Bike Pixels
Set of customizable front and rear bicycle lights
Learning about hardware manufacturing, electronics and product development while I'm designing and constructing a set of bicycle light.
Although a bit late for the Christmas campaign, I have finally managed to open the official Bike Pixels shop. By now it only includes one product, i.e. our brand new Bike Pixel L Prototype but of course in the future I'll be adding new products.
The shop is entirely based on Woocomerce and as fancy thing I included the possibility to pay using cryptocurrencies (along with credit card and PayPal).
Bike Pixels project has been certified by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA).
OSWHA is a non-profit organization that advocates for open-source hardware focusing on promotion, education and commercialization of open
products.
OSHWA also manages certification program for open-source hardware that indicate that given product meet standard criteria for open-source compliance. Current Bike Pixel version has certificate number PL000007.
Few day ago I've finished the development of a new Bike Pixel L prototype. This new version includes a 3D printed case and holder and a LiPo battery and charging module.
Soon I hope, to lunch the projects shop and sell some limited edition units to project supporters and fans (and friends and fools).
As the project is intended as an Open Source Hardware all the design files and documentations is available on GitHub.
It was not easy but finally I reached the first psychological threshold of followers on the Bike Pixels Twitter account. I think that there is a lot to improve but I'm not sure if Twitter is the best place to get audience for the project so by now I invest less time there.
As the end goal of the project is to build some cool cycling light, the account is mainly related with urban cycling, ecofriendly urbanism and other topics related with how our cities are changing (or should change) from car-centric design to more people-centric.
After some (let's call it) work I finally reached 250 followers on the project's Instagram profile (https://instagram.com/bikepixels). As I'm developing a product for cyclists and geeks I'm targeting this kind of profiles when I publish content, including the documentation of the product developing process, some news and from time to time beautiful bikes that I found somewhere.
After reach more than 100 subscriber to the project's newsletter I decided that to celebrate it, it was a good time to prepare and send my first newsletter ever.
To get this first subscribers apart of having a newsletter section on the LP I just added some call to action like encoring the readers of the project's blog to subscribe. And time made the rest as it also took me some months :D.
On this first newsletter I just informed about the projects progress and added the excerpts of the lasts 3 blog posts. Bo now 12% of the mails have been opened!
After two weeks of waiting, the PCBs for the new version of the Bike Pixels Rear prototype have finally arrived.
To select the manufacturer I sent the design to 5 companies asking for the price for print 10 or 100 units. Only 3 replied (the order was very small) and finally I selected the one who gave the average price. As a general rule I think it is better never to work with the cheapest. And the truth is that the manufacturer has done a good job. It's true that it didn't look as I expected (especially the texts on the PCB) but it's the fault of the design as I used too small a font. In the next order they will be perfect :D
Finally I've finished and sent for production to a manufacturer the second version (aka. known as v0.5) of the PCB that by now will contain connexions and switches of the new Bike Pixel Rear prototype.
As Bike Pixel is intended as an Open Hardware Project, during all the design process I am using only Open Source software which may give some head aches. At the beginning for the PCB design I was using a software called Fritzing. It is really easy to learn and use package. Using it I've designed some custom components, breadboard view, and of course the PCB itself. But when I send the generated production files to some manufacturers it resulted that they are faulty! Probably the exporter is buggy or who knows but in the end I have to redo everything.
So I've decided to chango to a more pro tool called KiCAD. It is still open source but it is supported by some manufactures that give some hints and standards about the produced designs and even work with the native formats. Of course it is more difficult to use and learn but it was worth it. After redo everything (schematics, custom components, etc.) the design documentation is now looks almost professional (unless for me ;) and the generated files have been send to a manufacturer this week (06/07) and should be ready next week!