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Today PoweredPlay Gaming is excited to announce the launch of its Kickstarter project. Funds of the project will be used to make the initial production run of the company’s patent-pending Spotlight Kits, Alpha Kits and Color packs. Visitors can sponsor the project by visiting: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/79084871/modeling-leaves-the-dark-ages

By launching on Kickstarter, we're giving you the ability to sponsor in return for advanced (and discounted) kits. We'll also be supplying contributors with a variety of special giveaways, including T-Shirts, stickers and decals, store banners and even hosting a major tournament at your local game/hobby store.




We’re eager to bring our technology to the community, and look forward to seeing how the community will apply our products in gaming, modeling and a wide range of possible applications – all without the mess and frustration of soldering, electrical engineering or needing advance degrees.




Don't know PoweredPlay Gaming? We formally launched in January, but have spent the last year researching and developing our technology. Our breakthrough kits provide a plug & play option for gamers, artists and hobbyists to enhance their creations. You just simply decide where you want the effect, drill any holes, and plug in the kits.

The kits contain the patent-pending PC Board, battery connectors, and LED lighting strings (battery not included). Within a few minutes, you can have fully functional models or retrofit existing projects without needing to dismantle anything.

Also, We're official sponsors of Adepticon's 40K championships and will be in the vendor are there on site. If you're going to be there, come say hey, check out our Soul Grinder, Storm Raven Vendetta, Rhino, Land Raider and custom models that we'll have on the table!

Saw these guys at the BAO, their kits are amazing. It really makes the LEDs pretty much plug and play.

Backed!
I'm really interested in this, not just for miniatures but as a professional model maker for theatre designs.
Hope the KS goes well.

...interesting setup. Goal is $36k. But apparently stretch goal 1 is $100k, stretch goal 2 is $200k. Probably not likely with them being that far out.

Yet they say this:

We have a long line of stretch goals, and new products that we want to create. Thus, for each one we’re able to reach, you’ll get advance access to the new products!

Want mini battery packs? Sure! Want a micro-controller? It’s on the list.
Want a pony? How about lighted bases for your miniatures instead.

Our first goal is to launch additional colors and color combinations ($100,000). Right now we have Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple and White in 3mm and Yellow and White in 5mm. But what about teal, orange, pink, chartreuse, strings with lights of different colors, or more than two LEDs per string?

How about Fiber Optics? That’s goal number two ($200,000) – and it’s perfect for lighting weapons, eyes, external edges, ropes, and a host of other applications.

Pledge levels are also very messy.

$18 is a Spotlight kit.
$30 is an Alpha kit.

$100 gets you a poem written by one of the guys (but apparently no product??? - well I guess if someone wants to just donate money..)
$125 gets you 5x "Starter" kit. (and a t-shirt). - what exactly is a starter kit as opposed to an Alpha kit - or even a spotlight kit?)

They also say this:

If the drive is successful, everyone who pledges $150 or more will be automatically enrolled to receive future Alpha kits of our new products as they come out.

But there's no $150 pledge level. So pledging $150 requires them to meet at least one of their stretch goals ($100k, $200k) and then buying an add-on?

A word of advice - get someone else to proofread and QA your campaign ASAP and get these odd things cleared up.
You may also want to do something like allow a $125 pledge to swap out the t-shirt for another kit/cou0ple of kits, as not everyone is going to want one of your t-shirts, and by bundling it in there, you're no doubt putting off some potential backers.

Yeah... $100 for a poem, pass. Best of luck gentlemen but your KS structure is too confusing for me to get behind.

I'm somewhat interested in this, I'll be taking a look at them while at Adepticon.

 agnosto wrote:
Yeah... $100 for a poem, pass. Best of luck gentlemen but your KS structure is too confusing for me to get behind.

Well, that one is essentially a donation. Which is fine to an extent, but really, no-one except maybe their mums are going to do it. So they're wasting the "magic $100" pledge point on it when they could be getting people pledging for 5 or 6 starter kits (or whatever) for that amount.

so $30 (or $40, if you're unlucky enough to be outside the US) for a 9v battery wire, 5 LEDs (one of the cheapest electrical components out there), and a (patent pending!) PCB that appears to just be a 9v input, 5 connectors and a switch - I see no resistors or other electrical components on that board. I'm sure this will take off in a big way.

I will be very interested to see if a patent will be granted for this

I'm groaning at this one. It's far too easy to do this yourself. I agree with Charax. In fact, to hell with it. You guys kickstart this so I can open a competing company selling the same 3 bucks worth of parts for 20 bucks.

Thanks for the feedback.

There was a bit of a whirlwind with Kickstarter asking us to make a lot of last minutes changes and almost completely rejecting our initial support level structure.

They have some specific rules regarding support levels that are particular to the Technology (Hardware) category. So we were not allowed to do some of the stuff that was effective for many of the other projects we had used as a model.

I just fixed the 150$ thing, it should have been 125$. Good catch.

Once again thanks.

Keep the feedback coming.

Chris Wessling

This is a very cool idea. Maybe add an extended tutorial on how to add lights to a GW model.

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

Munga wrote:
I'm groaning at this one. It's far too easy to do this yourself. I agree with Charax. In fact, to hell with it. You guys kickstart this so I can open a competing company selling the same 3 bucks worth of parts for 20 bucks.

It's not hard, but it still is a little work and most importantly, calculation needed for resistors. Plug and play adds value, and making a custom circuit board isn't cheap.

I still don't see any resistors on that board. I would have expected some rather than driving 9v directly to less (the point, after all, is that LEDs are low-power devices. They could be using higher tolerance LEDs though - no resistors =no calculations.

As for the PCBs, Batchpcb charge $2.50 per square inch. These boards are smaller than that, so once the goal is reached they could print dozens of these on a single PCB panel, bringing the price per unit down further. Truly the costs of PCBs are staggering...

There was a young man with a goatee,
Who wanted a shiny LED.
He got two wires and a carrot.
And blew up his parrot
And that's how he earned his PHD.

$100, please.

Charax wrote:
I still don't see any resistors on that board. I would have expected some rather than driving 9v directly to less (the point, after all, is that LEDs are low-power devices. They could be using higher tolerance LEDs though - no resistors =no calculations.

9v seems like overkill. I've found regular old 3v button cells are more then adequate, especially with the limited real estate inside a Deff Dread\Dreadnought\Kan etc.

Well yes, that's the point. 9v is overkill but if we're talking about replicating the kickstarter setup then we need to start from the premise that the input is 9v and work from there

I love what you guys are doing. Planning on backing it, though it makes me sad more gamers don't know how to do this on their own.

I take it the rectifier bridge is on the PCB? or built behind the LED?

What's a rectifier bridge? I've added a ton of LED's to kits but never heard of one. And yes, I read the wikipedia page, which explained.... nothing. Some way of being able to drop the LED's into the plug regardless of which is the anode?

I like this kickstarter, I think what you're making is pretty aweomse and I've always wanted to light my models, The one thing that's a put off is that I don't feel the opening video is compelling enough for me to get behind. I still think I am going to back it but it's just a suggestion.

Munga wrote:
I'm groaning at this one. It's far too easy to do this yourself. I agree with Charax. In fact, to hell with it. You guys kickstart this so I can open a competing company selling the same 3 bucks worth of parts for 20 bucks.

I agree if you know your way around a circuit diagram it's pretty easy and cheap to put together this kind of stuff. But lots of people would like a simple, ready made solution.

The thing I don't understand is why this is on Kickstarter. It isn't a creative project. It's a pre-order system for bundled electronic kits.

That is a complaint about Kickstarter not the actual project.

Munga wrote:
I'm groaning at this one. It's far too easy to do this yourself. I agree with Charax. In fact, to hell with it. You guys kickstart this so I can open a competing company selling the same 3 bucks worth of parts for 20 bucks.

It's all a matter of being more convenient. Same thing with laundry and ironing your shirts. Sure, you can DIY, but if you can pay to avoid spending your free time doing something you hate, you will. Same thing with this. I want to light some of my models, but I sure as hell know I HATE playing around with hardware. I always hated my hardware classes while in university so I'll take any help I can get.

Where's the on/off switch?

@Saxon

The on/off switch is on the printed circuit board.

We will be posting another video demonstrating the kit in action Monday.

Thanks.

Chris Wessling

Charax wrote:
Well yes, that's the point. 9v is overkill but if we're talking about replicating the kickstarter setup then we need to start from the premise that the input is 9v and work from there

Hey Charax,

Thanks for your multiple thoughts and edits that we could make. We truly appreciate the feedback.

You asked a few specific questions, so I'll try to address a few of them here.

There are a lot of considerations that went into the battery choice, namely current drop-off and longevity. While you could light the LEDs with lower voltages, the battery life would be rather short, and you'd be changing it out after each round. Currently we supply a battery cable for a standard 9-volt battery. We found that a 9v provides just enough juice to ensure brightness and the longevity for upwards to 80 hours (depending on full charge or battery chemistry). Also, our Canadian friends reminded us that when they’re dead, they pack a wallop when tucked inside a snowball (#Assault&Batteries) (#DontTryThisAtHome). As we develop smaller battery packs, we will be offering them both to supporters, on our retail site and at your local game store.

To your point that anyone could get these pieces at their local electronics store and put it together, sure they could. The question then becmoes, do you have the time, talent and tools to do so. Not everyone has a soldering station in their garage, a DVM (digital voltage meter), connectors, PC Boards or $1500 crimpers sitting around. Even if you look at many of the DIY YouTube videos and articles, many of them require hours of soldering, a laundry list of materials, and more frustration than a nasty divorce to get the job done. If you do have all of the materials, skills and time, kickass! If you don’t, or you want to save a bit on a kit by pledging to support on Kickstarter, we’ve got you covered. We priced the kits to be about equal to having to go to the store and getting the parts to do it yourself, and we priced the kickstarter under that so people could save a few bucks.

For the resistors, we put them on the LED strings to minimize the size of the boards so it could go put it in more places. A number of lights have different current requirements - and as we found that we may be including more lights on a string, that requires customizing the string, not the board. This ensures that the current for each string is exactly what we need.

Thanks again for the feedback, and please keep it coming! If you'd like, feel free to shoot us a note directly at: chris [at] poweredplay.net or cmichaels [at] poweredplay.net



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, a few people have asked us what we meant by "Modular" systems. So, we created a quick video that shows how we made a single lit Rhino chassis into a Razorback, and then into a Predator. It's just as simple as plugging in the selected weapon systems and turn it on.

Chris,

I think what you are doing is very admirable, and will help a lot of people like myself.

The only problem I have is that you sem to be concentrating on GW models. I am currently working on a Leviathan Crusader from the recently released Dreamforge Games plastic range and would love a simple system that would allow a button cell and a fast flashing LED to be installed in the Vulkan cannons of this kit. I am also looking for a green single or double LED system for the head of this model.

The unfortunate thing being that there is severely limited room, especially in the Vulkan cannons, and no where near enough space for the battery pack you are proposing. I can envision many vehicular model makers who would also like to have headlighs that work on their models, but whould have the same problems.

I like the size of the PCB, but the 9v battery is kind of a deal killer - it's a lot easier to stash a button cell and consider lowered longevity to be a fair tradeoff.

For example, I lighted a Rhino and was able to hide the battery inside the void between the front armor plate and the inside hatch thing, as such:



By doing it this way, you can paint the interiors and have a nice display model. With a battery the size a a 9 volt, you would essentially sacrifice the entire interior just to hide it - not to mention there is simply not going to be room, at all, in models like Kans, Dreads, Dreadnoughts, and so on. The battery's really only going to fit in Land Raiders, Monoliths, Russes, things of that nature.

@Ouze

We have designed a 9v power source that is smaller than a AAA battery. I have four prototypes in people's hands and getting tested right now. They will easily fit in the front compartment in a Rhino.

We will be posting some pics of some of Mr. Dandy's models (mrdandy.com) that will be powered by the smaller battery the next day or so and will have a lit Soulgrinder and Helldrake at our booth at Adepticon.

@Conrad
We will also have some pics that will interest you in the next week...

Glad to see some Cryptic ramblings of non-GW support, We've got a unit planned for later this year that would be amazing with an LED Kit.

Hmmm...interesting. Ive got a project ot two Id like to light...but they are way down on the list. Best of luck, if this gets funded and goes to general sale I might pick some things up eventually.

I like Kickstarters, and I like gizmos for my models...but as others have mentioned, this seems a bit odd...

To a large extent this seems like you are trying to reinvent the wheel or build a better mouse trap for no reason in particular. Companies like Miniatronics, nGeneering, Evans Design and Micro Structures already do micro circuit boards with connectors (and quite often different effects like strobes). They are readily available and often expandable. You can even get LED kits to run headlights, brake lights and turn signals in HO scale cars for systems like Faller's car system.

The second thing which is a bit off is the choice of 9v...and the explanation so far. Without getting into the engineering, you can go into any store in the US and pick up an LED flashlight that uses one or two AAA batteries (1.5v) that will run for hours and hours without needing to be replaced. I have an LED head lamp that I have worn for 6 hours straight with no battery loss while caving that uses 3 AA batteries and that is running over a dozen high output LEDs. There is no reason that you would need or even want a higher output from your power supply than what your devices needs to drive it. LEDs do not need 9v...

My final issue (and likely most are indifferent to this one) is that of the "Patent pending". I dont see anything new here. It is an LED control board (which I pointed out already exist). It is in a model (which have been quite common since the first Star Trek model was released 30+ years ago). I hate bad patents, probably more than I hate anything else due to the effect it has on real innovation.