Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!

[Yago]

The video appears to show a light illuminating a sticker on the wall.
Perhaps the old Seller's Goon, "I've got a sticker with the time printed on it".

[Corporate666]

They're just a design concept firm, and actulaly have two other (non hardware) IGG campaigns running concurrently with this one.

No, they are just scammers.

If I am a "video game design firm" and I come up with technically impossible video game concepts - like an MMO game that can handle 1 million concurrent players on a peer-to-peer setup, then I get people to give me money to develop such a product, then fail to deliver by have enrichened myself from the project - then that is fraud.  Here in the USA it's fraud by negligence, at best.  Such as if you buy a car and the guy selling it says it was never in an accident... then you find out it was a total loss and was repaired by an incompetent mechanic... the guy who claimed it was never in an accident because he just didn't think it was has committed negligent fraud.

I personally think it rises to a higher level and it's willful fraud because even a cursory review of the project plan by an experienced person - or some investigation from an inexperienced person - would show that it's an impossible goal.  That level of due diligence should be incumbent upon project creators before they go out and ask for funding.

The people 'investing' in this project are fools and deserve what's coming to them.  Any and all of them could very easily do a tiny bit of due diligence and discover the project has no chance of success as stated - but they are being irrational with their money and so they deserve to lose it.  Some day they will put on their big boy and big girl pants and realize there are a lot of people out there ready and willing to scam you and we each bear the responsibility of using our brain before we open our wallet.

[Whales]

If the speed of light is 3 x 10E8 ms^-1. What is the speed of darkness ?

Jay_Diddy_B

Easy.  3 x 10E-8 ms^-1.  Imagine the delay issues between bright and dark parts of the image! 

[Laurynas]

Darkness can be much faster than light. (think of a shadow of an object traveling nearly as fast as light).
So these geniuses should use their darkness emitters^tm to speed up communications.
I'm sure stock micro traders would be happy to pay

[Mechanical Menace]

Darkness can be much faster than light. (think of a shadow of an object traveling nearly as fast as light).

You could, with a big enough laser, move a point of light across the face of the moon faster than the speed of light, that doesn't mean the light (or the darkness either side of it) is actually travelling faster than light. The "information" is travelling from the laser to the moon, not from one end of the moon to the other. Shame it doesn't though, the Cherenkov radiation would be pretty and blue is really popular and modern ATM.

[notzippy]

What pisses me off is when the tv picks up on this as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGGEiDHR-Nw&feature=youtu.be

Send alexandra.bahou@wxyz.com an email and link her some facts...

[Faccina]

They had this when they have launched the project (See attachment picture).
That was against the terms and i saw only an arduino with some random display and all cg images so i have reported it:

Prohibited Perks

• any form of lottery or gambling;
  any form of financial incentive or participation in any profit sharing;

After some days they have removed it, now changed with win a clock stuff.

Well, the funny thing is that i got my account BANNED, for the same reason, w/o any way to get it back.
And i was raising money to help my family, we have got 2 landslides near home and the roof broke so we have to rebuild it, i was offering the 10% raised to one random donor.

IMHO this will end with a crappy thing if isn't a scam.
Like this impossible to work thing:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/vitastiq-a-smart-device-for-vital-advice

[jwm_]

The laser based projectors with infinite focus are pretty neat, they can project onto arbitrary surfaces, seems like they would need that or some really funky optics to project the way they are showing in the mock ups from such an oblique angle. You would still have the issue that the bottom pixels will be taller than the top ones so you would have to correct for that in software. Not going to be as cheap or nice as they seem to think. Requiring a wall mounted screen that exactly fits the shape of the projection would greatly improve the clarity, line it up just right and it could be mostly seamless. maybe.

I have a small laser based projector I use for augmented reality stuff.

MIT is doing some cool stuff http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/

In any case, if they could provide that at that price point, the first thing I'd do is buy one and canibalize the processor and projector out of it to install my own OS on it, can think of more interesting things than a clock.

[donotdespisethesnake]

This has "Makibox $300 3D printer" written all over it. They will start shipping units after a very long dev time, there will be lots of complaints, demands for refunds, then it goes quiet and then they announce they have run out of funds and sadly have to shut up shop, leaving a lot of punters with nothing and no possibility of refund.

Ironically, after Makibox have gone bust, there is some "clearance stock" being offered for the original asking price of the unit! Hardly a bargain, since there is no technical support, it was never a good printer anyway.

[Kean]

Last 48 hours and they still havent shown a working prototype - just trying desperately to get as many last minute suckers backers as possible.

In the latest update they're saying they could maybe use something like this technology to help with projecting images: http://youtu.be/4bMMWEK4VhY

Except that would require you to mount a projection "screen" on the wall under the projector (which I'm sure people will *love*...), will almost certainly be quite lossy thus requiring a much brighter projector, and is going to hugely inflate their already impossible BOM costing.

[Dave Turner]

As Terry Pratchett pointed out - the speed of dark must be greater than the speed of light, since the dark has to get out of the way of the light.

[donotdespisethesnake]

Their "plan" is to finalize the prototype in November - then start manufacturing and ship all in time for Christmas 2015??

There's going to be 1211 serious disappointed people by New Year...

[codeboy2k]

Their "plan" is to finalize the prototype in November - then start manufacturing and ship all in time for Christmas 2015??

There's going to be 1211 serious disappointed people by New Year...

What? from final prototype to shipping in 1 month ??

[donotdespisethesnake]

I misread slightly but it still seems quite ambitious :

February/March 2015: Campaign here, funding. Setting any extra strech goals.

March/June 2015: Receive circuit boards. June/September 2015: Assemble prototypes. September/October 2015: Complete prototype bring-up and testing and make any necessary engineering changes. Complete software development.

October/November 2015: Line-up manufacturing and assembly relationships.

November / December 2015: Final Articles roll off the production lines. Finalize shipment arrangements. Production and Shipment.

In my experience, never give Christmas as a deadline! Early Q1, maybe

[Muxr]

$242,027 for a 30 second vaporware CGI demo. Not bad.

Seriously there needs to be a bulshitometer on each Kickstarter page, to warn the gullible from giving their money to scammers.

[codeboy2k]

March/June -- receive circuit boards

it's already April, and there's no gerbers on the page, no work in progress of the prototype, clearly no working prototype, and just some images of a Pi and the Pi bootscreen.

[Jay_Diddy_B]

Hi group,

Check this in EDN:

http://www.edn.com/electronics-products/electronic-product-reviews/other/4439097/Zener-enhanced-Dark-Emitting-Diodes--ZeDEDs--deliver-10X-more-Dark-Flux-Watt

These dark emitting diodes are just what this project needs.

Jay_Diddy_B

[Nerull]

I was curious what ever happened to this project. They are still providing updates, and they sound on the verge of imploding...it turns out several of the dev team have jumped ship and now they're looking at late 2016...

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/coolest-clock-probably-the-coolest-clock-ever#/updates

 

[suicidaleggroll]

In short, we have our prototype but it`s not working as we wish and also because of these coming and goings, and also being very optimistic on all, we didn`t and couldn`t see how hard a complicated product like CC would be to mass manufactured.

No shit it's not working as they wish and is hard to manufacture, because not a single one of their CG images is physically possible!   

[Kean]

They do seem to have spent some money on outsourcing the electronics and PCB design, but only a trivial rigid interconnect PCB was shown in any detail, and no sign of the custom flex PCB they promised photos of.  They clearly have no idea on product development.  I called them out on twitter long ago about their technical issues, but the language barrier made it just too difficult to communicate.  Now they've hit some "hiccup with the manufacturing process" which will delay shipping till 4Q 2016 best case.  Their estimated time frame for shipping has always been the least of their problems.

I like to think the login form on their website gives a good idea of how well their projection clock will work.  What login form?  Well, if you look closely you can just make it out amongst all the different shades of grey.

[edy]

WARNING #1:  IndieGogo

WARNING #2:  InDemand

WARNING #3:  Fuzzy pictures of Arduino's, Multimeters and other electronics stuff

WARNING #4:  All product photos, videos, completely rendered

WARNING #5:  Ridiculously low price

WARNING #6:  Time-line


Obviously these are not enough warnings...   

The old saying still holds true.... "A Fool And His Money Are Soon Parted".

This clock can be made. It is not out of feasibility, but it will cost way more and take more time than they let on. You are not going to run it on an Arduino. There are already Android apps that do what this clock does, complete with fancy faces and pulling in data from newsfeeds and so on. The challenge here is to package in a projector and also provide the means to interact with the device. For example, you can rig up such a clock using these existing devices:

1. Android tablet with HDMI out, and micro-USB to accept mini-keyboard/trackpad or Bluetooth
2. Pico projector with HDMI in
3. USB keyboard/trackpad to plug in to interact with Android tablet (or bluetooth)

So have your custom app installed on the Android tablet, let you plug in (or connect bluetooth) keyboard/trackpda to configure the tablet... like app basic settings, configure WiFi network/password, etc. Finally, output of Android tablet to the Pico projector and there you have it. Need to just power up both devices. The biggest problem is the optics on the projector to allow such angled projection (keystoning issue). Once you have configured the device, it should just sit there and run your clock app and project with minimal user interaction, but if you want to mess around with the settings you could just turn on your bluetooth keyboard/trackpad.

In fact, if they do use an Android tablet they can even integrate Skype since the tablet will have a camera. They can load on the app and you can Skype-chat with someone and see their face on the wall. Also, you could have it cycle through your photo app and be like a slide-show of family photos. Tons of features available if they simply use an Android tablet.

Surely, if they actually could build such a thing as a prototype they could have already hooked up a rudimentary clock like this. The rest would be figuring out how to put everything in a convenient package, tuck all the power and wiring in there and then refine the software. But otherwise you have yourself an Android tablet hanging on your wall which projects to your wall. Not brain surgery. And with the $289,000+ they have now, they can surely buy themselves an Android tablet, bluetooth keyboard/trackpad and pico projector:

ITEM #1: http://www.amazon.com/Android-KitKat-Tablet-Cameras-Bluetooth/dp/B00KVVAI3C



ITEM #2: http://www.amazon.com/QQ-Tech-Bluetooth-Keyboard-Touchpad-Android/dp/B00BALK9CM



ITEM #3: http://www.amazon.com/AAXA-Projector-Minute-Battery-mini-HDMI/dp/B007CWDFP6




Now the MINIMUM price for such a thing will have to be at least $600-700. There is just too much in there to sell for even $299 for one. It is totally possible to create this clock, but not for the price and timeline they have stated. I am also sure that someone here on EEVBlog or one of the Maker sites (or Instructables) has already everything they need to create this thing (short of the custom app) and that the work involved will be how to take everything apart and re-package it in a convenient wall-hanging package.

If you strip the LCD display from the Android tablet, cameras, battery, etc... you can shave on some cost. Leave in the WiFi module and speaker, bluetooth, and use HDMI output to the pico projector (or some variant). If you can find a small LED projector and have enough room inside you could stick the guts of the Android tablet into the Pico projector and power it off the same supply. Now all you need is to set up your bluetooth keyboard/mouse somehow. Perhaps leave a mini USB port just in case to get in first... turn on bluetooth and set up the bluetooth keyboard/trackpad, then once configured it should automatically detect it every time you turn the keyboard/trackpad on.

Honestly, at this point I would just start another IndieGogo campaign and just sell an "Android Projector" pre-configured with a bluetooth keyboard/trackpad. Let people use it for whatever they want (presentations, gaming, video conferencing, playing movies, projector clock, etc). Certainly melding the 2 devices into 1 package is nothing new. It has been done already, and for only $450:

http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/tablets/lenovo-yoga-tablet-2-pro

[suicidaleggroll]

This clock can be made. It is not out of feasibility

A projection clock can be made, but THIS projection clock cannot.  It is physically impossible to make a device that will project an image onto a wall that looks ANYTHING like their renderings.

When you project an image onto a surface, the absolute darkest point in your image can be no darker than the surface already was before you turned on the projector.  When you are projecting onto a well-lit surface, as is the case with all of their renderings, all you can do is make certain pixels even brighter, you cannot make any point in the projection darker (at least until the infamous dark-emitting-diode is invented).  This is why they turn off the lights in movie theaters.  Ever try to look at the screen after they turn the lights on?  Apparently nobody backing this campaign has.

This:

is impossible, as are ALL of their other renderings.

Replacing all of their renderings with what the projection would ACTUALLY look like in each of those scenarios, would look so terrible that nobody would have backed it.  As Kean mentioned, the login page on their site is a good example of what it would actually look like...pretty much useless.  Either they are idiots, or scam artists.  I'm feeling optimistic, so I'm going with idiots.

[edy]

A projection clock can be made, but THIS projection clock cannot.  It is physically impossible to make a device that will project an image onto a wall that looks ANYTHING like their renderings.

Absolutely agreed. And their "update" page now is just a bunch of excuses stringing people along for the ride while they run off with the money. Another bunch of crowd-funders BURNED. What a shame, forget about the DarkWeb and SilkRoad. Who knows how many criminal organizations use it to raise funds these days... Organized Crime Rings are surely watching, as are Terrorism Groups.... Great way to raise funds don't you think!

And yet the US Government doesn't do anything to look into IGG crowd-funding.... Hmmm... What if they suspected it was being used to raise money for terrorism or organized crime rings? FBI and IRS want not to investigate at least somewhat the money flow here? Really? Perhaps some awareness is needed, a CHANGE.ORG campaign and maybe some anonymous letters to government officials or a leak to the media might stir up some scrutiny.

[Kean]

Either they are idiots, or scam artists.  I'm feeling optimistic, so I'm going with idiots.

I think they started off as idiots, but as things progressed they've become scammers by hiding the truth of their incompetence.
Very similar to many other campaigns - such as muOptics or Ritot.

[PointyOintment]

I learned about PG-PCS technology as a result of seeing this. So they've accomplished at least one (small) good thing.