Prototyping Round 2

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.

Heading home from the first tests of Beacon, I was driving home and thinking of how I felt when I heard the "beep beep" from the bushes. The concept worked, and now I wanted to improve on it. That started with what improvements were most important at this stage. I didn't need it to be perfect yet, but I really needed to see if it could be improved in a few specific ways. Here was my list:

1. It needs to be lighter
2. An LED on the unit to see in dark bushes or at night
3. A replaceable battery to reuse without removing the unit from my disc
4. Better adhesive

I started from top to bottom. Step one, lighter. That meant no epoxy, it was just too heavy to be functional. If I couldn't use epoxy, this prototype needed to be stronger, both on the electronics and the mechanical design. The electronics were all off-the-shelf components at this point (buzzer, LED, battery, switch, etc.), and as compact as I could find. I designed a 2 layer PCB with these components. Simple but compact (and no more wires connecting the components). The second part of this was mechanical. With no epoxy coverage, I needed a strong housing to hold the whole thing, with easy access inside for tweaks or replacing the battery. I was off to the 3D printer to make a few samples.

The second part was adding an LED. This turned into a bit more of an impact than I expected. LEDs have low power consumption, but they are not zero. It started to dig into my battery life. Second, and LED has to compete with bright sunlight! The LED needed to be a very high brightness to really work outside in all conditions. I also needed to design a light pipe to get the LED light out to the surface. I used a simple cutout for the light pipe, and filled it with hot glue. Not the best design, but it worked (ish).

The battery replacement felt important at the beginning of the design. I was still figuring out how to design the Beacon, and knew I would need consistent access to the electronics. That really meant I had to design some strong screw bosses into the design.  I added some extra material on the bosses, and made sure they had some good rib design around them to add structure. I tend to hit a lot of trees :). I was concerned on how strong the material would be, so I 3D printed two samples in Ledo 6060 (ABS-like) and two others in PA12 Nylon for added strength. This turned into a great idea, the Ledo 6060 shattered from the first tree I hit (see that later)! The PA12 survived all my testing.

Lastly, getting the adhesive right was very important. 3M is by far the best option when it comes to this. My focus turned to adhesives that work well on disc plastic (Polyethylene), and how much flex they need (thickness of the tape). The balance is making sure you get the best possible performance on attachment without impacting flight. It did take me quite some time, but I ended up finding the right option to balance both worlds. 

During the testing, I spent a lot of time at Black Bear in Hoffman Estates. On my first round using the unit, it turned into a rough day. On hole 11, there is a swamp to the left of the fairway. I threw one of my two units right into the swamp. I spent at least 30 minutes looking, and couldn't find it or hear it. I figured it went underwater. It was stressful, I was frustrated, and I didn't want to leave it. I finally did, moved on to the next hole thinking it was gone. Two holes later, I threw my other unit into a tree, and the plastic housing (the 6060) shattered. My 2 prototypes lasted a total of 13 holes. Sometimes progress is hard. I didn't want to leave my round 0-2 on the prototypes. So after 18, I went straight back to the swamp, and charged right in. About a minute later, I heard my disc beeping about 50 feet further away from where I thought it landed. It was stuck in some reeds in the center of the swamp! All those feelings of frustration and disappointment just vanished. I started fist-pumping in the middle of a swamp, excited my journey wasn't over yet.

That unit I pulled out of the swamp ended up lasting for months! Throughout this process, I tested so many options. I learned a couple of things. 

1. ALWAYS turn on your Beacon. It took me some time to find the right adhesive, and looking for a small black unit in the brush was NOT fun.
2. This unit was OK on sound, but I needed more. Off-the-shelf options were not going to work. I needed to design a speaker specifically for this application (more on that in the next blog).
3. The LED was not worth it for the tracker. To get it working well outdoors, it would take too much battery life away from the unit. Sound was working much better.
4. It was time to make this more compact and really see if it impacted flight.

It was back to the drawing board, and I brought in some help...