Author Topic: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!  (Read 25325 times)

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Online KeanTopic starter

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Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« on: February 14, 2015, 02:25:59 pm »
Yet another concept that would require the ability to project "dark light" to acheive what they show |O

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/coolest-clock-probably-the-coolest-clock-ever
 
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Offline janoc

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2015, 03:15:51 pm »
You know, since when do the laws of physics get in the way of Photoshop and Adobe After Effects?

 :palm:

They show some fuzzy pictures of an Arduino, Raspberry Pi and then whoa, jump to an LCOS display (3D rendering, of course), because the guys have no clue how to make something like that to work. But they have walked away with their $20k already, I would call that a success (for the campaign creator, of course).

It only shows that some people are too dumb to use money without supervision.

« Last Edit: February 14, 2015, 03:19:43 pm by janoc »
 

Offline codeboy2k

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2015, 10:06:25 pm »
I watched the video and everything is a rendered graphic.

Further down the page there is nothing real.

The images will NEVER be as sharp and bright as they have given in their photoshopped renders.

This is doomed to fail.


 

Offline Wilksey

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #3 on: February 14, 2015, 10:17:25 pm »
Seems legit, no?  :o  :-DD
 

Offline cloudscapes

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2015, 02:06:39 am »
yayyyyyy darkness projection! my favorite kind of fail.
 

Offline SL4P

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2015, 02:08:50 am »
"The secret is: Rocket Science, Magic and Love."

Their words - not mine!
Obviously on top of their game, but the 'love' my run out sooner than later.
Let's hope the rocket science and magic have stronger foundations!
Don't ask a question if you aren't willing to listen to the answer.
 

Online KeanTopic starter

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2015, 12:58:30 pm »
Already over $75k.  Yet another IGG project that won't end well.   :--

I considered backing for $1 and asking some "hard" questions.  But from experience I know that a lot of backers seem to get too emotionally invested to see the truth.  In any case, with it being on IGG it is too late for backers to change their pledge, and the creators can just delete unwanted posts anyway.  So a bit of a lost cause.

Hopefully some potential backers will do some Google searching and find this - so I'm just going to include the following *completely unrelated* words here... coolest clock indiegogo scam   :-//
 

Online KeanTopic starter

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #7 on: February 15, 2015, 01:21:42 pm »
OK, glad to see a couple of people questioning the projection of a dark image on a white wall in full daylight.
It will be interesting to see if the creator actually bothers to respond...
Either way both the creator and IGG will happily be raking in the cash  :rant:
 

Offline Jay_Diddy_B

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #8 on: February 15, 2015, 01:23:14 pm »
Hi,

Don't knock this project!! It is based on alien technology from another world. I watched the video. The clock was developed on a planet with two moons.




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

Jay_Diddy_B
 

Online KeanTopic starter

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #9 on: February 15, 2015, 01:25:40 pm »
Don't knock this project!! It is based on alien technology from another world. I watched the video. The clock was developed on a planet with two moons.
:-DD
 

Online tom66

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #10 on: February 15, 2015, 01:37:57 pm »
Ok, they've sold about 498 clocks so far.

Their chart says 23% of their funding goes towards hardware: https://images.indiegogo.com/file_attachments/1214040/files/20150211060039-Piewherego_CC.png?1423663239

So, a grand total of $36 per clock, will actually be used to make them.  |O
 

Offline Jay_Diddy_B

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #11 on: February 15, 2015, 01:52:55 pm »
Hi,

The proposed projector, from the IGG campaign, has a pitiful output of 9 lumens. LEDs have an output of about 100 lumens per Watt, so we are talking 100mW or a white LED running at around 30 mA. May be you don't need a lot of lumens if you are projecting darkness  :-//



In addition the lifetime is stated at 10K hours.

10,000 / 24 x 365 = 1.14 years or 1 year and 2 months. :palm:



Jay_Diddy_B
 

Online KeanTopic starter

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #12 on: February 15, 2015, 02:07:35 pm »
So, a grand total of $36 per clock, will actually be used to make them.  |O
Wow, I hadn't seen that.

While it is good to see that they've allocated funds to many areas that other crowd funding creators forget about, to get their BOM and manufacturing costs to that level will mean needing a very large order... and probably leaving out some of the core features, like the projector!  :palm:

The proposed projector, from the IGG campaign, has a pitiful output of 9 lumens. LEDs have an output of about 100 lumens per Watt, so we are talking 100mW or a white LED running at around 30 mA. May be you don't need a lot of lumens if you are projecting darkness  :-//
9 lumens??!?!?!?  So it is worse than one of those pitiful pocket pico projectors!  :-DD

In addition the lifetime is stated at 10K hours.

10,000 / 24 x 365 = 1.14 years or 1 year and 2 months. :palm:
This just shows the lack of any basic up front engineering.  The fact they're aren't planning to build their first prototypes until July is pretty telling.

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

Online KeanTopic starter

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #13 on: February 15, 2015, 02:13:50 pm »
They've "adressed" the projection of black light in their latest update.
Quote
and also about the "black" color in the projection images: No projector can project color "black". The black or dark colors you may realize in the projection images are just samples of the faces users might have.
So essentially, they have no clue.   :-+
 

Offline bigone5500

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #14 on: February 15, 2015, 02:17:17 pm »
Hi,

Don't knock this project!! It is based on alien technology from another world. I watched the video. The clock was developed on a planet with two moons.




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

Jay_Diddy_B

Sir, you are wrong. There are 4 moons to be exact. 3 of which have their own windows panes and the 4th which is too large to be included in the photo so it stays hidden above frame.  :bullshit:
 

Offline Jay_Diddy_B

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #15 on: February 15, 2015, 02:24:24 pm »
Sir, you are wrong. There are 4 moons to be exact. 3 of which have their own windows panes and the 4th which is too large to be included in the photo so it stays hidden above frame.  :bullshit:


I am sorry, I thought it was the planet that went for my vacation last year.

This  :bullshit: isn't a bullshit meter. This is a bullshit meter:



Jay
 

Offline mikeselectricstuff

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #16 on: February 15, 2015, 02:50:25 pm »
Funny how none of the pics show an ugly power lead hanging off it - are they expecting people to drill/channel the wall, or does it use some magic voodoo to power itself from wifi signals (or projected unicorn farts)
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Online tom66

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #17 on: February 15, 2015, 03:03:30 pm »
It'll be battery powered... with a runtime of 23 hours between charges.    :palm:

This is a problem most artists/designers have: absolutely no clue of what is actually practical.
 

Online KeanTopic starter

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #18 on: February 15, 2015, 03:15:01 pm »
They've provided a sample photo of the projection to show the "dark colors are OK"...
Quote
The clock (and the projector) cannot project black color.. but the dark colors are OK, and as our first test results in this sample projection (from the very early times, we tested like this in daylight room conditions — from our first tests)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/91y2hit20xx0tmj/IMG_8361.JPG?dl=0

That doesn't look like a daylight lit room to me.  I also suspect it is a completely different projector.   :bullshit:

Also, they've stated in an update that there will not be a battery powered version (maybe they actually did some math on that?) - so you need to live with an ugly power cable, or get an electrician to install a power point halfway up your wall.  Or as someone just suggested, install it upside down - so that all the dust can settle on the optics!
 

Offline andtfoot

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #19 on: February 15, 2015, 03:19:16 pm »
Maybe they will team up with uBeam and power it ultrasonically...
 

Offline Jay_Diddy_B

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #20 on: February 15, 2015, 04:05:24 pm »
They've provided a sample photo of the projection to show the "dark colors are OK"...
Quote
The clock (and the projector) cannot project black color.. but the dark colors are OK, and as our first test results in this sample projection (from the very early times, we tested like this in daylight room conditions — from our first tests)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/91y2hit20xx0tmj/IMG_8361.JPG?dl=0

There is a bit of an optical illusion going on here. It appears that the girls hair is darker than the background. But If I copy the a block including the hair and paste it over the background. I see the expected resulted that the hair is the same as the background.



It is interesting to note that the clock projection, does not match the time on the real clock.

Jay


 

Offline cloudscapes

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #21 on: February 15, 2015, 05:24:52 pm »
Funny how none of the pics show an ugly power lead hanging off it - are they expecting people to drill/channel the wall, or does it use some magic voodoo to power itself from wifi signals (or projected unicorn farts)

yes, but only dark projected unicorn farts.
 

Offline cloudscapes

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #22 on: February 15, 2015, 05:27:45 pm »
Quote


I'm sure the small font will look like that when it's projected at an acute angle of 10-20 degrees or something. yep. no problems here.
 

Offline mux

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #23 on: February 15, 2015, 05:49:15 pm »
So, this is a BIG technological problem, and the only thing the developers (which I assume are legit people, they're not trying to scam) have done so far is focus on the software features.

These LCoS modules are pretty good. People around here saying picoprojectors don't do the job: I've had one for a couple years in the bedroom and they are MUCH more optically bright than the raw lumen figures give an indication of. Human sight is roughly logarithmic-ish, so this won't look too bad in a room, as long as there's no direct sunlight on the piece of wall that the clock is on. Take into account that it's a pretty small projection area, too. I'd say the choice for this module is fine.

But then...

In order to get this to work at short range and at the very shallow projection angle they show, they need custom aspherical optics. Also, they probably need some reflective field-distortion optics to get the resolution nearby to be the same as the image resolution at the farthest corner. This is NOT simple to do. With any straight (single element/dual element) aspherical focusing optics they will have unacceptable color fringing. Honestly, they need to hire an optical engineer, which is impossible on their R&D budget.

The price is also just too low. Those modules are $80 (yes, 80 us bucks) in small quantities. They only go down a little bit with larger quantity, which they will not be able to hit (we're talking 10ku+).  Then they need something pretty beefy to run TCP/IP and their image composition stuff, some AC power solution, wifi and supporting electronics. Even with (not actually commercially acceptable!) ESP8266-type stuff and a pretty barebones board with off the shelf wall wart, that's at least $15 BOM. Then there's the enclosure, which again, at these volumes you're not going to get below a couple bucks per piece (I've been there, casts or molds are just a fixed price of at least $2000/piece). All in all, we're looking at $100 BOM at a minimum if they get absolute killer pricing on those projector modules. They budgeted $36 per clock at the moment of writing (532 clocks at $83981 raised). Nope. In order to break even, they need to AT LEAST multiply BOM by 2.6, but in this case about 3 because of the IGG and payment fees. So they need about $175,000 to make this work. This is essentially a $100k loss leader.

So we've got something that is technically very hard, on a pretty giant loss leader. Even if they go into full-on production after the campaign, the gross margin on their product (MSRP $299) is still only about $190. Even in the best situation (BOM x 2.2-2.4) that's only a net profit of $50 per clock. It would take something like 2500 additional, non-reduced price clock sales just to break even on the IGG loss leader. On a product that I would very much doubt is going to live up to its expectations.

Nope. This project should have been bootstrapped and should have been better prepared for the launch. There is clearly a market, they would have succeeded financially regardless of the campaign date.
 

Offline SL4P

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Re: Coolest Clock - projecting dark light!
« Reply #24 on: February 15, 2015, 09:20:44 pm »
They've "adressed" the projection of black light in their latest update.
Quote
and also about the "black" color in the projection images: No projector can project color "black". The black or dark colors you may realize in the projection images are just samples of the faces users might have.
So essentially, they have no clue.   :-+
Hell no!
They're projecting white/coloured light onto black walls!
Don't give up so easily.
Don't ask a question if you aren't willing to listen to the answer.
 


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