Monthly Update – March 2013

We’re going big!

We’re casting off the shackles of slowness, emerging early from our winter cocoon, and springing forward like our clocks did on Sunday. That’s not to say that we haven’t been working hard all along; we’ve had big things planned for a while. We’re just being more open about it now.

So what’s new? We’re fundraising like mad! We’ve launched a Kickstarter project, and we need your support. Go check it out!

Our beta testers list is getting longer and longer. We’ve been getting people requesting to be beta testers for a long time, and some of them have even paid for the privilege. We only have a few units, so we send them out for a while, get feedback, they get returned, and we send them out again. It’s worked out well so far. We have one unit that has been living at Sector67 for over a year now! Just like all things at the hackerspace, this one has been modified so that in addition to a buzzer at the end of the countdown timer, it also lights up some old police car lights. People do NOT talk over their time at our meetings.

We have verified our design in many ways. We’ve been talking to a lot of experts in wireless design, mass production, lighting, and other fields, and we’re happy with the electronics. We also ordered our final designed product 3D printed so that we could verify that everything fits together and works as intended. We have some tweaks to make; little things like screw hole sizes and depths, alignment locators for easier assembly, and surface texturing, but according to one professional who has been designing products for injection molding for 7 years, “this is really impressive. The only suggestions I have are nitpicking.”

We’ve even been molding and casting our own parts, like the rubber band, which we were able to make ourselves for 1/10th the cost it would have been to 3D print it in rubber. See the mold process here. This gives us more insight into the manufacturing process and allows us to experiment with different materials and make subtle changes that will make the mass production easier on everybody.

With the rubber around the scoreboard, it looks like a real product!

This is our production ready prototype, with 3D printed parts, a nice cast rubber seal, and the latest revision of the circuit board.

With all these great things happening, you’d think we have everything covered. Well, we’re humans, and we’re not perfect. We need your help getting the word out to everyone. This Kickstarter campaign won’t succeed without hundreds of thousands of people looking at the site, and we need you to help with that. Many of you have already helped us out in some capacity, and I’m sure you’d love to see your help get recognized by the world. Those who wish they could do more, here’s your chance. If you know coaches, teachers, fitness instructors, sports buffs, or competitive soccer moms, please tell them about this project, and hurry!

The link for the Kickstarter page is here: http://kck.st/16otSct

Please share it.

Posted in News

Leave a Reply

Why?
We built this for all the people and teams who play sports but don't have a big professional scoreboards. It's for tournaments, league sports, gyms, schools, and anyone who wants to get more involved and have more fun with their sports.
  1. We welcome any feedback, questions or comments