New Investor!

I’m thrilled to announce that Rob Underwood has joined our growing ranks of investors. Rob trains at CrossFit South Brooklyn (his Twitter bio leads with “lifter of heavy things”), and, in his day job, he is a Senior VP and the Director of Programs at FINOS, a nonprofit that promotes the use of open source software in the financial sector. In this capacity, Rob is in charge of the marketing, development, and operations of FINOS programs.

Rob has 20 years’ experience working with companies and nonprofit organizations large and small to develop their marketing, fundraising, product, and technology strategies. Like everyone I’ve got on board, Rob is a great asset to PWC.

“I’m very excited to be part of Peterson Watch Co.,” says Rob. “I love Nick’s vision to create a purpose-built, focused solution for athletes, and I want to help bring it to reality.”

Rob likes Peterson Watch Co. Be like Rob.

Progress Update: Embedding the Software

Mat finalized the mechanical engineering for the first prototypes over the summer, and we’re now in the throes of embedding the software on the device. I’m not a techie, so the load rests on Don’s and Kentaro’s shoulders. But the three of us have been keeping our calendars clear for a four-hour work window each Wednesday since mid August to work intensively at the same time and be immediately available to each other. At the beginning of the work window the three of us hold a video conference to update each other and go over any issues we need to clear up. Throughout the rest of the week we’re using Trello to communicate and track our tasks.

Front (above) and back (below) of Mat’s 3D printout of the housing of one the first prototypes, with the hardware in it. He only had clear material on hand, so this has an 80s look to it.

We’ve made a lot of progress. Don and Kentaro have finished verifying the hardware functionality and are now setting up the application-specific drivers. The drivers enable the display to print readable text from workout data that's been compacted for efficient storage in the device’s memory.

Don holds up a PCB (printed circuit board) for Kentaro and me to see during a recent weekly video conference call to discuss the project.

Don and Kentaro are now working on the software, which is fully baked as an iPhone app.  The code, originally written in Swift – a language used specifically for iPhone apps – has to be translated into C and loaded onto the watch. But this happens baby step by baby step – Don and Kentaro are getting the microcontroller to “print” to the screen via the application. They’ve gotten icons to show up in the right places on the display and have written text. Next, they’ll develop the stopwatch; this exercise will start to glue all of the work together – hardware, device drivers, and the application-level code which is really what the user thinks of as the watch. While this phase isn’t high-tech, it’s incredibly detail oriented and cumbersome, because we’re maximizing battery life and memory efficiency to minimize costs.

The display with our logo. This is a crucial early step in bringing everything together on the device.

Chop the Wood and Carry the Water

The theme of this recent Instagram post is relevant to Peterson Watch Co.'s proposition that we must be fully present, regardless of outcome.

(Swipe) @tomio_filiaci (on the erg) and @jennystevenson6 (cooling down on the Assault Bike) pulled their 2000m erg tests on Saturday. They both pulled gutsy pieces, but in different ways and with different outcomes.

Jenny knocked more than 7 sec. off her PR to get 7:13.2. She’d been hunting for 7:15 for two years, so she was pleased. If you look at her splits, you can see she held back a bit too much for the middle 1000, simply because she didn’t know what she was capable of. Once she saw an opening in the last 500, she dropped the hammer and f*cking TOOK it. It was an amazing sight. When she does this again she’ll pull a more consistent piece.

Tomio, whose last piece had been a 6:13.2 (pretty weird that his and Jenny’s PRs are X:13.2…), had the opposite experience in terms of pacing. He threw everything he had at the piece and came out with a 6:14.0. T was disappointed, but to get that close to a PR is still a success. If you look at his split for the last 500, you can see he slipped quite a bit. But he stuck with it, and did the best he could; you can’t ask for more than that. Like Jenny’s piece, it was an amazing sight – just in a different way.

Every athlete has a different psycho-physical makeup – which can manifest in all sorts of ways – and the athlete and the coach both have to understand what works and doesn’t for that individual. But the basics are always the same. Everyone has to follow generally accepted training and recovery protocols. And everyone has to do this one thing: chop the wood and carry the water. Focus on the task at hand, regardless.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have emotions. It just means, if you’re going to make a commitment to do something, be fully present for it. You may feel like you SHOULD be doing better at something, but “shoulds” often aren’t helpful. And there may be all sorts of things going on, but you’re still right here, right now, and you still have to finish the task at hand. What’s the alternative? . Chop the wood and carry the water.

#training #mindfulness #crossfitsouthbrooklyn #rowing #rowingtraining #concept2 #bepresent #bepresentinthemoment

A post shared by Peterson Watch Co. (@petersonwatchco) on May 18, 2018 at 4:42am PDT

Buttons and Legalese

Don and Mat are meeting this week to look at two different options for switch placement on the PCB (printed circuit board) so that Mat can then design the buttons. They’re trying to keep the design of this mechanism as simple as possible. This, in turn, will enable us to reduce the overall profile of the watch. We then have a two-week turnaround on 3D printing the new actuators at Shapeways, but we’re exploring other options.

Detail from Mat's latest drawing set showing the assembly and the old button design.

Meanwhile, I’m putting the finishing touches on the pitch deck and my “translation” into plain English of the term sheet and note. Many thanks to my parents and my advisors on these!

Almost...There...

We've gone through a couple iterations of the preliminary design; we had to accommodate the button action, as we had conceived it, as well as the battery bracket. We also had to tweak the design a couple times to account for the relative imprecision of 3D printing. And now we really are almost there.

Our focus has been to produce two rough-n-ready prototypes that I can put in people's hands – or rather, on their wrists – and run tests on (how much power these things use is a major concern). As far as I'm concerned, these things can shoot sparks after a week's use. They don't need to be shock- or water-resistant yet – we just need to work out major kinks and learn a thing or two before delving into some of the finer points. I've been thinking of this as Phase 1 of prototyping. Phase 2 will consist of taking what we've learned and moving forward on a watch that isn't over-large (the rough-n-ready prototypes are), is shock- and water-resistant, and whose power draw is known to us.

I met with Don (the electrical engineer), Jenna (the industrial designer), and Mat (the mechanical engineer) on Sunday to review the “rough-n-ready” prototypes. (Kentaro lives in Pittsburgh, so he missed out on sipping beer in The West's outdoor seating area as the temperature dropped. Brrr.) These prototypes are much bulkier than Jenna's original design concept, so the biggest visible change visible when we hit Phase 2 is that the design will be slimmed back down.

Mat, the mechanical engineer, walks the rest of the team through the rough-n-ready prototypes that he's been working on.

Jenna, the industrial designer, pointing out the back plate, which had to be expanded out to fit the internals. Her mockups are on the table.

With the buttons where they are now on the printed circuit board (PCB), the actuators – or what the user sees as the buttons, on the body of the watch – activate the buttons in a mechanically inefficient way, at an angle. In other words, this is too rough-n-ready (!), and we have to go through another tweak. For these rough prototypes, Don will put new buttons the side and return the components to Mat to assemble. Mat will redesign the actuators as part of this assembly, and then return the units to Don so that he can load the program onto them.

"That car in the distance fits between my thumb and finger. I'm CRUSHING it. I'm CRUSHING it!" Jenna and Don, the electrical engineer, look on in amazement.

Once these two prototypes are complete, Don will redesign the PCB and Mat will rework the overall design and mechanics in consultation with Don and Jenna. This redesign will be a departure from the current prototype, and while we’ll go through a few iterations moving forward, those iterations will presumably not be that different one from the other. The team will explore the following in this new phase:

• Changing the button action such that the actuators directly make contact with a plated surface on the side of the PCB
• Using a 500mAH rechargeable battery instead of a coin cell; this is longer lasting than a coin cell, and would be physically easier to fit. The battery would be recharged via either induction or USB. Induction charging would guarantee a perfect seal, while USB charging would introduce a set of issues to solve. This is a big departure for me – having the unit run on a coin cell has been one of the hills I was ready to die on – but Don makes a compelling case. A rechargeable battery will require:
  • A different connector
  • A different micro processor
  • Battery charge circuitry
• Reducing the height of the unit, mostly on the back plate. We’ll try to reduce the height even further, to make it smaller than Jenna’s original design, if possible.
• Designing for shock and water resistance

Stay tuned!