David Savastano, Editor09.17.14
Printoo Simplifies Prototyping for PE Producers
Ynvisible and its partners offer an easier approach to prototyping through module approach
Printed electronics (PE) offers lots of opportunities for companies to devise ways to utilize inexpensive, flexible electronics systems for their products, but actually gathering all of the materials can be a time-consuming project.
With that in mind, Ynvisible developed the Printoo project. Working together with partners throughout the PE supply chain, Ynvisible put together a supply kit for product developers to utilize, including printed batteries, flexible displays and lighting.
To get the word out, Ynviible ran a Kickstarter campaign for Printoo, with a $20,000 goal. The company quickly quadrupled that, raising $80, 336.
Manuel Câmara, new products manager for Ynvisible, said that the ability to develop prototypes is driving interest in Printoo.
“What Printoo offers to customers is both huge savings in time and effort and the opportunity to prototype using thin, flexible components that can very neatly be attached to the physical design of the object you want to create,” said Câmara. “The time savings include not having to source and wait for all the individual components, draw the circuit and lay it out on a breadboard or Arduino, at the end of which you’d have a working demo from an engineering point of view but that would look nothing like the object you wanted to demo in the first place, thus not allowing to draw any conclusions from a design and user perspectives.”
Ynvisible contributed its electrochromic display and display driver technology, and then initially added a wide assortment of printed electronics companies, who brought their expertise to the project. Blue Spark and Enfucell provided printed batteries. Mekoprint offered polymer solar cells, VTT provided LED strips and ISORG has its Organic Photodetector Slider, which detects hand movement over it.
“We reached out to Blue Spark, Enfucell, ISORG, VTT and Mekoprint to collaborate as suppliers of proprietary components for the first launch of Printoo,” Câmara said. “We wanted to get to market quickly and sought technologies that were more or less ready to be supplied. The response and enthusiasm from all the partners has been absolutely fantastic. With the Kickstarter campaign underway, Smartrac and LunaLEC also joined, offering NFC tags and LEC segmented displays, respectively.”
Through Printoo, customers can purchase specific components and use them to design their own applications. There are an assortment of power sources, sensors and displays to add to the Printoo core.
“We wanted to offer an appropriate amount of input, output and powering options,” Câmara said. “The Printoo core is the essential bit as it holds the MCU, then the users can choose to go with printed, coin cell or Li-Po batteries; include temperature, accelerometer or photodetecting sensors; and use LEDs, motors or electrochromic displays as an output means. Finally, we’ve found that most of the demos we come up with include Bluetooth Low Energy, so that is also a vital component.
Câmara noted that customers can add pretty much any further electronics tools they wish as they would with an Arduino, and added that more modules will be added to the Printoo offering.
“We do plan to include more and more modules to make it easier for customers to prototype with,” he noted. “For future iterations of Printoo we may have the time and means for more in-depth joint developments of modules integrating partner technologies.”
Câmara said there were two main factors for utilizing Kickstarter.
“First, the need to have a solution for those interested in us to tinker with our technology, and the realization that many in the printed electronics industry had the same concerns: we need to facilitate the adoption of our technologies and the first step is to make them easy to prototype with,” Câmara noted. “The second factor was being aware of recent tendencies concerning the maker movement, the democratization of prototyping tools and new tools for the hardware space, such as Kickstarter.”
While the Kickstarter campaign brought attention to Printoo, the most important test will be the development work done by customers.
“The most important reaction so far was obviously the success on Kickstarter,” Câmara said. “The biggest test, however, will happen once people get Printoo in their hands to play around with.
“We’ve had a few interesting surprises,” Câmara added. “For instance, we didn’t anticipate such a large interest from the education community. One other interesting surprise is that while people in the field are aware that flexible PCBs have existed for a while, for most people those technologies are themselves a novelty, not to mention the printed electronics components themselves. This is relevant today because those coming up with new product concepts in tech startups (and even larger corporations) come from a design or computer science backgrounds. They will design with what they know, and if they are unaware of printed and flexible technologies, they will not include them in their products.”
Câmara added that Ynvisible expects to start shipping the modules for Printoo’s Kickstarter backers in October, with general sales following in November.
Câmara said that the positive response Printoo has received shows there is a strong need for this approach.
“When we set out to create Printoo, we were solving a local need and believed it could be useful within the printed electronics community as well as being a niche interest for the maker community at large,” Câmara said. “Following the Kickstarter campaign and further market response, we see a much wider potential for Printoo, and are exploring how to best address the different market segments that have shown interest: the maker community at large; hardware startups; product designers within larger corporations; and the educational market.”
Ynvisible and its partners offer an easier approach to prototyping through module approach
Printed electronics (PE) offers lots of opportunities for companies to devise ways to utilize inexpensive, flexible electronics systems for their products, but actually gathering all of the materials can be a time-consuming project.
Printoo's core module. |
To get the word out, Ynviible ran a Kickstarter campaign for Printoo, with a $20,000 goal. The company quickly quadrupled that, raising $80, 336.
Manuel Câmara, new products manager for Ynvisible, said that the ability to develop prototypes is driving interest in Printoo.
“What Printoo offers to customers is both huge savings in time and effort and the opportunity to prototype using thin, flexible components that can very neatly be attached to the physical design of the object you want to create,” said Câmara. “The time savings include not having to source and wait for all the individual components, draw the circuit and lay it out on a breadboard or Arduino, at the end of which you’d have a working demo from an engineering point of view but that would look nothing like the object you wanted to demo in the first place, thus not allowing to draw any conclusions from a design and user perspectives.”
Ynvisible contributed its electrochromic display and display driver technology, and then initially added a wide assortment of printed electronics companies, who brought their expertise to the project. Blue Spark and Enfucell provided printed batteries. Mekoprint offered polymer solar cells, VTT provided LED strips and ISORG has its Organic Photodetector Slider, which detects hand movement over it.
“We reached out to Blue Spark, Enfucell, ISORG, VTT and Mekoprint to collaborate as suppliers of proprietary components for the first launch of Printoo,” Câmara said. “We wanted to get to market quickly and sought technologies that were more or less ready to be supplied. The response and enthusiasm from all the partners has been absolutely fantastic. With the Kickstarter campaign underway, Smartrac and LunaLEC also joined, offering NFC tags and LEC segmented displays, respectively.”
Ynvisible's electrochromic design. |
“We wanted to offer an appropriate amount of input, output and powering options,” Câmara said. “The Printoo core is the essential bit as it holds the MCU, then the users can choose to go with printed, coin cell or Li-Po batteries; include temperature, accelerometer or photodetecting sensors; and use LEDs, motors or electrochromic displays as an output means. Finally, we’ve found that most of the demos we come up with include Bluetooth Low Energy, so that is also a vital component.
Câmara noted that customers can add pretty much any further electronics tools they wish as they would with an Arduino, and added that more modules will be added to the Printoo offering.
“We do plan to include more and more modules to make it easier for customers to prototype with,” he noted. “For future iterations of Printoo we may have the time and means for more in-depth joint developments of modules integrating partner technologies.”
Câmara said there were two main factors for utilizing Kickstarter.
“First, the need to have a solution for those interested in us to tinker with our technology, and the realization that many in the printed electronics industry had the same concerns: we need to facilitate the adoption of our technologies and the first step is to make them easy to prototype with,” Câmara noted. “The second factor was being aware of recent tendencies concerning the maker movement, the democratization of prototyping tools and new tools for the hardware space, such as Kickstarter.”
While the Kickstarter campaign brought attention to Printoo, the most important test will be the development work done by customers.
“We’ve had a few interesting surprises,” Câmara added. “For instance, we didn’t anticipate such a large interest from the education community. One other interesting surprise is that while people in the field are aware that flexible PCBs have existed for a while, for most people those technologies are themselves a novelty, not to mention the printed electronics components themselves. This is relevant today because those coming up with new product concepts in tech startups (and even larger corporations) come from a design or computer science backgrounds. They will design with what they know, and if they are unaware of printed and flexible technologies, they will not include them in their products.”
Câmara added that Ynvisible expects to start shipping the modules for Printoo’s Kickstarter backers in October, with general sales following in November.
Câmara said that the positive response Printoo has received shows there is a strong need for this approach.
“When we set out to create Printoo, we were solving a local need and believed it could be useful within the printed electronics community as well as being a niche interest for the maker community at large,” Câmara said. “Following the Kickstarter campaign and further market response, we see a much wider potential for Printoo, and are exploring how to best address the different market segments that have shown interest: the maker community at large; hardware startups; product designers within larger corporations; and the educational market.”