Eyeborgin’ it!

The great thing about Thomas Edison is he knows a thing or two about failure.  Watch this video, and you’ll know why I’m talking about failure.

“If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
“Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

Thomas Alva Edison

I’m not equating myself with Edison, but I am quite familiar with failure.  So many magnificent failures…  At SpaceX it took three revisions of KSAT before the thing decided to do it’s thing.   And even after all that– when the rocket carrying the working KSAT into orbit blew up it was a whole other (highly impressive) bit of failure.  So I guess failure is a part of most everything.  But it’s still tough.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m living on a couch in Toronto Canada designing a bionic eye with a man named Rob Spence.   I had two weeks since arriving here to get a design up and running before Rob went off to Brussels for a big press conference.  Two weeks is not a lot of time, but I love a challenge– and designing a prosthetic eye, that will go inside someones head, that can transmit video– well that’s a good healthy challenge.

When I got here I hit the ground running.  Literally on the phone all day trying to line up manufacturers to produce a wafer thin circuit board, getting all the parts overnighted from all over the place, finding an assembler who could place, solder, and inspect the super small components that we were using.   It was a beautifully choreographed ballet from an engineering perspective– choreographed down to the minute.

But then there was the film crew… I was driven around by a film crew.  Everywhere I went the cameras were on me.   I have no idea how we got our hands on a RED– a $50,000 SUPER camera, but we had one of those too.  And we had to set that up, take that down, move it around, do a little dance.   Rob, the soon to be bionic man, is a wizard at inspiring the people around him to help him in his endeavors.  He’s done it for me, I’m living on his couch and designing this bionic eye for him– for free!   Most everything related to the project has been done pro-bono.  It’s pretty impressive.  Even the film crew works for free.

As I was sitting in a carefully lit studio, with my freshly-assembled bionic eye camera board in front of me I was so apprehensive.   This was to be the moment of truth, and I had no idea if the thing would actually do anything!  I told everyone “don’t get too excited, I’ve never gotten anything right the first time and I don’t think this is going to be an exception.”  And it wasn’t.  The board fizzled and smoked.  The oscillator I was using had a reversed pin– the datasheet for the part had an error in it…

I was so destroyed after that.  For a god few hours, because I was CONVINCED I was going to make this thing work on the first shot.  But I guess there were more things I needed to learn.  After swapping the pins on the oscillator we were still having issues with the NTSC output of the camera.  Unfortunately I don’t have a lab– or even an oscilloscope, so I can’t really debug the thing until someone lets me use one.  Anyone? Anyone?  Even the soldering iron I’m using is borrowed… It’s a pretty ghetto setup.

But I am so pumped.  Because I have already learned so much, and we are that much closer to building a fully functional bionic eye– and we’re going to do whatever it takes to get there.  To quote Edison again: “Hell, there are no rules.  We’re trying to accomplish something here!”

So wish me luck.  I’ve taken a break and gone into full marketing mode.  Photography, video, website design, press releases– I so enjoy this stuff.   Check out the new website: http://eyeborgproject.com