hammers. Many of you are aware that KoH is right around the corner and therefore time is of the essence. I’m confident that this is the start of something that ties litterally everything I’ve been working on, together. This is something that we were going to aim for next year but due to lack of other options for this years race, we spung into action and have been working tirelessly. I’m confident we will make an impact at this years race and an explanation here won’t be neccessary come Feb 3rd.
Despite the new version of the TrailMark being on temporary hold, if you want to see how one of the prior prototypes work, please reach out. I would be more than happy to chat with you as long as everything is runnig smoothly with the KoH project.
Thanks for staying up to date with me and I hope we can chat on the lakebed.
-Steven