Introduction and Assistance

[Mitchell Tillwick]

Hello,

I stopped by the space a couple months ago, but I got caught up in school. I finished recently and have more time on my hands now.

I recently graduated from UNO with concentrations in International Business and Entrepreneurship. I work for two small startups in town which deal with software and reports. I'm not a tech (software or hardware) guy, so that makes things a little difficult. I'm learning HTML/CSS and Illustrator right now.

I was hoping there may be someone who know about electronics such as arduinos. I'm building a wristband with a button and three LEDs. The button switches between LEDs. It will need an on/off switch (unless the button does this). It must also:

- collect the time of day each LED was on

- collect the duration each LED was on

- show which LED was on

- be small enough to reasonably fit inside a wristband

I can 3-D design/print the actual wearable part, but I was hoping someone could assist me in building the electronic hardware portion. I'm trying to learn electronics, but I don't have much of a foundation, so it's creating a bit of a learning curve. I'd appreciate any help I could get and would love to help out in any way I could!

Mitchell Tillwick

[Kevin Fusselman]

Hey Mitchell, looking at your requirements written down (after talking at the space yesterday), I have a bunch more questions... Take no offense if they seem dumb, as often as not it's just things you haven't articulated yet.  

* How many days do you expect the battery to last? - Rechargeable? USB or inductive (wireless) charging?

* Could the 3 LEDs be 1 LED in 3 colors?

* What happens when you switch the switch to "off"? Is it important that the data be retained? Does it need to keep track of which light was on, so that it can restore that state when power is turned back on? Is there a value to "turning off" beyond saving battery?

* How do you intend to get the data off the device?  I'm betting on Bluetooth, but I could be wrong.

** If bluetooth, I'm betting on a smartphone. Given that, would it be a problem if the device was just a bluetooth button and light and all the brains was actually in the smartphone?

* Assuming that the button cycles between lights/colors, and I was switching from Light 1 to Light 3 (via Light 2), would it be intended to show Light 2 for 1 second during the swap?

* How much timer resolution do you need?  How much duration?   IE "Up to 3 days, in seconds"

* Would the user care about the actual date/time of each change, or is duration all that's important? (timestamp or stopwatch, basically)

* What would be the eventual goal for this design?  Do you want one for yourself or are you trying to build something to sell?  If the latter, what's your target price point?

The way I'm imagining this (as a product):

A simple wristband with a rechargeable Li-Ion battery (probably contactless, inductive charging) with a single red/green/blue LED integrated into a button.  Pressing the button sends a trigger to a smartphone app (via bluetooth) that says simply "switching from blue to red", and the app on the phone does the actual timekeeping and calculations.

Depending on what holes you shoot in my theory with your answers above, we're back to any old fitness tracker or smartwatch, and the entire project could just be software for a Galaxy Gear (/selfinterest) or similar.

Hopefully some of this is helpful in refining your concept.  I don't have a lot of experience with wearables or [microcontroller] bluetooth, but I know which end of an arduino plugs into the SCSI port. :)

--Kevin

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[Mitchell Tillwick]

Those are great questions. I've never done a tech spec, so this is a learning process for me.

* How many days do you expect the battery to last? - Rechargeable? USB or inductive (wireless) charging?

- I would aim for about 7-9 days for the battery to last. It could be rechargeable. USB or Inductive - whatever is easiest, feasible, and quickest to build

* Could the 3 LEDs be 1 LED in 3 colors?

- If we could make one LED switch between 3 colors, that'd be great so long as it's works and can record the status (time, duration, color)

* What happens when you switch the switch to "off"? Is it important that the data be retained? Does it need to keep track of which light was on, so that it can restore that state when power is turned back on? Is there a value to "turning off" beyond saving battery?

- Data must be retained when it is off (unless it can last a week being on). It does not need to keep track of which light it was on. The only value in having an "off" other than to save battery is to have a non-lit status (no LEDs on) so nothing is recorded

* How do you intend to get the data off the device?  I'm betting on Bluetooth, but I could be wrong.

- I was hoping a USB for collecting data. I'm not entirely certain. If wireless is easier, sure

** If bluetooth, I'm betting on a smartphone. Given that, would it be a problem if the device was just a bluetooth button and light and all the brains was actually in the smartphone?

- It would be a problem if all the controls were on the smartphone. All user actions must be from the wristband

* Assuming that the button cycles between lights/colors, and I was switching from Light 1 to Light 3 (via Light 2), would it be intended to show Light 2 for 1 second during the swap?

- It would be preferred not to show light 2 when switching between light 1 and light 3. However, I do not think this would be a problem if we could see in the data that light 2 was on for a second. Then we could recognize and ignore it

* How much timer resolution do you need?  How much duration?   IE "Up to 3 days, in seconds"

- Timer Resolution - I googled that and only have a limited understanding. Someone will probably have to explain that to me. Probably up to 7-9 days, in minutes. If we could split the days into 24 hour periods, that would be ideal. Not required though. I think I answered this correctly...

* Would the user care about the actual date/time of each change, or is duration all that's important? (timestamp or stopwatch, basically)

- Both timestamp and stopwatch if possible. The user shouldn't care about any of the raw data (right now). The analysts looking at the data would. 

* What would be the eventual goal for this design?  Do you want one for yourself or are you trying to build something to sell?  If the latter, what's your target price point?

- I'm building something to sell. Currently, I'm in a position where I might be at risk of losing IP, so full disclosure is best to be avoided until I'm told otherwise. Sorry. I'll let you know as soon as I get a green light. Prior to price point, I'm trying to validate the market and see if there are customer segments for this product. 

If the wristband uses a smartphone app while all the actual controls for the device were on the wrist, that would be fine. I've just never considered an app, because I think learning Swift/Android would be more work than necessary right now for myself.

To clarify, the piece I'm trying to build is a minimum viable product (MVP), so this is not the final product. I'm just trying to build a quick and cheap prototype to market test. As a general rule, I'm trying to build lean - cheap, fast, and meeting the bare minimum requirements to test it. Let me know if this helps clear things up!

Mitchell Tillwick

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