Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
As it turns out, the MaKey MaKey team had no problem hitting that funding goal,
achieving it within the first 48 hours of the Kickstarter campaign with still another 28
days of fundraising to go. By the end of the first week of fundraising, it was obvious that
the project would be far more successful than had originally been anticipated. It also be-
came clear that SparkFun would have to make some decisions about how to build the
MaKey MaKey boards and kits if it wanted to meet its goal of delivering
all
of the kits to
Jay and Eric's Kickstarter backers on time—a decision that had been made early on to
show the world that Kickstarter-backed products need not always ship late if good plan-
ning has been done by the developers.
When the Kickstarter campaign ended on June 12, 2012, Jay and Eric had raised more
than $560,000. The clock immediately began ticking down for SparkFun to assemble and
ship 13,802 MaKey MaKey Invention Kits by the estimated delivery date of August 2012.
Having only 80 days to pull this feat off posed a much greater challenge given that the
volume was at least one order of magnitude greater than anything SparkFun was accus-
tomed to at that time.
Although SparkFun was not starting from scratch in setting up its own manufacturing
operations, it was being challenged to scale capabilities to an entirely new level in a finite
amount of time. As a result, we had to revisit each of these five manufacturing design ele-
ments if we wanted to succeed in shipping out kits on time that were both designed and
built to the highest quality level possible.
Anecdote: My Watercolor Bot Kickstarter
Sylvia Todd (“Super Awesome Sylvia”)
In January 2013, I really wanted to compete in RoboGames, so I came
up with an idea for a watercolor painting art bot. I worked out with my
parents that I could spend a week off school. With help from Lenore
and Windell at Evil Mad Scientist, I went from an awesome idea to a
working prototype in only one crazy, caffeine-fueled week. Right be-
fore RoboGames, I got invited to the White House Science Fair, and
decided I might as well bring the project. When RoboGames finally ar-
rived, I won second place. The next day I flew to the White House and
showed off my invention to hundreds of important peeps, including
President Barack Obama himself. He liked it, I think.
In the two months we had to build the bot, Windell and I decided
that we could totally make this into a kit that we could sell. We contin-
ued to build and improve the bot over the next six months until it was
