Lixies/Tixie Clock

[Paul Andrews]

Just came across this on Tindie:

Here's a link to a cool Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwXqQos0ZFk

I have to say. I really like this.

[Dylan Distasio]

While I do agree that this looks cool, I would point out that the creator, Connor Nishijima, defrauded Kickstarter backers on his prior ill-fated Moodlight project.  He admitted to using the backer's funds to pay for car repairs, and nothing was ever delivered, nor was there any attempt at making it right with backers.

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[Paul Andrews]

Ouch!

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[Spencer Woodburn]

The files are provided to use a laser cutter if you wanted to make one yourself .

Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Droid

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[Nick]

Is there a public reference for the Kickstarter issue, or is that heresay?

Nick

[Dylan Distasio]

I was a backer, so I will share the last update from KS (which was only provided after months of backers pleading and cajoling for any type of update):

Fatal Mistakes

 

My name is Connor Nishijima. In 2015, I set out to audit the emotions of the earth via Twitter using a Kickstarter for Emotiscope - then known as "Moodlight".

It crashed and burned. Here's what I did wrong.

I never planned to make it this far

I only wanted just enough funding for a small batch. Just enough leftover to start a run on Tindie afterwards or something, so I did the math. $935 was what I needed to make a modest batch, and grow it from there afterwards. I could handle assembly and shipment on my own in a timely matter for that kind of run.

I hit that goal in less than 24 hours. Fuck. It kept going, and kept going, until I was 483% over funded. My first fatal mistake was never planning for this before starting. I didn't know how to fulfill that size of an order yet.

Irresponsibility with funds

I own a 2008 2nd Gen Prius. It's a wonderful car, but it had a hiccup.

Driving on a freeway, the car would slow down on its own. No dash warnings. I turned off the air conditioner and radio. The car kept slowing down and losing power. It went into safe mode, then all the dash warning lights went on.

After taking it to a dealer, the regular service tech couldn't figure why it was failing. There were no codes being generated upon failure. The dealer got a master tech from Toyota who went over the car and said it was fine. After the first service tech and I witnessing the failure, I wasn't confident taking the car. The master tech said he would try driving it again. After a 20 minute drive, the car failed again.

The diagnosis from the master tech was to replace the Hybrid, Power and the Transmission Computer. This totaled $1,660 in parts and $1,428 in service.

I had $1,700 of my own savings on hand, but I still needed another $1,300 to cover the cost. My girlfriend at the time didn't drive or work, so this was the only way for either of us to afford our roof. At the time I was making ~$1,500 a month at my job, so I figured this would be easy to fill in with some help from family. I pulled $1,300 from the KS fund, with the idea of paying it back in within a month. This was my second fatal mistake.

That company I worked for was the original RadioShack. (Now General Wireless DBA "RadioShack") After filing their Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February that year for a restructure plan with Sprint's parent company, they got the approval in September. In October 2015, RadioShack cleaned house of over 80% it's hourly-waged employees to bring in existing Sprint staff for massive downsizing.

Now I've fixed my car, and I have no income source. During following month, I had to live off of KS funds, until landing as an Electrical CSA for Lowe's, for about the same wages.

So my life was back on track, but now I'm out $1,300 car fund, and $800 rent.

I was making about $1,400 a month on average at my new job, and this wasn't enough.

Rent - $800

Groceries - $100

Gas - $20

Heating - $80

Electrical - $60

Water - $40

Verizon - $110

Comcast - $60

Pet supplies - $20

Total: $1290

At the end of every month, I would only be left with about $110. At that rate, it would take 19 months to refill the KS fund to it's original status, so I knew now that the entire profit margin was gone and I would have to sell at a loss.

I had no fulfillment company

One thing I realized very quickly after it was too late, was that anyone whose ever comfortably "made it" on KS used a fulfillment company to handle shipping. There are companies designed where you can ship your entire stock to them, and an address list. They charge $2-5 per order, and move shipments for you. I didn't have one on retainer, because I never expected the massive overfunding. But I couldn't afford that fee, as things were already in the hole.

I wasn't cautious with large order proofing

"Might as well keep up appearances", I thought. I pressed on, making a final revision of the boards, double checking it, and ordering 120. I checked every trace, and all was well. But this was my third fatal mistake - I did the mass order without a proof. By forgetting to change out the DRC of the more-expensive and capable OSHPark fab, I gave a board to a Chinese factory that couldn't match the OSHPark standard my board passed during checking. As you may recall, 120 boards arrived with a short to ground near the LM317, causing it to overheat, overdraw current, and quickly destroy any USB port they were plugged into. This was a $574 loss.

I kept changing the product after launch

I was starting to make a little more money on the side with some graphic and web design consultation, so I was able to make back a lot of the missing money. So I got cocky. I wanted to make the wait worth it for my backers, so I refined the prototype unit seen in the video to a slimmer model, with a faster processor, and a painted, translucent front window. I figured since the boards were dead I could still change the PCB as needed. This was my fourth fatal mistake. This extra prototyping ended up costing an extra $400, and wasn't necessary. My backers fell in love with the original model - why the hell was I changing it when I'm already in the hole?

By the time I'd reached the point where a design was set in stone, that I felt was worth the wait to the backers, the 6 already-running DigitalOcean computation servers had costed me another $480. I was left with $1,400 at that point in time, and I would need another $2,485 to simply break even on this product.

Fear of permanent Kickstarter reputation

Anxiety set in. This product just wasn't going to happen - and I didn't want to face it. I was called a coward by some of my more intense backers, and one even released a previous address of mine from a WHOIS record in an attempt to have people harass me or my family in my home. I alerted the current residents to the entire situation, at which point their attorney said that if anyone came to the door for that purpose they could pursue a class-action harassment charge with me against that backer for openly inciting residential harassment from strangers online. Luckily for him, that never happened, and the KS staff removed my information from the campaign. But what did happen was a permanent negative comments section of Kickstarter, which will rightfully tie to my name forever.

Hiding

This did incite a bit of fear. Someone wanted angry backers to find me in person. To do what, I'm not sure. While some of you are disappointed at the failure of my venture, I can't imagine you're violent. So I went on hiatus until I could figure my future in electronics out.

A month later, I released photos of one final model: the slim, but windowless fourth model. Maybe there's still some love out there. I wasn't ready to post a public update, so I kept some of my angrier backers up to date for the time being. The info leaked to all interested before I finished an update, so I let people discuss the new model on their own and answered questions, until I realized something:

I wasn't passionate anymore

Even if some angel investment allowed me to continue as if nothing happened, I wouldn't want to. The project at hand became too ambitious, as I realized I'd have to continue paying for Emotiscope servers for years after retiring the product. The sense of failure and disappointment tainted the entire idea for me, and I no longer loved this little lamp, I resented it and myself.

This is the end of the line...

My fifth and final fatal mistake was a lack of transparency. I regret keeping my backers in the dark as my product capsized, I was too prideful to admit defeat as soon as I should have. I'm sorry for the long run of nothingness this became, and for being irresponsible with funding. This will probably be my first and last Kickstarter, as I'm terrified of the entire site now. My heart would sink every time I got a message from a backer and didn't know what to say. For the longest time I felt like I could turn it around, but it's official:

The Moodlight Kickstarter is closed.

I don't have enough funds for every backer, and even if I did, I couldn't possibly pretend I was still passionate about the service it offered. Even after 18 months of development I could never bring the statistics to the level of accuracy I wanted, so the lamp was little more than a random light show at times with only major world events across all cultures triggering a response.

I'd like to extend my full appreciation to all 102 backers for funding my first Kickstarter, being patient for a year, and even trying to scare me - because it's made me more cautious. It's made me realize I wasn't ready, and has given me a reason to never blindly take the risks I did, again.

- Connor Nishijima

On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 11:41 PM, Nick <ni...@desmith.net> wrote:

Is there a public reference for the Kickstarter issue, or is that heresay?

Nick

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[Nick]

OK - I just like to know the background if someone is casting aspersions...

Thank you for posting that - I looked on Kickstarter and he'd made the above post private, available to backers only.

Not a good story and I presume no funds were ever returned? He could still clear his name by refunding folk over time.

Everyone makes mistakes - Lord knows I have - but you need to be upfront & honest about it and clear up the mess afterwards.

One to avoid, methinks.

Nick

[gregebert]

I think a lot of kickstarter campaigns are started by people who have a good idea, but dont have first-hand experience taking a concept into production. It's NOT easy, and it's not cheap.

Every time I finish another clock, my wife asks me why I dont sell them. My usual answer is that I make nixie clocks for fun and I do it at my own leisure; once I start selling them it's a business with financial & schedule constraints. I get too much of that from my day-job (well, it's more like a day+night+weekend job....). 

-------------------

Regarding that guy's sob-story about his Prius......I own 2 of them and they are excellent, trouble-free cars.

Regarding that guy's sob story about Chinese PCB manufacture....I've done several boards there and they are excellent quality.

[Nick]

Agreed on all fronts - the sob-story is completely irrelevant - he could still have pledged to return the money over time and if I was a backer, I'd be really piss*d about this. His own/personal problems/stupidity are nothing to do with his backers.

I also use a variety of Chinese PCB manufacturers - PCBway is my current favorite for prototypes - and I've never had a problem with them, assuming you give them decent Gerbers in the first place :)

I've commercialised a few items over the years, but I gave up being an EE professionally many years ago as it's a tough old world. Bring a product to market requires a lot of careful planning and risk assessment, both commercial and technical - you shouldn't even consider Kickstarter until you have a few working prototypes, i.e. Kickstarter is not a way to realise your technical fantasies!

Anybody thinking about this, just do a lot of upfront reading first and, please, talk to people who've done that & been there - experience is everything: Accept that the risk should be all yours, not your backers', Be honest, communicate well and regularly (surprises are generally a BAD plan), build in contingency (that's not the same as profit, by the way!). Backers accept properly managed risk - some projects are bound to fail - no-one accepts stupidity or dishonesty.

NIck

[Manuel Azevedo]

I've been thinking of making something myself like this, though smaller.
Neo-pixels on their way...
Acrylic: studying my options...

[JohnK]

I am really surprised that no-one has mentioned the you-know-who saga.

 

John K.

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[Nick]

The guy is dead. We've been over it far too many times - nothing to be gained revisiting it.

Nick

[Dylan Distasio]

No funds were ever returned, and I think you can see from his own writing that he has no real issue with what he did.  Apparently, screwing over his backers was a learning tool for him.

I have backed a ton of projects on Kickstarter, and fully understand that things can go wrong and that ultimately a project may not work out (although in all my backed projects, his was the only one where I encountered a total loss combined with fraud).   I think that all most backers are looking for is a well planned out best effort, and transparency throughout the process.  In this case, there was zero transparency until the end, irresponsible use of funds (criminal in my mind), and a lack of remorse.  If he had really cared about what he had done, and learned from the experience, he would be refunding his backers over time.

Anyways, for obvious reasons, I personally will never do business with him again.  Luckily, it was a relatively minor loss financially, but the overall experience leaves a bitter taste.

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[Mich...@aol.com]

Agreed.

 

How about the failed kickstarters though?

 

Still waiting forever for my TIKO.

What's worse is that they came back and had everyone pay an additional $55 for shipping and that isn't going to be refunded either.

 

Michail

[Manuel Azevedo]

Looks like that “Lixies” already existed before:

 

http://hackaday.com/2017/03/23/before-there-were-nixie-tubes-there-were-edge-lit-displays/

 

Edge Lit Displays – never knew about this.

 

Still a cool idea and I want to explore it myself.

 

[Manuel Azevedo]

And of course Jürgen already experimented with them too…

 

https://hackaday.com/2012/02/18/edge-lit-nixie-tube-is-sheer-brilliance/

 

 

[JohnK]

Some of you might like what you see in the files/photos section of this Google Group or the old Yahoo Group - pics of non-nixie displays and lots of interesting stuff.

 

John K

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[Paul Andrews]

What files/photos section? i.e. How do we access that?

[JohnK]

Actually no idea how far "they" got relocating the files and photos from the old Yahoo Group. The intro to this group doesn't tell much.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/neonixie-l

 

I see stuff like this on the web, but it doesn't seem to match even though they purport to be discussing Google and not Yahoo.. "Every group comes with 100 MB of storage space to store all of your group's photos, documents, and more. You can view the amount of storage space your group is using by clicking on the "Files (Default)" link on the right side of your group's homepage. The amount of storage space currently being used is indicated at the bottom of the Files page."

 

If you look back at the early days of this Google Group, no doubt Nick spells it out. I seem to remember discussions about having to 'link' various Google products together to get the 'old' Yahoo functionality.

 

BUT, the good news........

 

I mentioned the Yahoo days when I posted on 23 Feb about the military use [and I still need some pictures].

If you go there you will see photo and file areas. There is a lot of stuff stored by the Yahoo Group guys.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/NEONIXIE-L/info

 

 

John K.

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Paul Andrews

To: neonixie-l

Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2017 2:04 PM

Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Lixies/Tixie Clock

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[Nick]

Speaking for "they" :)

The files are all still on the Yahoo! group - its the same moderators both here and on the old group - luckily, Ray handed over the Yahoo! group ownership before he died, so we control that.

Google Groups don't have their own file section, per se; the recommendation is that you use another Google service to provide that capability but the problem is in ownership and upload rights - there is no way to link the membership of a Google Group with access rights to a Google Docs or Google Drive repository, i.e. controlling upload rights etc. would be a major pain as users would have to be doubly registered - if someone knows otherwise, please let me know.

Oddly, I have been looking at this again after giving up a couple of years ago - Since setting up the Google group, I've been shadowing it on mail-archive.com (as stated in the group intro), but I've also shadowed the old Yahoo! group at groups.io - https://groups.io/g/neonixie-l, just for safety.

When I first did that, groups.io didn't have a "files" or "database" section, and now they do, so I'm trying (not very hard, I have to admit) to get the Yahoo files section mirrored there.... I have asked their support team what we need to do to get the files accross - no response yet...

Ho, hum. On with the day job.

Nick (not the pharmaceutical one)

On Saturday, 25 March 2017 14:26:24 UTC+4, johnk wrote:

Actually no idea how far "they" got relocating the files and photos from the old Yahoo Group. The intro to this group doesn't tell much.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/neonixie-l

 

I see stuff like this on the web, but it doesn't seem to match even though they purport to be discussing Google and not Yahoo.. "Every group comes with 100 MB of storage space to store all of your group's photos, documents, and more. You can view the amount of storage space your group is using by clicking on the "Files (Default)" link on the right side of your group's homepage. The amount of storage space currently being used is indicated at the bottom of the Files page."

 

If you look back at the early days of this Google Group, no doubt Nick spells it out. I seem to remember discussions about having to 'link' various Google products together to get the 'old' Yahoo functionality.

 

BUT, the good news........

 

I mentioned the Yahoo days when I posted on 23 Feb about the military use [and I still need some pictures].

If you go there you will see photo and file areas. There is a lot of stuff stored by the Yahoo Group guys.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/NEONIXIE-L/info

 

 

John K.

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Paul Andrews

To: neonixie-l

Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2017 2:04 PM

Subject: Re: [neonixie-l] Lixies/Tixie Clock

What files/photos section? i.e. How do we access that?

On Friday, March 24, 2017 at 5:07:36 AM UTC-4, johnk wrote:

Some of you might like what you see in the files/photos section of this Google Group or the old Yahoo Group - pics of non-nixie displays and lots of interesting stuff.

 

John K

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