December 13, 2021

Doppler customers, we have some exciting news to share, a couple of favors to ask, new features to discuss, and a BIG discount. 

At this point we can (and have) used a practically limitless number of strained metaphors to discuss the Dopplers development. Well, initial development is over and we are happy enough with the product to finally launch on Amazon! We are only offering three colors (as opposed to the seven on Kickstarter) and have limited stock, but they are there. Go check it out and tell your friends. You all helped us do this, seriously, we couldn’t have done this without you!  

In order for the company and product to be successful on Amazon we need as many awesome five-star reviews as possible. If you have five minutes could you head over to our Amazon listing and write an honest review? It would truly help us continue to grow the brand and product and allow us to continue releasing new features for you!

Another thing that could really help us out is to take a picture of your Doppler! We will be using these images on our various social media platforms to help promote and sell the Doppler. 

Speaking of selling Dopplers, we wanted to thank you for your support with a HUGE 30% discount on another Doppler! Want another Doppler for your guest room? Now is your best chance! The Doppler truly is a great gift for those that have everything already and getting them a gift which you had a hand in bringing to life will make giving that gift extra special. We don’t plan on ever giving this discount again, so now is the best time! Please check your email for the coupon code and if you don’t see it in your email, feel free to message us on Kickstarter, email us at support@sandmanclocks.com, or message us on Discord for one. This sale ends on December 15th to ensure arrival before Christmas and is domestic only. Act fast! If you are international and would like to take advantage of this sale, shoot us a message. We can make something work.  

OK, now that we have finished the salesy talk, let’s switch up our hats and talk about new features coming to your Doppler and how the transition to the cloud went. In our last update we discussed how you need to update your Doppler to the new cloud version. If you haven’t done that yet, do it now! The cloud update is a MASSIVE improvement that fundamentally improves the Doppler in so many ways. Also, due to the fact that Apple and Google have app updates defaulted to on, it’s likely that your Doppler is no longer compatible with the app installed on your phone. If this is the case, make sure to follow the instructions to upgrade your Dopppler now! 

Doppler software updates

In 1.4 we are totally revamping the way users update their Dopplers. All of the updating will be done in the app, from the improved Doppler Information tab. You’ll be able to view release notes, and download new software updates from this screen. Once those software updates are ready to install, you can press the install button and it will instantly reboot and update your Doppler. We call these “user-accepted updates” and the majority of updates will be done this way in the future. 

On top of the user-accepted updates and release notes we will also move the beta program to this screen where you’ll be able to opt into beta releases. 

Smart Buttons

We are enabling the smart buttons on the Doppler!! This is a huge feature that we have been working on for a while. These smart buttons can trigger Alexa routines, so when you press the 1 or 2 buttons on the top of your Doppler you can program them to do literally anything you can think of. Want to have the 1 button lock your front door, close your garage door, and set the thermostat to 68 for ideal sleep conditions and have Alexa wish you goodnight? Done! Just program it in the Alexa app as a routine and change the trigger to be the Doppler smart button 1. Want the 2 button to turn on your toaster, change the thermostat to 74, open all the blinds in the house and start your coffee maker? Make it so! The power of the routine is limitless and all will be able to be triggered via the 2 Doppler smart buttons silently. What routines are you going to add? Sound off in the comments! 

We will enable the smart buttons by creating a Doppler Alexa skill which you’ll have to link up to your Sandman account and then go into the Alexa app and create your routine. We admit, this process isn’t as easy as we’d like so we will have a video which will guide you through every step of the process and will do our best to make it easier in the future. You should only have to do this once and we will continue to add new features (like being able to control the Doppler display color with your voice) to the skill in the future. If you have an awesome feature you want us to add to the skill, let us know! 

Real-time weather

We are adding support for real-time weather and air quality to the Doppler! We are also keeping the ability to display the forecasted high and adding the forecasted low temperature for the day. We have more weather features planned, but hopefully the addition of real time weather helps make your Doppler more useful. What other weather features would you like to see? 

Other app updates

Finally we have a slew of other app updates coming. These updates are designed to make the Doppler and the app more usable, customizable, and intuitive. 

Some of these updates include:

  • Time to next alarm displayed on the top of the app as well as the ability to stop or snooze alarms from the app. This fixes a big problem with alarms not being as easy and intuitive as they should be, especially recurring alarms.

  • Setting up a time offset from the app in case you want to set your Doppler a little bit fast or slow if you’d like. 

  • Custom alarm bell colors on the app and the Doppler so you can customize what alarms colors mean what. This will allow you to see at a quick glance what alarm is going off.

  • PM alarm alerts so in case you accidentally set an alarm to PM (we have all done it) the app will warn you and prevent a bad situation. We will also have a similar alert if an alarm volume is set quietly (or 0) to prevent a quiet (or silent) alarm.

We have many more features as well as bug fixes and onboarding improvements under the hood as well coming in the 1.4 update. 

It likely won’t be included in the update, but Spotify support is coming soon! We know how important it is, and please know that we are working on it! 

This 1.4 update is arriving in the coming months and we are targeting Q1 of 2022. 

Finally, if you haven’t yet, please join the Discord. It’s a fantastic way to get support and interact with us as well as other Doppler customers. 

Thanks again to all for your continued support and patronage. We really appreciate it! 

-PAI Team



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