[Awkward Engineer]

Saying Goodbye to Blogger

2015-10-02T15:17:00.003-04:00

To those who still get this RSS feed or read blogger, I've decided that the platform has become quite dated and will be switching to tumbler. I'm a little sad that Google let blogger die, but it's time to move to something that a bit more modern.

Best regards!
-Sam

It's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up.

2015-01-06T09:04:00.002-05:00

It's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up. Two years ago, my first Kickstarter failed, and it was a shitty, shitty feeling. I dusted myself off, learned from it, and got back at it with Kickstarter #2. Over 500% funded with a full week left to go. If you have friends who like geeky stuff, please share.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1080427607/awk-105-analog-voltmeter-clock

Milestone Reached!

2014-11-10T17:57:00.000-05:00

Guess what! We hit a major milestone with the Analog Voltmeter Clock! Working, custom circuit boards! To celebrate, we'll be drawing three names at random from our email list and giving the winners a choice of any item from the Awkward Engineer Store.

The Technical Stuff:

(scroll to end for pics)

I've been told that nobody get's their first printed circuit board right, there are just too many tiny details that could go wrong. I was pretty nervous waiting for my boards to come back (I ordered 5 populated prototypes) and had a couple scary moments, but all in all, everything went pretty well. Here's the run down of what happened:
I messed up an easy one, right off the bat. The holes for the screw terminal mounts that attach the meters to the board were sized for a 2mm screw, not 2.5mm. A couple minutes with a drill solved that problem. Luckily, there was still enough plating around the screw hole that I still could get electrical contact.

The pinouts on the PCB were different than the pinouts on my breadboard prototype. I slapped my forehead pretty hard, but then it was a quick fix in firmware. Fortunately, the ISP header was wired up the right way and I could still flash the chip's memory.

The firmware was written for the 20khz crystal I had on hand to build the breadboard. Again, a minor fix in firmware to change to the 32.768khz clock crystal.

The voltage divider on the board was designed to work with the potentiometer "mode" knob and an optional unpopulated "alarm" switch. (Future versions only...). One more fix in firmware was need to get the levels right for the different modes.
The working clock! Running off an AA battery for about 2 weeks now!

The populated side of the board.

The board/meter screw terminal interface.

What's next?

Well, at this point, I feel like I've cleared all technical milestones and it's on to final pricing, campaign, and launch planning. The launch list (that means you guys!) is at a reasonable size for a small batch, so it's really up to me to pull the trigger.

Here's an example of what's still on my mind: Getting a custom meter scale ordered from the factory has a setup cost that needs to be defrayed by a couple hundred orders... or if I do a really small batch, I can make custom scales and assemble them on my own. The question is where does the small/medium batch line fall?

Other than that, stay tuned! I'm planning on attending the MIT Maker Faire on Oct 4th, so if you're around, feel free to drop by!

Doing More with Less

2014-05-16T15:56:00.002-04:00

"I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain! If I push it any harder the whole thing will blow!"

Ok, oblique Star Trek reference aside, I managed to squeeze some more power out of the ATtiny84 chip that runs the Voltmeter Clock. Less oblique Star Trek reference, Mr. Sulu (George Takei) was in the Boston area this past week and I got to meet him! He was doing a video shoot for his youtube show and I happened to be in the right place at the right time!

Back to power reduction. Here were the key methods to get below 300uA:

Getting to interrupt driven code last week was a big step, but with some reorganization, I made the interrupt service routines faster. I don't miss interrupts at the slower clock speed any more and overall, the chip spends more time in powered down mode. This got me under a 1mA.
Changing the size of pull-up resistors. The ATtiny84 has internally selectable 70K ohm pullup resistors, while I was using 10K pullups in my previous version. I want to make the pullups that tie the encoder switch debounce filters high as large as possible, while still being able to drive the chip inputs.
I sacrificed an output pin to enable / disable power to the potentiometer on the mode select knob. When the mode select knob isn't being polled, it is now completely disconnected. This and the last step got me to about 600uA.
The last biggie was turning down the voltage. The chip was running at 5V power previously. The ATtiny84 also comes in a couple different flavors... the original, and also an 84V version and an 84A version that can run at even lower voltages. Turns out, I got lucky when I ordered breadboard parts and I had the 84A on hand. Turning the voltage down to 1.8V dropped the current draw all the way below 300uA.

Doing more with less

With some good data on hand, I can move forward with a little more confidence about board design. Two AA batteries in parallel should provide enough energy to last for more than a year, and Microchip Corp makes a switching regulator (I'm considering the MCP1624) designed specifically to provide a voltage boost to appropriate levels from a battery source.

The last big hurdle is "future proofing" the board layout. I'd love to have an alarm clock version of the clock, and if I can use the same printed circuit board for both products, but with different components, I'll be in much better shape.

Sacrificing an I/O pin earlier to power down the Mode Select Knob in between polling means having to work a teeny bit harder to add an "Alarm On/Off" switch. It's still possible to get clever and I try to read several switch states through one pin. If any EE's out there would like to critique the solution, I'd appreciate it.

R2 is the "Mode Control" knob, SW1 is the optional "Alarm On/Off" switch
AtoD conversion to the read the control knob switch / state is made at the "MODE SELECT" pin.
Q1, Q2, R4, and SW1 may be unpopulated.
The mode select knob should read between 0 - 1/2 Vcc with the switch open and from 1/2 - 1Vcc with the switch closed, giving distinct voltages for all states. With the unpopulated components, voltage will go from 1/3 - 2/3 Vcc.

What's Next?

The schematic is nearly done, then we'll be getting into board layout. This post has been heavy on the technical details and next week we'll get into more of the marketing tools / techniques we're using to manage our campaign.

Empty Infinite Loops

2014-05-07T13:12:00.000-04:00

We hit a milestone this week - all Arduino code for development of the Voltmeter Clock has been rewritten in lower level C, giving us more control over the peripheral circuits of the microcontroller. The code is now completely interrupt driven, and looks something like this.

int main (void)
{
mode_pointer = &mode_time;

pwm_init();
timer_init();
analog_init();
pinchange_init();
sei(); // global set enable interrupts

while(1)
{
//just hang out and wait for interrupts
}
return 1;
}

Note the empty while loop. How does that work? Read on below for the answer.

Interrupt Driven Behavior

The chip is able to enter a powered down mode with the CPU off, while still controlling PWM outputs and running an internal timer. When the timer expires, it powers up the CPU, executes something called an "Interrupt Service Routine," adjusts all the displays and dials, polls to see if the inputs have changed, and returns back to the emptywhile loop.

The code is currently just interrupt driven, the next step is to add the power down instruction to the while loop and see how much power we actually save with a scope. This will drive decisions about battery requirements for the board.

If you'd like to see the full code, in all it's heavily commented glory, check out the Github. (We started with modifying a basic Blinkie program, and the file name is still the same :-). )
Places We Plan on Hanging Out This Week

As part of our ongoing marketing effort, we plan on stopping by at Artisan's Asylum in Somerville, MA at their FREE "Circuit Hacking Night" event this Wed!

Voltmeter Clock Power Management on the ATtiny84

2014-04-21T16:16:00.001-04:00

This is what it looks like:

This is what prototyping looks like at Awkward Engineer: Sometimes, kinda messy.

In previous posts, we went over chip selection, choosing a power source / battery (which we postponed until we could measure our system's current draw directly), and deciding to start BUILDING stuff.This past week, we ordered some parts off of Digikey and started breadboarding, which leads to our most recent activities, planning out our...

Software / Power Strategy

To truly take advantage of what the ATtiny84 microcontroller can do, we're going to be getting into some of the features of the chip that the Arduino environment normally hides. More specifically, we'll be taking advantage of some of the power saving modes.

As it turns out, the ATtiny84 has two timers that can be run completely independently of the actual CPU (plus a watchdog, which we won't use). The general idea, therefore, is to keep the CPU off as much as possible, saving power, and only doing work during periodic interrupt service routines when TIMER1 maxes out.

The first timer, TIMER0, will be used to control the PWM outputs that control the hands on the voltmeter. When initialized with the right settings, the timer will chug along independently of the CPU and the Output Compare Registers A & B will automatically compare their settings to the timer count, setting the duty cycle of the PWM outputs.

The second timer, TIMER1, has a 16 bit register that triggers an interrupt when it overflows, waking up the CPU. The microcontroller then polls the input to see if the "Mode select" knob has changed, adjusts the hands as appropriate, then goes back to sleep.

Here are some of our notes before we get deep into writing the software.

Marketing Cont...

This week, we tried checking out the Flea at MIT to drum up interest for the Voltmeter Clock and get more people signed up on our mailing list. In retrospect, it might not have been the best place to go (Shiny new gadgets are a bit out of place at what is essentially a garage sale for not so shiny, old gadgets), but we never would have known unless we tried and sometimes that's what entrepreneurship is about. I'll be keeping my eye out on some other events to go to, like Show & Tell Night at Artisan's Asylum in Somerville.

I generally find Facebook and social media marketing exhausting, so this week I tried scheduling posts for the first time. I'll see if this strategy is more maintainable / can be harnessed to drive signups to the email list.

Meanwhile, the email list is still growing through with targeted invitations, so we'll continue work on that front.

That's all for now!

Cheers!

-Sam
aka The Awkward Engineer

Board Design For Manufacture

2014-04-04T10:51:00.000-04:00

One of the big tasks for commercialization of the Voltmeter Clock is reducing the number of assembly steps it takes to put the thing together. The prototype was cobbled together with a lot of hand soldered wires and I might estimate it at 10-15 minutes of labor, and that's if you had a plan going in.

Even assuming minimum wage plus overhead costs, (the assembly houses we've worked in the past pay way better), that could easily add $5 to the raw goods costs, which is really like adding $20 to the finished product when normal markups are added in.

The messy prototype

Cleaning it up

The strategy for reducing cost was to eliminate as many wires as possible and place everything on a single board that could be quickly screwed down. By using right angle knobs, it's possible to eliminate all flying wires and connect directly to the voltmeter screw terminals using traces on the PCB. I'm pretty sure this is the right direction to go in. Integrating the PCBA into the housing should now take less than 20 seconds.

Here's a link to the design memo on github with more detail about selecting specific knob components from the wide world of Digikey.

What's Next:

We've already selected a chip, we selected our major electro-mechanical knob components, and we've now started on schematic capture.

We still need to resolve

Wall wart selection
Best way to route power through the housing and attach it to the board
Need for voltage regulation on the board, if any (how good is the wall wart?)
Finish schematic capture and start on board layout

Ongoing marketing activities

Our goal for this project is about 250 units in sales to make volume order of components worthwhile. Our email list doesn't have 250 people on it yet! If you know groups to reach out to, EE professors, product designers, or anyone else who'd be interested, we're happy to talk to them and have them check out the product page.

An Introduction to Microcontroller Selection, by Someone Who's Never Selected a Micro Before

2014-03-23T20:34:00.002-04:00

*edit: this page has been cross posted on the project wiki, and those who would like to help add to it are invited and encouraged to do so there. https://github.com/awkwardengineer/Clock/wiki/Microcontroller-Selection

For a while now, I've been kicking around the idea of a Voltmeter clock and I'm ready to get the project moving forward. I've built a prototype (one that at least moves the needles back and forth and looks kinda cool), which is up here.

At this point, I've found a source for the voltmeters themselves and a general idea of where to get the sheet metal case. Because the meters are customized, I've set a general goal of raising funds / selling a minimum of about 250 units, or the cost of the custom meters just isn't worthwhile.

A Brief Note on Open Source

After giving it some thought, I've decided to open source this project. Voltmeter clocks have been done before and will be done again, so there's not much IP in it. I mean, I was able to build a prototype fairly easily and I'm sure someone else could build one too, if they really wanted to. As such, I've decided to keep all the design, documents, and manufacturing files available in a Github repo. (I'm still squeamish about sharing price quotes and manufacturing sources, so that will be private for now, but I may change my mind in the future.)

Intro to Microcontroller Selection for the Voltmeter Clock

The general idea with microcontroller selection is to pick a component that's powerful enough for your application, but not too powerful, as that would end up costing more money than was necessary. The selection process for the Voltmeter clock relies mostly on peripheral knowledge that rubbed off from hanging around some electrical engineers and extrapolation from the prototype (which worked mostly because of blind luck).

If you're wondering what makes a microcontroller different than a microprocessor: What makes a micro special is that it has a lot of built in circuitry for helping it interact with the rest of the world, and well.. control things. There are internal timers, analog to digital converters, analog outputs, digit communication, and special inputs called interrupts that redirect the normal program flow in response to an event. All pretty cool stuff in a package that's smaller than your pinkie fingernail.

I'm aware of a few families of microchips, (Microchip, TI, and Atmel), and each maker produces a gazillion varieties of chips with different inputs, memory sizes, speeds, temperature ratings, and so on. To pick the right chip for production is a mix of art and engineering.

As a starting point, the prototype uses a Digispark, which is built around an Atmel ATtiny85 chip, which has 6 free pins available, and even gets double duty out of the pins, using a burnt-in program called a bootloader to switch some of the pins from programming inputs to whatever the end user wants to use them for.

Selection Decision 1: Stay with Atmel

Unfortunately, the 6 pins aren't enough if I want to add a proper oscillating crystal so the clock will stay accurate. (The ATtiny85 has an internal oscillator, but it drifts noticeably every hour.) I do however want to stay with Atmel, because the chips are cheap, readily available in small batch volumes, and the chips are well supported through the Arduino community.

The pin requirements:

Below is a block diagram of the clock circuit, which is followed by the pin requirements.

Pin summary
1 analog in to read selector switch / voltage divider
2 interrupts to read quadrature encoder
2 PWM outputs
3 digital outputs for am/pm light, alarm set, and buzzer
2 pins for external oscillator crystal

All together, this works out to 8 I/O pins, the 2 clock pins, and whatever is needed for In System Programming (ISP) pins, which can serve double duty. (If anybody would like to explain a general lesson for doing ISP without interfering with the existing peripheral circuits, I would love to get one.)

Atmel provides a somewhat overwhelming product selector, and if you set the number of input pins higher than 6, you see that next category of chip has at least 11 inputs. I also know from my prototype that the compiled code was 3kb in size, plus 2kb for the bootloader, so I need a chip with >5k memory.

Using the selector, that narrows down to the ATtiny84, with

8kB memory [check!]
Interrupts galore [check!]
2 PWM channels [check!]
Digital channels galore [check!]
External clock pins [check!]

Plus, it has support for ISP programming.

To expand on for next time:

Details of the chip pin outs, connecting the oscillator, ISP programming, and more.

A Level Of Customer Service To Strive For

2013-12-19T11:51:00.002-05:00

Every now and then, I experience a level of customer service that's so delightfully good that it's actually worth telling other people about. This is the level of service I would like to achieve with www.awkwardengineer.com. It's a high bar, and limited resources (especially time) may stop me from getting there, but I know that's where I want my company to be.

Story 1: ULine

ULine.com is the packaging supplier equivalent to McMaster-Carr. If it's related to shipping stuff, they have it. Boxes, envelope, tape, labels, pallets, mailers, bubble wrap, packing peanuts, shrimp, deep fried shrimp, shrimp cocktail, shrimp gumbo, etc...

I was in the process of figuring out how to pack the Blueprint Placemats for retail sale. I found a few items on their website, but I really have to insist on getting hands on with an item before committing to it. So I called them to request samples.

I called them on Sunday night. At 10pm. They answered on the second ring. And spoke flawless English.

Them: "Hi, is this Sam from Awkward Engineer?"

Me: "Yes, how did you know?"

Them: "We have the CallerID linked to your account."

I requested a few samples, they had my address on file and were able to send samples free of charge, ship them them on Monday, and have them arrive on Tuesday. I mean WOW, talk about knockout service, and late on a Sunday night, too! They decided they were willing to spend the money to staff a call center and were willing to spend the money on sending samples. Of course, they can afford to do that, as they have much bigger customers than me, but now I'll hardly even bother to look elsewhere the next time I want to buy packaging.

Story 2: My Logistics House

Have you ever been happy to pay someone to do something? That's how I feel every time my logistics house puts something in the mail for me. They are fast, accurate, consistent, on the ball, local, are already tightly integrated with my suppliers, respond to emails nearly instantly, are friendly, and generally awesome. And the owner believes in the principles of the book Conscious Capitalism, and views his company as a partner in helping my business grow, because what's good for my customer is good for me is good for him is good for his employees and so the virtuous circle goes.

Anyway, through the magic of the intarwebs, when an order is taken through our webstore they get a notification in their system. Then they put it in the mail and notify me. For this service, I pay them money, and I'm happy to do so. Because this is what my inbox has looked like at times.

I don't think I could be happier with a business partner.

Conclusion

Clearly, good customer service still exists these days. In fact, I think the competitive nature of the internet has made good customer service more common, which is a good thing. It's something I try to keep in mind, because it's something that I would want, and that bar, having a customer be happy to spend the money, is what I will always strive for.

Great Gifts for Your Engineer: An Original Guide

2013-08-14T14:51:00.000-04:00

Shopping for gifts for engineers is notoriously difficult. Engineers aren't concerned with materialistic items, they're frugal, and they insist that the items the do own are practical. So what do you do? The trick is to find that gift giving sweet spot, something they'll still like, but they wouldn't necessarily get for themselves. Here's our list:

1. Antique Tools

If we said head down to the hardware store and drop a cool $1000 on some new equipment for the shop, your beloved little engineer would probably be pretty be tickled pink, but we're trying to keep this in this a little more affordable.

E-bay is chalk full of awesome vintage tools. May we suggest an oscilloscope for an electrical engineer, pocket calipers for a mechanical engineer, and for a civil engineer, maybe a nice theodolite?

2. Blueprints

Blueprints are like great works of art to engineers. Thinkgeek carries some nice Space Shuttle blueprints, and there's the classic Engineer's Guide to Drinks.

If you want to go the DIY right, the US Patent and Trademark Office has plenty of cool design drawings. Check out the original safety razor patent filed by Gillette. Print it up and frame it!

3. Panic Button Light Switch Kit

We may have invented it, but we thing the Panic Button Light Switch Kit make an awesome gift for any engineer. Fun, functional, and an easy DIY home project rolled into one.

Analysis Paralysis and the Great Sock Quest

2013-06-29T17:44:00.000-04:00

So I've spent most of my adult life walking around with mismatched socks, because that's pretty much how you roll when you're an Awkward Engineer.

More recently in my adult life, I've had the impetus to live my life in a sock matching manner. Thinking logically, my plan was to purge my drawer of all its contents and restock it with something like eighteen pairs of identical, perfectly matching socks that could be mixed and matched with no perceptible difference. There would be no sock orphans, no mismatched feet, only wonderful, effortless, sock nirvana.

Of course, this is putting a lot of eggs in one basket, so I went to the store to investigate my sock wearing options.

There were crew socks, ankle high socks, no-show socks, and tube socks. Those all came in a comfort fit, cool fit, regular fit, dry fight, slim fit (ok, that might have just been the t-shirts), extra warm, and what ever else I missed.

And then, they had socks in 5 packs, and 4 packs with 1 free. How are those different?!

It was a combinatorial sock explosion of sock options. And that was only one brand! I was overwhelmed, frightened, and confused. How could I know which sock was right?! I couldn't! It was complete madness. I got stuck and stared at socks for twenty minutes.

So instead of buying one giant set of matching socks, I just got a few to try.

Sock quest fail.

Goodbye, Google Reader Readers

2013-06-21T02:37:00.004-04:00

I love Google Reader, and I'm pretty bummed to see it disappear. I know from the feed stats, that there are a good bunch of you out there that use it too.

Before Reader disappears, check out the latest creation from the Red Button Factory!

http://www.awkwardengineer.com/collections/stuff/products/panic-button-limited-edition

Making Stuff: The Twitterbox

2013-06-10T22:56:00.000-04:00

I've had a fascination recently with using dedicated physical items for presenting digital information. It's like the idea of an analog wall clock - a smart phone hung on the wall would still tell the time, but it wouldn't be the same. It just doesn't have the same opportunities for form and texture that a physical object does.

Plus, I really wanted to play with a newly purchased Digispark board and LCD shield from www.digistump.com. In particular, I wanted a paperweight sized piece to display search results from Twitter. Right now it searches for Tweets about "love" or "cookies" which are frequently the same Tweet :-).

I started development just trying to pull Tweets through Twitter's API with a Python script. Once I got that running, I started working on getting the Digispark going with the LCD shield.

The LCD has a 16 character wide, 2 line display, with a 40 character wide register. Tweets can be up to 140 characters wide, so I write to the register off the screen letter by letter and then scroll the message.

Once the Python script was talking to the Digispark board and successfully displaying tweets on the LCD, I started doodling through various ideas for a case. I wanted the case to house the circuit board, but I also wanted part of the circuit board to be exposed, to show that this was something I made.

Once I knew where I wanted to go, it was time to work on a CAD model of what I had in mind.

From there, I made a print on my 3d printer.

After that, a bit of sanding, some Bondo, some more sanding, paint, and here it is!

Crowdfunding Lessons Learned, "Unlocking Value," plus Kristin Bell, Zach Braff, and the Spider-Man Analogy

2013-05-16T23:58:00.000-04:00

Is Kickstarter a place "to help bring creative projects to life," or is it nothing more than a convenient payment processing gateway?

In the weeks since my Kickstarter ended short of it's funding goal, I've had some time to reflect on the experience, think about the lessons learned, and mentally process the whole thing.

In the end, the breakdown of funds raised was about 20-30% from friends and family, most of the rest was from traffic that our marketing campaign drove to the site, and the remainder was from pure Kickstarter product design discoveries.

So what do I make of all that? Well that leads me to...

Lesson 1: Kickstarter is a Payment Processor

In short, the lesson is "Don't Kickstart anything you couldn't launch on your own." You have to drive your own traffic to Kickstarter, whether it's from friends, family, regular online marketing, or your personal network. Kickstarter just does the work of securely handling credit card payments, hosting a website that can handle the traffic, and providing an aesthetically pleasing, well designed page.

So don't count on Kickstarter to drive traffic to your project, which isn't to say that it won't happen, just don't plan on it. The crowdedness of Kickstarter leads in some ways to a "tent poling" effect, where there are a fewer percentage of projects that make it on to the front page, but the ones that do score big. (Remember, only the really successful projects are the ones you hear about in the news.) But I digress...

Anyway, by providing those e-commerce services and also provided the "all or nothing" funding model (which is a whole other topic of discussion, but I actually think is rather important), I actually think Kickstarter becomes a little more...

Lesson 2: Kickstarter is a tool for unlocking value in social networks.

Business types love the words "unlocking value." As in splitting up a company into smaller pieces to make the sum of the pieces worth more than the whole. It suggests that there's extra money locked away somewhere, and by taking some action, you can just free it! It sounds so good! But is it true?

My friends and family saw how hard I worked on the Cookie Cup campaign leading up to it and they supported me, and I'm sure that a lot of that support had to do more with caring about me than the product itself. Whatever I'd decided to work on, they probably would have chipped in. Now, if I had just said, "hey guys, give me some money", they probably would have been annoyed, but having a project to work on with a clear cut financial goal, I was able to financially tap into the goodwill of my friends.

So now I know that the value of my social network to me is worth at least a few thousand dollars, which is kinda cool. But if I had a larger social network, say... if it was the social network of all the patrons of a coffee shop, or a museum, or a band, that could be quite substantial.

If you're, say... Kristin Bell or Zach Braff, and you have a million followers on Twitter, then the size of your social network is very large, and is very valuable. Kickstarter gave them a way to tap into the value of their social networks directly and capitalize on their "personal brands."

From an economic point of view, that's pretty awesome. I mean, if someone is willing to give you money in exchange for something you haven't developed yet, essentially paying in advance, well, that's a phenomenal way to defray risk.

But it also reminds me that Kickstarter is a for-profit company, here to take it's 5% cut as the payment processor. Is Kickstarter really trying to fund creative projects that wouldn't happen otherwise, or is it just acting as a middleman, providing a service (albeit a useful one), and making a market? When you see A-list celebrities on Kickstarter, you have to wonder. This is the part where Spider-Man comes in.

The Spider-Man Analogy

There been a lot of backlash against well connected celebrities who have gone on Kickstarter and raised funds directly through their fans, rather then from more traditional financial sources.

On one hand, I think this is kind of cool. Once a star has made it, and has name recognition, they don't need the studios in the same way that they did before they were discovered. But I'm reminded of the line:

"With great power comes great responsibility."

Now, take Louis C.K. as an example. He had the financial power, put his own money down, took a risk and bet on himself, produced a show that he sold directly to his fans on his terms, and won. He didn't ask for any handouts, he just made something people wanted and sold it.

Zack Braff on the other hand, used the money, fame, and connections that come from starring on a heavily syndicated, long running hit TV show, to..... help an undiscovered creative talent make it in Hollywood? No. He used that power to ask his fans to indulge him by funding a personal project. It's hard to say it's wrong for him to make money selling tickets to his fans for special showings, but what does he tell the kid just out of film school? You can ask people for no strings attached money, too, just become an A-list start first?

What next?

So, what next? Well... that's a bit tougher. A lot of people say that Kickstarter is a way to validate ideas, which is partly true. I'm certainly glad I didn't spend $25,000 of my own money on tooling and production, only to come up well short of what I needed to break even. I've gained a lot of valuable across the board experience, from factory sourcing to distribution to marketing and so on.

But I'm also out more than half a years worth of time. I usually have about half a dozen ideas cooking at any one point in time, and although the experience I've gained I'm sure will make the process go faster, I don't particularly relish the though of spending another 4, 5, or 6 months on a project to have it fall short of it's funding goal.

So I'm thinking of ways to do even smaller tests, probably thought the new storefront on www.awkwardengineer.com. This leads to the 3rd, and final lesson.

Lesson 3: Fail Fast

I've heard the expression before, "Fail as fast as you can," but now I've lived it. I'm naturally disappointed that the campaign didn't reach it's funding goal, but I realllllly wish I'd gotten through it maybe a few months earlier. The lesson is to learn if something works as quickly as possible, and move to the next stage or the next project.

So maybe you'll hear from me a little sooner than 9 months about what I'll be doing next. :-).

I'll let you know soon.

-Sam

aka The Awkward Engineer.

Nothing Like Setting Stuff On Fire While the Wife is Out of Town

2013-05-10T10:16:00.001-04:00

What It Feels Like Running A Kickstarter Campaign

2013-04-09T15:27:00.000-04:00

If you want to know what it feels like to launch a Kickstarter campaign, I think the full on Kermit arm flail gif sums it up, pretty well.

In all seriousness, it's been a rush. I mean, how else can you describing taking months of work and then asking the world if anyone likes it.

For the first few days, I was basically glued to my computer screen, watching for notifications from Kickstarter that people donated to the campaign. I was one big nervous ball of energy. And sleeping a full 8 hours a night? Ha!

People outside my immediate social circle started donating to the campaign and I started getting some media coverage and I thought, "Maybe I'm not completely crazy after all." I got coverage in Wired, ABC, The Boston Globe, The Awesomer, BostInno, GeoBeats, Trendhunter, Foodbeast, Nerdalicious, and a radio interview on 740 The Game.

Getting emails and phones calls from media made kinda feels like being a mini-celebrity for a moment. The Boston Globe even sent over a photographer to get pictures for their article!

The connection with Kickstarter backers has probably been one of the highlights of the experience so far. Robert Haleluk, cookie dunking aficionado and the inventor who ran the successful Kickstarter for The Dipr even reached out to us as well. Here's cheering for us, which I think is pretty cool. If he hadn't seen the campaign on Kickstarter, I'm not sure we ever would have met.

I'm sure when things wind down, I'll have more to post and will try to organize my thoughts into a more coherent fashion than what I've written here, but in the mean time... KERMIT ARM FLAIL!

Best Cookie Dunk Kickstarter campaign backer story EVER

2013-04-09T14:46:00.004-04:00

I was in RadioShack, browsing some of the electronic kits, because that's how I roll on a Thursday night when my wife is out of town, and an 8th grade girl was there with her mom. I overheard them say something about an LED, my curiosity took over, and I asked what they were working on.

Apparently, they were working on a science project to measure the power generated by different water wheels. They had an old analog volt meter they thought was broken. They thought that if it was working, they could attach a hobby motor to the water wheel drive shaft and measure the voltage generated.

I fixed the voltmeter (one probe was plugged into the positive side of the low voltage range port and the other was plugged into the positive side of the high voltage range port, easy fix) and showed them how it had different scales for different range settings. I offered a few ideas for mechanically measuring the horsepower of the water wheels, rather than electrically, and then gave them my business card with my website and email if they had any questions.

That evening, they sent me an email saying thank you for the help. And a little while after that, I got a notification from Kickstarter. They had donated to the campaign.

"Hey, I have this great idea..."

2013-04-03T09:50:00.000-04:00

this was written by Awkward Engineer's Chief of Marketing, Chris Sim

"Hey, I have this great idea..."

Many adventures in a boy's life start with this phrase and it's usually followed by a high risk activity. As a kid, it meant jumping bikes off a sketchy ramp. You get a bit older, and it's sneaking out past curfew. When you get old enough, it means starting a company.

We've known each other for years, but I hadn't spoken with Sam since I moved from Massachusetts. When Sam initially called me to gauge my interest in Awkward Engineer, I was actually kind of surprised. But the same "hey I have a great idea" feeling came back and hearing his enthusiasm made working on Awkward Engineer an easy sell.

To be honest, I had no idea at the amount of work that Sam had already put into the Panic Button Light Switch Kit or even the development of the Cookie Dunking Cup. I am continually impressed with the level of commitment and the passion behind Awkward Engineer and most of all, the follow through has been amazing.

I've been learning a lot about the product development and Kickstarter process, like everyone else over the last few months. What I really love being a part of, is that it's really about as grassroots as you can get. Take our blog post about starting a company with $500, it's amazing to me that technology has allowed the “two guys and in a garage” business model and further reduced it into “two guys and an internet connection”. The internet age has allowed us to collaborate and share our ideas and also to distribute them to the people who are most interested.

The internet, in the form of social media and blogging, provides a way for us to spread our story and share our experiences and ideas with all of you. It also provides a new opportunity in crowd sourcing. To me crowd sourcing or crowd funding is just the adult version of telling a friend “Hey, I've got this great idea...”

Are you in?

A Big THANK YOU

2013-03-28T14:17:00.002-04:00

We just wanted to say a great big THANK YOU to all of you who supported us on our first day. We were able to achieve 10% of our goal on the first day and we obviously could not have done it without you guys.

The Kickstarter project has been a challenge and seeing the amazing support is truly humbling.

A few things from our first day:

A surprising number of kickstarter members that we don’t know personally donated to our project.
People seems to agree that this cup solves the first worldest of first world problems.
A writer for the Boston Globe found our project and interviewed Sam.
Our favorite donation amount was for $23.02... just so he could throw in his extra 2 cents.

We're LIVE on Kickstarter! http://kck.st/ZtQjJw

2013-03-27T12:01:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone! Today, my Kickstarter went live. For me, this has been the culmination of many months of work, trying to take something from a little dream and a doodle to a place where I'm ready to raise funds for a production run.

I've worked with local Massachusetts companies I believe in and trust, I've put in my own time and money to develop prototypes, I've recruited friends and neighbors to help when my own skill set wasn't enough, and I've eaten more cookies than I can count in testing.

Up until this point, I've been able to keep this project moving forward using mostly passion, determination, and hard work, but now I'm in the final stretches and need your help to raise the money to bring this to manufacture.

It would be an absolute honor to have the support of you all as a I Kickstart this project, and try to turn this dream into a reality.

Thank you, I love you all.

EDIT: eeek! here's the link http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1080427607/the-ultimate-in-cookie-dunking-techonlogy

Our Valued Partner: New England Village

2013-03-21T12:47:00.000-04:00

I stopped by the other day at New England Village, our assembly facility, to check on some stuff for the Panic Button Light Switch Kits, and it prompted me to finally write this blog post, which I had been meaning to publish for a while.

For the who didn't know, New England Village is a campus based community, and part of their mission is to "enable adults with intellectual disabilities to experience dignified, enriching lives...". At the assembly facility, that experience translates into providing their residents with real jobs that pay a real wage.

We feel good about the fact that we're creating paid work for those with intellectual disabilities, but in practical terms, New England Village is a valuable partner, allowing us to scale our operation. Many people don't realize how much manufacturing is still manual, and indeed, the final assembly on the Panic Buttons and placement inside the retail packaging is done completely by hand. When our last pre-Christmas order of Panic Button Light Switch Kits came in, we realized we had grown to be more than a kitchen table business and needed serious help.

Visiting NEV is a blast. Their work area is set up almost like a school cafeteria, air conditioned, with light assembly work going on at each of the tables throughout the room. I've even jumped in at an assembly table before and joined the chit chat while everyone worked. And the first time I went to visit, when they introduced me, everyone clapped. It was great.

They weren't working on my stuff on this last visit, but I snapped a quick pic of work in progress. It's definitely a cool feeling to see pallets of things you designed getting ready to ship, and it's a reminder that we wouldn't have been able to handle this sort of quantity without the residents at New England Village.

On Store Shelves @NewburyComics in Burlington, MA

2013-03-11T16:48:00.003-04:00

Hey, it's not every day you see your own product on store shelves. :-) We took this today at the Newbury Comics location in Burlington, MA.

Want to play Where's Waldo with the Panic Button Light Switch Kit?

Scroll down for the answer......

Take a Peek Behind the Curtain of What Makes Internet Commerce Run

2013-03-04T12:02:00.001-05:00

In short, order fulfillment is the little bit of magic that connects a glowing screen and a credit card to physical goods at your door. The 3rd party order fulfillment house is basically what makes the internet economy run... (and keeps my wife happy because I don't have a pile of boxes on the kitchen table.)

Here's a little peek behind that curtain from our visit with Dan Cence of Sprocket Express. We particularly like this order house (instead of say, Amazon), because they're within an hour's drive of our assembly house, the manufacturer we plan on working with to make Cookie Cups, and also because when we email Dan, he usually responds within 5 minutes.

Oder fulfillment really is a key piece of infrastructure, tying together warehousing, inventory control, picking + packing + shipping, and any sort of email notification and tracking.

Here are a few pictures from the trip.

Sometimes the strategic plan is called TRY HARDER: On grit, determination, and mentorship.

2013-02-28T15:09:00.000-05:00

Awkward Engineer Creations has come a long way since from it's humble beginnings. We've built up supply chains, worked on web dev, made sales calls, studied the retail industry, created graphic designs, and more. Sometimes people ask us how we learned all this, coming from a Mech. Eng. background, and the answer boils down to one thing -

We tried.

Of course, it took some persistence and follow through, but in the grand scheme of things, it's been done before. People have launched new products. People have started companies. We're just trying to study what other people are already doing (sales, basic manufacturing, marketing, etc) take what already works, and then do that ourselves.

You want to know what's actually hard? Cold fusion. That's hard. It's something that hasn't been been done before, that might not be physically possible. And even if it is physically possible, it might not be technically feasible. And if it is technically feasible, it might not be commercially viable.

But we're not working on cold fusion. Or drug development. Or rocket science. (We used to design components for things that were launched by rockets, actually, so we've kinda sorta done rocket science in the past, but we digress...) We're just making and selling fun things that we want to see in the world.

So when we get stuck, one of the the best things our mentors can do for us is give us a metaphorical kick in the behind and make us realize that all we have to do is try harder. We were starting to sense a scalability problem, as we hadn't picked up any new major distributors in a while.

Our new strategy was to piggy back on sales reps in the toy and gift industry, and use them to achieve growth by reaching out to mom and pop stores, but our mentors had a few questions first.

"Well, do you think you've saturated the market for major channels?"

"No, but..."

"So how many more do you think you need to hit your goals for the year?"

"Maybe a dozen or so, but"

"And do you think that's possible?"

"Yes, but..."

And that was it. Sometimes you just need to hear the words come out of your own mouth. It's not impossible, you just need to try harder. So we went back to Google, did some research, and found a half dozen new companies to reach out to.

I'm often reminded of a saying I read once, about hiring practices... that people run out of hard work long before they run out of smarts.

So if you're starting up and new and wondering how to make it, just keep working. Sometimes the strategic plan is called TRY HARDER.

Getting to Dream. Draw. Print. Do.

2013-02-27T12:04:00.000-05:00

This post if from fellow Mechanical Engineer and friend of the Awkward Engineer, Greg Fischvogt

If you’re anything like me, finding solutions to problems doesn't stop when you’re off the clock. My name is Greg and I’m an inventor in corporate America by day and a dreamer by night. As a full time employee at a large global company I have nearly endless resources at my disposal. 25+ full time model makers, SLA rapid prototyping, photopolymer printing, vacuum casting, lathes, mills, wire machines, laser welding, access to the latest version of CREO, and most importantly of all, someone else’s check book! One would think that I would be well positioned to dip my toe into the pond of prototyping and one-off design outside of work, but for some reason it just doesn't seem all that easy.

The modern innovation process as I see it is:
Dream
Draw
Print
Do
(There are more things that could be added to the list, but getting started is half the battle!)

Currently I find myself stuck in the dream stage. Many of my ideas tend to get trapped in the world of poorly cobbled together prototypes and Home Depot hardware aisle creations that sometimes get the point across, but often don’t always cut it. They fall short in some way and this is where many of my ideas die. I am well aware that there are tools out there that could easily bring my ideas to the next level, but I've found that something as simple as CAD software can be a significant barrier to making well thought out functional models.

As I see it, CAD is a gateway to discount prototyping (something that every inventor is looking for). Long before you ever make your first physical model, a simple 3D part or assembly can sort out most design issues. This allows you to iterate and continue on without ever spending time or money learning the lesson the hard way. When you finally do feel comfortable with your idea, automated manufacturing techniques are instantly at your fingertips. With a few clicks of a button you could submit your ideas to additive rapid prototyping houses, CNC machining services, your own 3D printer, or share something as simple as a screen grab in an email to your friend.

Sounds great. Where do I sign?

Naturally I find myself in the position where I’d want something that’s “good”, but the fact of the matter is most of my ideas don’t come with a business plan to justify the expense. Most mainstream commercial CAD software is far too expensive for the average Joe to justify having some fun with. The majority of packages have an entry level price of approximately $4000 USD with annual maintenance costs of approximately $1250 USD per year.

It seems like the product design process has seen some serious change over the past 5+ years. Where simply making a model was the most cost prohibitive barrier to implementation…now it seems that CAD software may be the new front runner in a world of ultra-cheap prototyping.

My advice? Don’t let the price of CAD software stop you from getting out there and trying your ideas. Something is better than nothing. Reject the notion that owning professional quality software is the only way you’ll be able to create models on your own. Lower your expectations on what the software is capable of doing. There is a whole world of free to discount CAD programs out there that will likely meet the basic needs that you have to get started. With a little money invested, if you decide you really love doing this you can always consider upgrading in the future. Getting started is half the battle, make good use of these discount tools!

Resources for free to discount CAD access:

See Makerbot’s “choosing your hammer”
http://www.makerbot.com/support/guides/design/

Join a local hacker space like TechShop
http://www.techshop.ws/

Alibre Personal Edition

http://www.alibre.com/products/hobby/

Author’s note: Since writing this article I have decided to take my own advice and have purchased a license of Alibre Personal Edition. This software is not free, but seems to be similarly featured to software I use on a daily basis and heavily discounted for what it is capable of. Time to start clicking some buttons!