Spekwin32 - securing the future!

What to do next?
Short History
Current state
Into the future
Funding Required!

Give your opinion!
(survey closed after 300 entries)

Results summary

Kickstarter Cockpit (archive)

Join the fundraising
Funding & Software status

Kickstarter crowdfunding failed at 66% of the goal reached.

Now funding next step with direct fundraising!

See update from Nov. 2016 and March 2018 at the bottom!

Short History

When Spekwin32 was first put in use as optical spectroscopy software in early 2000, it was just a little tool for me and about five fellow PhD students from Prof. Daltrozzo's physical chemistry workgroup at Universität Konstanz.
Within the following year Spekwin32 found more users throughout the chemistry department and finally the first (German only) website was created end of 2001.
Its first citation in a published outside scientific work (a PhD thesis) was in 2004, which was the same year when I created an English version of the software and also the website.

During all the years since, website traffic and download numbers were steadily growing, as well as its user base in academic and industrial settings. The range of functionalities, the performance and the ease-of-use were continuously improved.
In the year 2010, the commercial licensing scheme was introduced, which earnêd enough revenues to pay the expenses, but not much more. And did not even remotely compensate for expenditure of time.

Current State (as of 02/2016)

An estimated 10,000 - 15,000 satisfied users from all over the world, 90% thereof academics.
About 5000 individuals downloading the software per year.
Direct interaction, support, problem solving with about 400 individual users every year
110+ scientific publications mentioning the use of Spekwin32
70+ companies purchased commercial licenses since 2010
1 person handling everything during his spare time

Into the future, with your contribution:

Now, despite the software going strong, it is also growing old and further development is hampered by its outdated foundations. Therefore, there is urgent need for modernization and along the way also for enhancing its functionality. Here comes a list of relevant topics, I need your opinion in order to prioritize them! For this, please fill in the questionnaire. A 6-page document describing the details is available: Spekwin32_Masterplan.pdf

Modernization	Expanded Functionality
New development environment + technology level Development platform 32bit vs. 64bit, Unicode Modern FileOpen/ FileSave dialogs Internationalization/ Localization Windows certificate New name & icon New look & feel More interactivity	More file formats Individual functions Chemometrics data preprocessing Automation, batch execution of sequence of steps spectral file converter Reporting Spectral matching, library search Converting spectrum images Spectrometer hardware control Other platform

Funding required!

All the time since leaving university in 2005, I developed, maintained & supported Spekwin32 and it's users in my spare time. During all these years, I never requested anything from the non-commercial users of Spekwin32, except asking for their feedback and sample files. I always enjoyed this and I still do, but the project described above is too big to be done in my spare time.

Since three years, I consider doing this, since three years I postponed it. The evenings and week-ends are just too short and too scattered, and my family is too important to me to sacrifice all available time for this. It will take an estimated three months of full-time work to get this ready. Therefore, after the failed Kickstarter campaign, I now created a way for direct fundraising in order to fund the development of a brand new modernized successor to Spekwin32.

Update, Nov. 28 2016: With the direct fundraising attempt, about 23% of the initial Kickstarter goal could be raised. Which was enough for me to begin the work in mid June. During the last months I was working full-time on the new software, while the funding sum slowly rose to about EUR 7100, which corresponds to 29% of the Kickstarter goal. After some interruption due to change of location, finally released the first version of the new software on Nov. 11: Spectragryph v1.0
Now, it is up to you again to enable the next development steps to create a really versatile generally usable spectroscopy software. Let's reach a funding sum of EUR 12000 (50% of the Kickstarter goal) and I will create new functionality like spectral database search, automation of processing steps and spectrometer hardware control!

Update, March 6. 2018: Since the initial release of Spectragryph, a lot of work has been done and major functionality has been created (see version history). Today, another funding round started, with the goal of raising the total sum from EUR 14,5000 to EUR 20,000. This will help developing further functionality and create an even better and more versatile software, while maintaining the current ease-of-use.

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