Happy Spring!

Thanks so much for your patience as we work through production. We’re really excited that we’re in the home stretch and eager to get your Tangeez kits out to you. We’ve got a lot of updates to share with you, including news about added functionality.

Read on to hear the full details!

Recharging
New feature! Since the earliest stages of development we had hoped to make Tangeez rechargeable. For many reasons, we knew that it would make the product better. We’re very excited to share with you that we have been able to work the charging functionality into the Kickstarter kits that you’ll be receiving! This means you’ll never have to replace a battery. We’ll be sending along a charging cable with your kits, which you can plug into any USB port.

Each unit will have to be charged individually. While we would love to allow you to stack a tower of Tangeez and charge them all at one time, when we weighed the pros and cons of this approach the individual charging direction made more sense. Also, because the color of the light dictates how long each unit will last, they will rarely die at the same time. If you do decide you want additional charging cables, we’ll provide the option to purchase those cables when we get your shipping information.

Because we took time to develop this functionality, we expect to be slightly delayed in our shipping. **Based on our estimates, we’re aiming for a July/August ship date.**

We hope the added benefit of recharging will be worth the wait for you!

First Casing Samples
We received our first samples early this month to confirm the form of the units are accurate. After a few delays, we have been able to test the parts and provide our feedback to the manufacturer who is making final updates as well as finalizing the texture that we’ve selected for the exterior of Tangeez. This means we are very close to finalizing manufacturing of the mold.

We’ve also tested the Tangeez samples with our circuits & LEDs to ensure that we’re getting the right distribution of light. The final material that we chose for manufacturing has a very nice glowing effect and it diffuses the light very well.

Circuit
We have finalized the circuit and made our battery decision based on the new added charging functionality. Based on the new circuit and battery, we estimate each Tangee can glow nonstop for a minimum of 24 hours. Each Tangee has the ability to display 7 different colors. The color that is displayed along with how often you plug/unplug each Tangee unit will affect how long each unit will continuously illuminate, so often Tangeez will last longer than 24 hours.

We had some bumps in the road with our circuit manufacturers over the last few months. Unfortunately, we needed to find a new partner to work with us for the circuit production. Luckily, we were recommended to a new source in Boston and we’ve been working with them for all the circuit related concerns including production and sourcing of parts. We received our manufactured & assembled circuit samples today and we are working on these circuits to see if there is anything that needs to be addressed before mass manufacturing.

We are excited to hold the first manufactured Tangeez in our hands! When we started working on Tangeez it was hard to imagine reaching this point but it feels good to finally be here.

Tangeez mentor, Jim Campbell, had a Retrospective show, Gallery opening and series of performances with Lines Ballet in NY this month. Below are images of his latest pieces up at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery in Chelsea.

Jim’s work focuses on video based work and explores the perception of motion across low-resolution canvases. His latest works explore the use of color in pieces that have historically been black and white as well as the idea of mapping 2D video onto 3D topographies. For more on Jim’s approach, you can watch the Creator’s Project Interview here.

The show is up until April 19th.

Hi Tangeez Backers!

Spring is around the corner. In the mean time, we hope you’re all staying warm and dry. You haven’t heard from us in awhile, but we’ve been busy here in snowy New York finalizing the design details for Tangeez and kicking off the mold manufacturing process.

Check out our progress below.

Casing:
We’ve made a lot of improvements to our casing. In previous versions, we were using a twist mechanism to open and close Tangeez. This closure wasn’t working perfectly, so we’ve been prototyping different alternatives (screw closures, snap fits, etc.) for securing the bottom of the casing to the top of the casing. We decided to move forward using a snap fit so we can minimize any shadowing and avoid implementing any tiny set screws.

With these iterations complete, we’ve finished our design phase and we’re moving on to building the injection mold. This is a huge milestone for us.

Mold:
Our Mold making process has began! Our injection mold partners, Premier Source here in the US, are creating the mold files that will be used to shape the mold. Our mold will be made out of P20 steel and is considered a “2+2+2” mold, which allows us to create two Tangeez at one time during the production process.

Circuit:
We’ve been fine tuning our circuit design. We tweaked the size and shape of our circuit to get the best light distribution and we’re currently exploring alternative for improving our battery. We’re very excited about the new developments and hope to announce some big news very soon…stay tuned for those details in the next few weeks!

On March 1st, we moved into a new studio here in Brooklyn. We will be testing, packaging and shipping your Tangeez from this new location.

We excited to see the prototypes that we’ve been working on for 2 years become a final, manufactured product and thankful to have you as our backers!

That’s it for this update. Stay warm.

Thanks,
Mustafa & Emily

So we’ve been quiet for a long time! We’ve been doing a lot of very subtle casing revisions, but not quite happy with the effect yet.

Some of our tests are below.

We’re working toward a screw closure, rather than a notching closure that we had in our last version. We found that the notching didn’t work as well as we had hoped so we’re looking for a more robust closure.

We don’t like how these posts affect the light, so it’s back to the drawing board…

We’d like to use this blog to help describe the process we’ve gone through to bring a product from concept to market.  A lot of blood, sweat and tears has gone into the research and development of Tangeez and we’d like to share our process in hopes of helping others who are looking to do the same thing.

We will be making regular updates about Tangeez here, so stay tuned for more info!