Hawaiʻi's Technology Community

Inventors

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The road from concept to successful product is a long and difficult one. This group tries to make that trip a bit easier by bringing together inventors, marketers, and business people to share their knowledge and experience.

Members: 27
Latest Activity: Oct 6, 2017

Discussion Forum

What are you inventing? 9 Replies

Someone needs to start a conversation and it beats working, so here goes.I am working on Soundpaper; a technology for printing audio on paper. We use a very high density 2 dimensional barcode to…Continue

Started by Ken Berkun. Last reply by Ken Berkun Sep 15, 2010.

Patent attorney for consumer product 2 Replies

Hi all,A friend of mine asked me for a recommendation for a good, reasonable patent attorney for a consumer product. He wasn't specific about the product details so I don't know more than that. I…Continue

Started by Bruce Kim. Last reply by Reichart Jul 23, 2010.

Resources: Electronics, mechanics, optics, whatever... 4 Replies

Please post in this forum any resources you know of related to companies that sell electronics, mechanics, optics, software, development tools, etc. that are helpful in building prototypes.Continue

Started by Roger Garrett. Last reply by Greg Garriss Apr 27, 2010.

Resources 3 Replies

I'll be adding a few discussion topics where we can post information we may have of resources available to inventors, such as University and College courses and programs, electronic, mechanical, etc.…Continue

Started by Roger Garrett. Last reply by Reichart Apr 26, 2010.

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Comment by Rik Jadrnicek on April 25, 2010 at 8:28pm: Good luck with that one ...
I always just make sure that I don't get too tied up in the back room when venture comes to the table.

Comment by Ken Berkun on April 25, 2010 at 7:56pm: My biggest challenges have been finding the right team and raising funds. I have a fab team now, but it took a long time (still looking for an audio codec expert and optics/lighting expert. Funding consumes most of my time. I have a modest amount of local funding, but mostly mainland funding. But I am optimistic about our current round.

Comment by Rik Jadrnicek on April 25, 2010 at 7:44pm: Thought this group was about commenting on invention processes -- just thought you might have something you wanted comments on or help with -- i.e., grey areas you need help with.

Comment by Ken Berkun on April 25, 2010 at 7:26pm: Rik, what do you mean by grey areas in this context?

Comment by Rik Jadrnicek on April 25, 2010 at 6:38pm: Sounds good Ken,
so what are the grey areas for you?

Comment by Ken Berkun on April 25, 2010 at 6:33pm: Rik, we want to operate without a network connection. If you believe that everybody is always connected then our product makes no sense. I don't see us being there perhaps not even in my lifetime. When you compare our user experience against the QR user experience we are much better.

Gus, we decided to stick with black and white so that we can use cheap label printers, but we can take advantage of gray scale and color if provided. We get more data per square inch than anyone else that we are aware of.

I should make it clear that we are pretty far along on this project with partners lined up, user testing done, retailers, etc. People in our target markets who have tested it are very enthusiastic. So far, so good!

Comment by Rik Jadrnicek on April 25, 2010 at 6:18pm: Ken -- some feedback:
Why wouldn't you just put up a barcode that caused an event that launched a web link to an audio file and played it? That way the content could be changed at the server at any time with next access(s) being updated.

Comment by Greg Garriss on April 25, 2010 at 6:06pm: Back again..( Changing blades in the planer.) You can stack a lot of data in 2D barcodes but not a huge amount. If you had the resolution, gray scale would be interesting to try. You can do all sorts of things to data afterwards ( thatʻs just computing and ever changing...) but the tricky part is getting it in the first place with a low enough error rate via whatever means.
The marketing type actually rounded up the tech guys to work on projects..All his baby, we were just the hired guns. He got a crazy idea, I got a phone call.

Comment by Rik Jadrnicek on April 25, 2010 at 5:49pm: Thanks Ken -- that's good news ...
I will further document what I feel is a mass-market product, then unfold it here as time permits to see if anybody thinks it is viable.

Comment by Ken Berkun on April 25, 2010 at 5:42pm: Quality depends far more on the audio codec (encoder/decoder) than the mic and the speaker. Every phone is capable of dealing with a variety of codecs at a variety of bit rates and other settings. And yes, we can massage the raw data before playing the audio.