So, what we have here is a lithium-ion battery-powered guitar effects pedal power supply.
So, it's an isolated unit, it's all-in-one.
We make the battery packs out of 18650 lithium-ion battery cells, create our power system on top of that.
And since it's an all-in-one unit, we have more control over the ins and outs of the battery pack.
And we can get much more efficient step-up conversions and whatever else.
And it's totally isolated, it's super convenient.
You can just strap it to your pedal board, throw it on the ground.
Turn it on and you're ready to play!
[Music]
So I've been playing guitar for a long time.
And one thing that always frustrated me was
when you're trying to get portable power within these units,
you can throw a 9-volt battery in but it only lasts maybe an hour or two.
And so, we wanted to find a way to have battery power effects units
that lasts a lot longer and that are more reliable and rechargeable.
We had our original concept and you know it took a little while,
we got a breadboard trying things out, we had to figure out like, what's gonna work,
and what kind of values we're looking at, what's our peak,
what's our low and how we're gonna match,
what we need the output to be, so that it's useful for everyday use, right?
So, we start designing these things make up small circuit and then go from there really.
So, what is your background, engineering... or what do you guys do?
I do computer science. Mostly I like to work with a lot of the lower level electronics though
and I kind of dabble around with it more of a hobbyist but I don't really have much formal training in it
but it's just something that's an interest to me and but I formerly studied computer science.
And I'm an engineer by trade but you know I've always tinkered with stuff, my whole life really.
I've always electronics, computers, all that stuff has been like you know, a passion of mine.
So, doing something like this is really fun for me because it's just you get to just go there
and you get stuck in it for hours and you don't even realize it's past right so...
[Josh] So, you're telling me, these are just prototypes. Correct? [Ian & Doug] Yes!
So, what is the next step, what do you have to do to get this design for manufacturing
and ready to actually produce these in bulk?
Well, we still obviously have a lot more testing to do.
We've got some different options that we're looking at,
in terms of what kind of, where we want to place everything,
how many outputs we want to have on it, what kind of switches we want to use,
I mean it's endless, the amount of... you know, options we have to add onto this thing.
So, what would you say has been the most interesting exciting part of this project?
So, I mean for me it's been like the past three days, just putting together these prototypes real quick
because you know I live up and I look further away from where he is.
So, we're kind of doing this thing remotely and it's hard to do hardware
when you're both not right there sitting next to each other the whole time.
So, you know for me like the past few days have just been sink into it and getting stuff done.
And it's really rewarding because you know you you're pulling all-nighters but you come out
and you're like, "Hey! It works, oh my God! It worked the first time."
you know and that's the aha moment and you know, just come in here and be able to show it off
and be like, "Hey! I built that", you know, that's great.
And you said, the aha moment just you feel fantastic.
On the flipside, what has been the worst portion of doing this,
or have you just bang your head against the wall, what it's been the most challenging and interesting portion?
So, some of the design work we've been doing just like trying stuff out
and then we hit a wall and it doesn't work, great! and then you're like, "ah, back to the drawing board" or you know
For me, when I'm taking around with the electronics and "Oh crap! I fried something"
or whatever and you're like, I got now I gotta go run back down to the store
[Doug] and there goes another four hours like... [Ian] sorting out a lithium ion battery
[Ian] Thats fun. [Doug] Yeah! That's always fun.
Yeah! That's probably the most frustrating parts but you know there's ups and downs
but it's all fun at the end of the day.
[Music]