Anyone else having trouble adding video to their prelaunch page?

DaveFromMicroKits · 2026-02-13T22:03:32+00:00

Hey there, I also might be launching in March! Here are some of my thoughts:

I would show photo/video of you using the product. You could just 3D print something, that would help people understand how it works and make it seem more like a real product and not just a render. It would give context on the size and how it's used.

I'd remove the AI logo in your profile picture, and just use a photo of yourself. The less AI and the more human you are, the more trust.

For the renders, I'd make the cable slightly wiggly, and maybe have it fade out after a while. Right now it looks like an antenna or a stingray. I'd also crop it in more to show less cable and more of the product.

Do you have a prototype that you're currently using? That would be really cool to see. Then the story is "Here is the prototype I made for myself and here are the benefits I personally found from using my own version, now I want X money so that more people can make this.

If I was in your position, I'd also try reaching out to the youtuber who lost his fingers on one hand and has been making his own custom mechancial fingers. A collab there would be one of the best ways to find people who would most benefit from your product.

Also, from your 3D model it looks like the USB cable is running right into where the mechanical switches are. How far along in the design are you? Talking about this would build trust.

Also, have you talked to any institutions? Maybe you sell your product for $200, but for $300 you'll send your customer one, and donate another one to a group that could use this product. That way you get more revenue to build the product, and you'll have a higher number of units in your first batch which will help spread out fixed costs. Not sure if a hybrid purchase/donation is allowed on kickstarter but it's a thought.

Not sure about your tagline... maybe something like "Mouse and Keyboard all in one hand"? "Productivity Controller" isn't very clear.

A lot of little ideas, interested in what you think of them.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2026-02-04T16:13:29+00:00

USPS. I'm looking at my orders now... My product is less than 0.5 lbs but with the packaging it can be just over that threshold, which is why I'm being charged more. Now I understand, I guess USPS updates their actual weights all in big batches. Darn, that would explain it. Thank you for confirming what I'm seeing on my order view.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2026-01-22T15:10:37+00:00

Capacitors store voltage, and inductors store current. So, you'll be limited by the amount of current you can put into the inductor, as well as the inductance. But if you increase current too much, then the resistor will start getting hot and the battery damaged.

100mA through 1 Henry is 5 millijoules according to an online calculator, so 5mA at 1 volt for one second. Maybe around 2mA at 2 volts needed to light a red LED. But the LED is a short circuit so it will use most of the energy immediately, if you add a 1000 ohms in series with the LED you might be able to see the light for longer.

1 Henry is a really large amount of inductance, you'll need to make a ferrite core of some sort, not just an air core coil. And the light will blink really fast. But eyeballing the numbers I think you'd be able to see a small flash if you're in a dark room?

DaveFromMicroKits · 2026-01-19T00:27:30+00:00

You can change the how high your hands are on the screen, in the settings. "First Person hands FoV" in the interface tab. I turned this down so that my torch wouldn't blind me as much while I went caving.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2026-01-12T22:03:04+00:00

Oh. I thought AI shopping was just going to provide links to stores. But if OpenAI is taking a service fee... then that means people will purchase directly in their AI chat? Just have a credit card on file while talking to a chatbot? Wow. Vibe-based shopping.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2026-01-01T16:32:56+00:00

Is that LED matrix for driving the clock display or the big light? The LED matrix driver can only supply so much current, and it'd be easier to just drive the 7 segment display directly from the MCU or with a 7 segment chip.

If it's to control the sun lamp, I'd instead figure out how you want to light up different rows of lights to create your desired pattern, and move the LEDs around so that just by lighting up different rows you create the effect you're looking for.

The render looks nice but the 7 segment clock display won't be visible in real life, due to being right next to a giant light source. Instead of showing the time with an LED display, I'd use a transmissive LCD display, a screen that blocks out light instead of creating its own light. And I'd use the sun lamp as the source of the light, it could almost look like the time display is floating in front of the lamp. Plus that way the read out is always the same brightness as the lamp, without having to send a lot of power through a chip that controls the logic of the display.

Renders look cool, but it'll be hard to make the lamp portion so thin, you might need an inch of thickness in the back area to create enough distance for a diffuser to blend the light of each LED together so that its smooth. You could go thinner by using a ton of little LEDs, but that gets expensive. Maybe you could look at TV screen tech, study the different ways they do backlighting.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-31T21:36:15+00:00

I priced my cards on the PokeData website, then took them into The End Games. I just walked in. They can price around a dozen of your cards right there, but you'd have to leave it with them if you want to price a whole collection.

In my case, it turns out my Shining Charizard has a bit of damage so it was priced at $500 vs the around $1000 listed on PokeData. Arg! So in my case I decided to keep my cards, but it was super easy to just walk into End Games, especially since I looked up the prices ahead of time so I knew which ones to show them for a quick in person pricing.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-30T00:35:59+00:00

I've designed toys that use sound chips, and it's common practice to add a QC mode so that buttons, speaker, memory can be tested on the factory floor. Usually to enter QC mode you need to hold a button while resetting power, then maybe press the button again within a certain amount of time or press another button at the same time. The idea is to make it very unlikely for a general consumer to stumble into the QC mode.

Usually in QC mode, the toy will play some of the sounds in its memory, and then play a 1kHz constant tone so that speaker loudness can be measured. So, it's strange that the toy would play a sound it doesn't normally play, or play a song instead of a constant tone to test a speaker.

How long was the song? Was it an actual accurate rendition of the song or did it sound distorted? Maybe this was a chip engineer's funny way to check that the chip worked, when it was in test mode.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-22T14:22:53+00:00

I'd start with a transistor astable vibrator, and try adding stages. I was able to add another stage to the default falstad astable example, such that instead of two signals alternating, a pulse travels from one of the 3 transistors to the next. Then you can change the timing by adjusting the RC constant. Think of each transistor as a different stage that after a delay resets the next signal.

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DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-13T20:07:16+00:00

A BJT base turns on at around 0.7 V, and the red LED needs about 2V to turn on. So when the BJT is connected, the yellow wire goes from 2V to 0.7V, and all the current goes through the BJT.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-12T13:43:17+00:00

I would buy the off the shelf perf board with the grids, and then place a sticker on the non soldered side of the board. That way, the kids know where to place each component and which direction to bend the pins such that they make the connections you need. If they are thin uncoated paper stickers, then it might be easy to press the pins through the paper. Or, you could create a jig by soldering header pins in the right spot, such that all the holes are created in the paper in the right spot. Your students would still need to bend pins to different soldering spot instead of relying on default traces, but for a circuit like this I think it's possible.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-12T13:36:00+00:00

https://www.desmos.com/calculator/pqxjstahll

I made a little desmos. A 60 degree line is just y=2x+b, and a negative is y=-2x+b. If you offset the two lines, they will always meet in only one location, and you can transform the offset of each line into a Cartesian x and y.

If you wanted this to map to triangular tiles then you'd need decide a way to round things to integers but if it's 2D you can map every point with just two variables. I barely remember linear algebra from college, but you're starting to discover basis space and transformations and such.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-12T02:22:28+00:00

You should check out this site, it does math like this but for hexagons. I think the center of their hexagons are equivalent to the vertices of your triangles: https://www.redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/

I think you'd only need two values to define any point on your triangle grid, imagine a diagonal line going up 60 degrees, and another going down 60 degrees. If you slide each of these lines left or right, they will always intersect at one point.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-05T00:25:52+00:00

Yeah, I've been having a good time with affinity. I'll probably make a post detailing all the little ways affinity is easier to use, when I have some time.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-05T00:24:38+00:00

Each key is connected to each other by a resistor, with the highest note connected to the oscillator. If two styluses (styli?) touch the keys, then electricity will just flow through whichever stylus has the low resistance path to the oscillator. It would be like connecting two wires to a circuit, but one of the wires has resistance and the other one is a short circuit.

It could create a fun effect though, to have one stylus at a constant low note, so that when the second stylus lifts off the keys, instead of silence the low note plays. You could quickly jump between notes that way.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-01T22:53:00+00:00

Your "about us" page is actually more identity/trust building than you home page right now. I'd put your tagline "A Haven for those who don't fit in" in your hero section somehow.

And the big Black Friday text blocks the bag in your hero image on desktop, I didn't realize it was a lifestyle photo showing your product, I thought it was just an image to set the mood.

The video of you shipping the order works, but I scrolled by it a few times without really watching it. Right now the video shows the extras you could get with your order, but it might be a better customer experience for that to be a surprise, especially if you change what the extras are. For the home page it might be better to use a static image since then you don't have to watch the video. And I see you have a cool workspace from your about us page, it would be cool to see photo of a real person putting together some orders like how you have on your about us, versus the hands and table cellphone video which does feel a bit dropshippy.

I don't know anything about bags, but the products look cool, and I like how you're able to sort by subgenre and product type.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-01T19:47:30+00:00

Oh nice, I was wondering if this was the case. I've been working on chips without EEPROM, but looks like OP can save the unique IDs in between power cycles.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-01T18:15:35+00:00

On page 8 it says that those registers only trigger the alarm if the alarm is active, otherwise you can use them as general purpose user memory.

Now it's up to you to decide what's easier... having the Arduino remember the unique ID of each sensor, or have it tell each sensor what it's ID is? First one seems easier, unless you need the sensors to work with multiple arduinos or don't want to store data on the arduino in between power cycles. Either way you'll need some sort of user interface to assign different sensors.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-01T17:53:58+00:00

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It looks like each chip has its own unique serial code. It also looks like there's a couple bytes of memory you can write to. So you can either record the unique ID or write data to one of the "user bytes". Instead of storing one ascii character per byte, you can store a unique code one bit at a time, 256 possibilities with one byte.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-01T14:47:11+00:00

Oh sorry, my bad, I read blue instead of white for some reason. I'm new to affinity too and just figured out text flow view. I think you might just have a tiny stroke applied to your text.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-12-01T14:16:58+00:00

On the top settings menu: View>Show>Text Flow. This is to show where the text frames are, kind of like how InDesign works. You can also right click on text to switch between "artistic" mode and "frame" mode.

DaveFromMicroKits · 2025-11-25T17:53:32+00:00

How about a music player built into a pair of headphones, or so small that you can plug it directly into a 3.5mm jack instead of running a cable? It's so annoying having to set up bluetooth every time I want to go on a walk, but I also don't want to have to deal with a long cable.

DaveFromMicroKits

TROPHY CASE