Chasing Volume

Hi there! I'm Kevin, the founder of Beacon. I wanted to share a bit about what started Beacon and rep some of my local courses along the way.

After the first two rounds of prototype Beacons, I had a short list of features to optimize in the next round: maximize sound, and minimize flight impact. It was time to get back into product design on the electronics, and test my way into the highest decibel level possible. 

The problem with off-the-shelf buzzers and speakers is that they are all so tall! In this application, a 4–5 mm tall speaker is just too big. These speakers come with optimized chambers that typically run around 75–80 dB. From my testing, 80 dB was equating to a 50-foot range in still conditions outside, it was just not good enough. To increase the volume further, the chamber needed to get bigger. My goals were at odds with each other. 

I turned my attention to a product that does this best—smoke detectors. The good news is that First Alert (a major smoke detector brand) is right here in Chicagoland, and I have some friends who work there. They gave me some tips on how to increase the volume, and how to actually produce it on a manufacturing line consistently. Those lessons were invaluable (thanks Jim!). After quite a few tests and iterations, I was about to start getting a Beacon custom design up above 90 dB consistently. This was insanely loud! I had to start wearing earplugs to test the units inside. The second benefit of this custom design was how short it was. The entire Beacon was just 8 mm tall with a 3D print, this would have increased about 30% if I had used an off-the-shelf speaker, and it would have only been 80 dB at best.

With my updates designed in, and the unit being a compact 8 mm, it was time to test! I headed to Cary, IL to play Fel-Pro RRR. This course is beautiful! It has rolling hills, high grass, trees, some tight fairways, and some open ones. This was the exact course Beacon was designed for. I was anxious to get reps on the unit. Did it affect the flight? How loud was it outside? 

Here is what I learned:

1. It was REALLY loud. This unit was reaching well beyond 100 feet even in windy and harsh conditions. I would throw a drive about 300 feet and I would hear it beeping through the wind from the tee pad. Honestly, I felt I needed to reduce it down.
2. Some units I noticed the flight was a little off from what I thought it should be, but I couldn't really see a big impact (more on this later).
3. The timing of the alerts matters. When it was too fast, it's a distraction. When it is too slow, it was annoying to wait between alerts when I couldn't see the disc.
4. Beacon was hitting on a pain point we all feel when disc golfing at tough courses. I met a couple of disc golfers on this round (Morgan and Garrett). They saw the potential right away, and they wanted to help. They became Beacon's very first field testers almost a year ago from writing this blog.

Next, I started to dig into the flight impact and the timing. 

On some of the prototype units it was noticeable, and on others it was not. I didn't see how the unit could sometimes affect flight on a disc, and sometimes it did not. I would have thought if Beacon affected flight, it would do it consistently on every disc, not pick and choose. Watching these units get thrown, the ones that had issues seemed to wobble more out of the hand. Maybe if the Beacon was not centered well, it would impact the flight more. I started to reattach these units to test the theory, some were purposely slightly off-center, some were way off-center, and some were dead center. The results were clear. The more off-center the unit, the bigger the flight impact. It was time to create a guide, and what better way to do that than to use the disc itself!

Every disc is plastic injection molded, something I work with consistently during my day job as an engineer at Tovala (and Weber before that). The best spot to inject the disc mold with plastic is dead center; it helps the liquid plastic flow consistently through the entire disc. It also leaves a small injection point on the middle of the disc. It was the best possible guide you can use to center the Beacon. Working with the manufacturer, we created a small cutout on the 3M adhesive tape that could be used as a target guide. Before I had this guide, it would take me about 10 minutes to attach a Beacon. I was trying to measure it from the rim in multiple places to keep it centered. With the guide, it would take me less than a minute to have a Beacon fully attached. I sent it to the field testers right away, and they loved it! Minimizing the flight impact also fixed the customer attachment pain point.

The second part of this design was creating an intuitive product. Beacon was designed to solve a major pain point of every disc golfer's game, searching for lost discs. I designed Beacon to be a guide, bringing you back to your disc every time. I started playing with timing on the alert to see what worked best. I tried longer timers (30 seconds), and shorter ones (5 seconds), and delayed timers (no alerts until 60 seconds, then a fast cadence) to see how each felt during rounds.

Short timers were a distraction, there wasn't enough time to throw your disc without having the Beacon distract you mid-throw. Longer timers didn't distract during your throw, but also made it difficult to find your disc later when you were waiting 30 seconds for the next alert. The delayed timers solved both of those issues, but created a new one. If your disc started to beep consistently after 60 seconds, you needed to get to it quickly to turn off to avoid distracting other players in your group. When I would outdrive my playing partner, I had to run up to turn off my Beacon, then go back to let them throw. It wasn't a great experience.

These tests guided me to a more intuitive design. The Beacon was meant to be a guide, not a distraction. I landed at a 10-second cadence. This turned out to be a better guide than I expected with the increased range of this unit going over 100 feet. I would hear the Beacon well before I was close to it, and then I would adjust my route as I heard the Beacon. It started to guide me to my disc from over 100 feet out, and was a consistent pulse that kept guiding me to the disc. Sometimes I would hit a tree, and my disc was nowhere close to where I thought it landed. The 10-second timing was way more intuitive both during your throws and acting as a guide when you needed it most.

Now, for some of the issues:

1. The switch was too darn small to be reliable. The switch height was only 1 mm, and would consistently break. This had to be designed out.
2. The mechanical design needed more structure when it is this small. The units with a stronger bottom housing worked more consistently than those with a weaker bottom housing. This resulted in broken Beacons and inconsistent volume.
3. Having a single noise setting was difficult when playing in a group with multiple Beacons. I wanted to add settings to let you pick your sound.

Overall, these units worked great! I still have one unit on my Insanity I continue to use today. I had the minor improvements needed. It was back to updating the design, which ultimately brings me to the final prototype in the next blog.