To gain some inspiration for their glue gun project, Heck and Gardner take apart what is already on the market. Why reinvent the wheel on a tight two-week schedule? Just be careful with copyrights. (Image courtesy of The Ben Heck Show.)
Anything you ever wanted to build or tinker is fair game if you get it on film. To many of us, that would sound like heaven.
Such is the life of Benjamin Heckendorn (Ben Heck) and co-stars Felix Gardner and Karen Corbeill, of element14’s The Ben Heck Show. The show is sponsored by the engineering community and consulting group element14, which helps engineers design their electronic products and are making a big push in the IoT world.
“People liked that we were always doing something new,” said Heck. “Back then, I had a lot of ideas for things I wanted to build. I wanted to build things that were altruistic, things that could help other people, something that doesn’t exist or something I wish existed. I just wanted to build cool things and we did that for six seasons.”
Heck and Gardner block diagram the glue gun temperature control. Don’t build blind on tight deadlines. Plan ahead! (Image courtesy of The Ben Heck Show.)
As the team develops these builds, the show will parallel the journey many engineers take when they find those special builds that just might make it big.
“This current season, we changed because the schedule got difficult,” explained Heck. “This year, we do more longer-term builds.” Who could blame him when you really think about it? Six years of one week deadlines is no easy task.
Engineers, Don’t Tell Yourselves, “That Idea Will Never Work!”
Size matters. The smaller the motherboard is in a board game, the more affordable it becomes. However, the larger connections make it easier to use for kids to play with their toy, forcing a larger game space. Tackling this problem with fresh eyes can make it fun and a challenge. (Image courtesy of The Ben Heck Show.)
Remember that episode of Heck’s show where he made a following suitcase? It’s a must watch for those making IoT devices. Well, a company made and are now selling that product. However, you won’t see Heck’s name anywhere on the product or patent. Another missed opportunity boxed and shelved away like the Indy’s lost arc.
“Up until now, everything we have done has been a prototype. As soon as it’s done, it gets put on a shelf,” Heck lamented. “That’s one of the reasons we changed formats. It’s not as satisfying to take something to a certain level of completion and then abandon it. Instead, what if we took three projects from the past and gave them the long-term treatment?”
Heck will spend time on each product on a rotating schedule until it is clear which project has the best opportunity for success. Additionally, he will pepper in a few videos on mini-projects throughout the year to keep things interesting.
This isn’t a bad strategy that tinkerers, engineers and inventors might want to pick up. First, it prevents Heck and the team from burning out on one problem or project.
Second, it keeps things interesting for the design team and audience, so they don’t see the same project every time they tune in or come into the shop. Next, it means Heck isn’t putting all his eggs in one basket from a business perspective.
Finally, it gives Heck’s subconscious, research team and element14’s community members time to figure out those hard-to-solve problems for the two projects on the back burner, while Heck’s conscious is focused on building the current, lead project. In other words, the gap between projects gives the show more interactivity between Heck’s team and their fans who can send help during the development cycles.
These changed between the two show formats, coupled with the help and encouragement from fans, will all help to avoid the dreaded words “this will never work.”
The Benefits of More Flexible Development Cycles
Heck tests ball bearing options on the original prototype for the mini pinball machine kit. Spending time on the ball bearing preferences wouldn’t be a priority if there were only two weeks to develop the project. Just pick what works and go. (Image courtesy of The Ben Heck Show.)
They can also add all of those dream features they wanted in the first kick at the can, but that didn’t make the two-week cut off.
“I’ve been using glue guns for decades to mock-up designs and cheap ones are getting worse,” Heck said. “They sit there dripping, are not convenient to use and are inconsistent. There are industrial glue guns [I could use]. But I was thinking, ‘what if [an affordable] glue gun had some of the features of a 3D printer?’”
Just some of the ideas Heck wants to add to the glue gun’s design include:
- A retracting stand that deploys at the release of the trigger for safe placement on a workbench
- Retracting the glue from the outlet at the release of the trigger to avoid drip
- A flow control dial, so a constant amount of glue is released despite how hard the trigger is pulled
- A fine tip, like an anteater that can glue hard to reach areas
- Auto turn-off for safety when the user forgets to unplug the device.
“This would be a super cool glue gun,” Heck said. “I want to build a glue gun that I wish existed but can’t buy.”
The Challenges of Bringing a Prototype to Market
Corbeill designs a flipper for the pinball machine kit using Fusion 360. The team specializes in pinball machines and can easily jump right into designing on CAD. This isn’t always the case. Sometimes a crude prototype can help save time finding issues and homing in on the right CAD design. (Image courtesy of The Ben Heck Show.)
“We’ll first identify the problem, like the issues with glue guns. All inventions start with an overall problem that can be solved,” Heck said.
From there, the team starts to sketch ideas to solve these problems. Heck recommends that developers start with a pad, paper and cardboard prototypes long before they move to things like CAD designs.
“You can spend a lot of time tweaking something on the computer and create something that isn’t usable at all, so I like to push real world analog design,” Heck said.
Heck and his team then created a mock-up and strategy to complete the projects to fit any time constraints. The team also assesses and records any challenges that they foresee and their goals.
For the current season, the team also created a list of the most common, affordable, and user-friendly parts between the glue gun, board game and pinball machine kit. This should help them to optimize the development time of the projects as they will spend less time re-doing common work between the projects.
“We got to the point where we have proven the theories of most of the projects,” celebrated Heck. “Now we just need to dial it in with the 3D printer before moving to the steel laser cutter.”
Another tip Heck has for budding design engineers and entrepreneurs is to put a lot of thought into how people can misuse your product. People will always try to hack your designs and sometimes they may not know what they are doing and hurt themselves. Due to human error, others will use your design incorrectly in ways you may not imagine on your first go. Try to determine those early and design for them.
“Never assume anything can’t happen and always assume the worst,” Heck joked. “It’s like chess: you need to think three moves ahead. Even if those three things are impossible to happen in sequence, you need to assume they will happen, because they probably can. Think of everything you can and cross your fingers.”
Another thing to note is that design teams will have setbacks. They will fail. This isn’t a bad thing. In his show’s old format, you didn’t see Heck’s failures too often, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. He promises that, in the new format, “you will also see more of the mistakes.”
Heck added. “Before they didn’t help the narrative of what we were doing, as everything was so compressed. So, in the video you’d leave in the success and take out the mistakes. Now we are showing more failures to show the iterative process.”
element14 Helps Engineers Overcome Development Setbacks
Ben hooks up a ChipKit to a breadboard to test and simulate the logic of the board game with his computer. element14’s bread and butter includes helping engineers with the design of electronics. (Image courtesy of The Ben Heck Show.)
“element14 is passionate about supporting start-ups and makers at every stage during product development,” Hari Kalranaraman, corporate developer at element14, said. “Engineers can use our Design Center and community to research products, discuss ideas with community members and get started with reference development platforms as they achieve proof of concept.”
“element14 is a good online community for engineers,” Heck agreed. “If you are having trouble, you can go on the forums and talk to people about your problems. Most of our interaction with them is through the show. We need to work with them more.”
The organization’s goals are to help bring their clients’ and members’ concepts and prototypes onto store shelves. They can be a big help for those stumbling on radio frequency (RF), analog, wireless, wireless power or digital design.
“Start-ups are resource-constrained. In some cases, the core team members are software experts and need a partner with hardware expertise to build a system,” Kalyanaraman said. “In other cases, the start-ups lack bandwidth to complete the design by themselves. When you add manufacturing to the mix, it adds complexity and takes time away from the start-up’s core revenue generation activities.”
For instance, element14 helps start-ups ensure their production goes smoothly by analyzing the product’s design for manufacturability (DFM). The idea is to find and address any potential manufacturing issues associated with a design and correct them before going into production.
“Hari is coming up to our shop in an upcoming episode to do a product review,” Heck said. “He will help us with the business development of our designs. We will go over all of the status updates of the products and Hari will help to guide us.”
element14 can also help start-ups as they look past development and move onto certification, marketing and distribution channels. In fact, the company’s track record includes being a manufacturing partner for the Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black and BBC micro:bit. If you receive a customized Raspberry Pi, then it has passed through element14’s hands, as they are the exclusive global partner permitted to tweak the recipe. The company even creates development boards and kits for its semiconductor supplier partners.
“One of the most common challenges we see is compliance testing and certification,” Kalyanaraman noted. “Depending on the application and geography, our compliance experts routinely help products get FCC, CE or UL certification.”
One last piece of advice that Heck had for entrepreneurs is not to forget about how expensive research and design can get when adjusting the costs of your budding organizations.
“If someone was running a start-up, my main advice would be to make sure the development of the product is worked into the profits not your deliverables,” Heck warned. “Keep the development costs down and work them into the profits you are and will be making. Otherwise, if you don’t get your funding you are doomed.”
To learn more about how to get your IoT product off the ground check out the element14 community and Design Center for resources, research, reference designs, technical support, Q & A, design challenges, webinars and more. Engineers can also post their projects in the element14 community so others can learn from your experiences.
To watch Ben Heck and his show, click here.
Premier Farnell PLC has sponsored this post. They have no editorial input to this post. All opinions are mine. — Shawn Wasserman