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Durr: A shivering unisex bracelet that investigates our perception of 5 minutes

skreksto.re

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Re: Durr: A shivering unisex bracelet that investigates our perception of 5 minutes

#21

Post by Crito »

r00fus wrote: post #13

From TFA: > Oh, and no, it's not waterproof, so don't shower with it. Water resistance just seems to be a requirement these days - even my Pebble which I'd never wear in the shower is water resistant so when I am forced to react to a bath incident, I don't worry about the watch, and my kids instead. Sounds like a pet project - maybe they should hire a real watch designer who can get them from hobby to actual product…

Between that, the pleather, and the price, I think I'd be more inclined to make my own than to buy one of these. It's a neat idea, but I am not satisfied with this execution.

Re: Durr: A shivering unisex bracelet that investigates our perception of 5 minutes

#22

Post by trebor »

wyclif wrote: post #10
trebor wrote: post #9

The idea might be good, but the price is extravagant. I think the parts should cost only $60-70, maybe less, so charging nearly $148 is laughable. Especially when I can get a nice, brand-name watch for $118 or so.

Apples and oranges comparison: this is not a watch in the traditional sense. It's more analogous to a timer. In any case, it's a completely new product which means there probably aren't many efficiencies of manufacturing like there would be with watches.

Sorry, but the price I "specced out" was with the modules from Adafruit. If you actually made a custom PCB, etc, you could easily hit the $50 mark with only 10s of units, in my opinion. Especially since the processor is unimportant: there are no complex calculations to perform.

Re: Durr: A shivering unisex bracelet that investigates our perception of 5 minutes

#23

Post by desireco42 »

My MotivAider does this fantastically, I like it on my belt and aside from being bulky, is perfect machine for $50.

http://www.amazon.com/Behavioral-Dynamics-9609-QC-MotivAider...

I've been using it to establish habits, remind myself to be mindful and focus on task.

Re: Durr: A shivering unisex bracelet that investigates our perception of 5 minutes

#24

Post by chc »

mnbvcxza wrote: post #14
trebor wrote: post #9

The idea might be good, but the price is extravagant. I think the parts should cost only $60-70, maybe less, so charging nearly $148 is laughable. Especially when I can get a nice, brand-name watch for $118 or so.

I could do it for free with the alarm snooze feature on my 5 year old blackberry.

That would create an alarm that you must reset every five minutes, rather than simply notifying you in the background that five minutes have passed.

Re: Durr: A shivering unisex bracelet that investigates our perception of 5 minutes

#25

Post by Crito »

trebor wrote: post #9

The idea might be good, but the price is extravagant. I think the parts should cost only $60-70, maybe less, so charging nearly $148 is laughable. Especially when I can get a nice, brand-name watch for $118 or so.

> "I think the parts should cost only $60-70, maybe less"

Consider that the thinkgeek 'annoyatron' is sold for $10. So the guts of this device cost far less than $10. A cheap watch band, better looking than the one this has, can be had for under $20 on Amazon...

Throw the rest of the money into having a nice brass enclosure machined, then pot it with epoxy to make it reasonably water-resistant as well...

Re: Durr: A shivering unisex bracelet that investigates our perception of 5 minutes

#26

Post by rusew »

trebor wrote: post #9

The idea might be good, but the price is extravagant. I think the parts should cost only $60-70, maybe less, so charging nearly $148 is laughable. Especially when I can get a nice, brand-name watch for $118 or so.

Generally you want to charge 4x your BOM (bill of materials) to cover shipping, fulfillment, customer support, etc. For such a small run (50 pieces) your costs are probably a lot higher than that of a large manufacturer; in their case they'd probably want to do > 4x to actually turn a profit. At $148 I'd be amazed if they were doing more than breaking even – these guys are doing it for the learning experience (and it says so on their blog).

Re: Durr: A shivering unisex bracelet that investigates our perception of 5 minutes

#27

Post by JTxt »

hyp0 wrote: post #16

Love the copy. "Wait what". Totally hip. Interesting concept. Though I'm sure there's an app for that... or will be.

Yes, search for interval timer, repeat timer... The closest free app I found for ios so far is "wake me up." It repeats forever but doesn't run in the background.

Re: Durr: A shivering unisex bracelet that investigates our perception of 5 minutes

#30

Post by blhack »

Anybody that wants one of these: this looks like it would be /trivially/ easy to build. An attiny85 and a vibration motor would do it.

The only "hard" part would be fitting a battery in this form factor.

Go to your local hackerspace during some open hours, and tell the hackers you want to build one of these. I bet they'll do it with you!

(Hell: I'LL do it with you if you come down to heatsync labs [in Phoenix])

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