Just put together these el cheapo spot lights for the front window. The two figures needed some more front-lighting, so I put this together out of some 3″ PVC, 2×10, 2×8, gels, and under-cabinet lights.

We had all this stuff already, but I didn’t like the setup, so I devised this new safer adjustable rig.

Let’s start out with the remaining work on the speaker. Here I’ve cut away that extra plastic. This is the speaker “tunnel”. It will be facing downwards:

Here is where the wires will be connected. It’s cramped, so I’ll use “banana” plugs.

Evelyn painted in the face. I think it came out really nicely.

You can see that there is a hole where the nose is at. That is for the microphone on the other side.

Here is the rear view, with the special effects circuit:

The complete pumpkin then got attached to a 4′ long 1×2 post. That post will be pushed into the ground near our front door.

I added a sign to the post, so that kids know that it’s okay to interact with the pumpkin:

That’s about it for this project. We did some testing and it works fine. I’ll probably do a dry-run sometime later this week (with the speaker in the tree, etc) so that I can check on the volume, effects, etc. The piece will only be displayed on Halloween.

Or: That’s no moon!

Last night I decided to make my outdoor speaker thing a little more rounded, so I flipped it upside down (or downside up, in this case) and used some more Great Stuff foam.

This morning we got the paint, and I sprayed it an Evil Black color. Here it is drying on a piece of 4″ PVC pipe:

That cup shape at the top is a big yogurt container embedded in there. It’s a temporary cover for the speaker, which is now sitting deep in the “asteroid”. I’ll cut it away once the paint has dried.

Also got the orange spray paint and did the pumpkin controller part. Evelyn will be detailing with browns and blacks once the paint is dry. I love the color — the perfect Halloween Orange. The “pumpkin” is about 10″ tall.

A lot of our Halloween 2009 work has been centered on our “store window” setup. We’ve basically turned out front window into a colorful spooky diorama. It’s very cool looking at night, and the moths are going INSANE (probably due to the two black lights we have running).

The trouble is, most of the little kids won’t be out after dark, so I wanted to do something that they could enjoy.

Evelyn had recently put together a voice changer circuit — and I had an “a-ha!” moment — I’d put a voice changer out there for the kids to talk into. The challenge with the voice changer is that you can’t have the speaker close to the microphone, otherwise you get horrible feedback. “A-ha!” number 2: I’d use that limitation to my advantage!

You see, we have a tree right by the curb and the driveway — right where people will walk up (and where we will have our benches set up). I’d hang a speaker high in the tree, run a wire to the front door area, and put the microphone near the door. That way kids can talk into the mic and scare/annoy/amuse anyone who is near the street. Perfect!

At first I was going to put the circuit in a little waterproof box, but I thought that might be too boring looking (and wouldn’t get kids involved). “A-ha!” number 3: I’d put it in a skull or something (“talk into the skull”). I thought a skull might be too scary, and didn’t want to buy a piece of plastic from the Dollar Store, so I went with a pumpkin motif.

First I found a friendly pumpkin design, traced it onto a piece of 1 x 12 pine, and cut it out with the jigsaw.

Now I needed to stick the circuit board somewhere (it has the microphone and the batter). I had a very strong little box that lathe screws come in, so that’s what I’d use. Here you can see that I’m going to attach it to the back of the wooden pumpkin.

See how nicely the circuit and battery fits:

I used a couple of screws and standoffs to hold the circuit board to the plastic case.

All of these bits and pieces come together is you have a well stocked and well organized set of fasteners. You can tell I like to keep things organized. We have probably 8 of these organizers (about 14″ x 10″).

The speaker is apart from the microphone / circuit, so I needed a way to quickly connect speaker wires. I went with the reliable, and easy to install, “banana” jacks. It has thumbscrews so you can use regular wire (like you see of the back of some stereos).

Here is what it looks like with the speaker wires attached and everything tucked in.

The really nice thing about the plastic box is that the cover snaps on/off easily. Plus, it has a little door, so you can easily get at the battery and power switch.

The microphone is soldered to the circuit board. It faces DOWN in all of these photos. What you don’t see if that I’ve drilled a 3/8″ hole in the plastic case and through the thickness of the wooden pumpkin. The kids will speak into this hole (which is roughly aligned to where the pumpkin’s nose will be painted on).

Here is the setup being tested. In this photo you can see some lines drawn beneath the plastic case. That is where the pumpkin will be screwed to a 1×2 post. The post will go into the ground right near our front door.

Tomorrow we’ll need to go to Lowe’s and pick up some orange and black spray paint. The pumpkin will be spray painted orange, and then Evelyn will do the details in black (by hand).

Now that the pumpkin part is coming along, I needed something protective for the speaker (which will be hanging in the tree). I went back and forth a bit, and decided on a simple setup. I’d put the speaker in an old butter container.

The speaker will be firing downwards, so if it rains it won’t get filled with water. (Also, I’m putting this up the day of Halloween, so it just has to survive the day.

I didn’t do anything fancy to mount the speaker in the container, because I decided to use a piece of steel cable to hand the unit. The cable is wrapped around two of the speaker mounting holes, and goes through the top of the lid, along with the wires. Here’s a top view that better illustrates the setup:

Now I needed a way to make this look less like a speaker in a butter container. Great Stuff to the rescue. Now it’s a blob, roughly looking like a bee hive.

What you can’t see in the above photo is that I’ve embedded some more “banana” jacks for connecting the speaker wire. Once the Great Stuff has dried (overnight), I’ll put some sort of speaker grill on the bottom and spray paint the whole thing.

I’ll post some more photos once we have things painted.

Here is Evelyn’s first paper mache mask:

Been spending the past couple of days setting up our new web store. This will allow people to order our products on-line. It’s coming along pretty nicely and will really come into play once we have more products (I’ve a couple ideas for outdoor furniture). Take a look and let me know what you think.

We offer Leopold Benches either fully assembled or as kits. Some of you may wish to purchase your own supplies–given the cost of shipping heavy lumber, I can’t blame you.

If you are interested in making your own bench, using simple cuts and tools, check out our kit assembly guides. You can cut your own lumber and then follow the instructions. They are very detailed, with step by step photographs.

You can find the Assembly Guides here: Leopold Assembly Guides

To those of you who think that “Green Eggs and Ham” is just a story, I present you with green eggs:

The two eggs, fourth from the left, are most definitely green. (More green  ”in person” than in the photo.) These eggs were given to us by our Chicken Coop Beta Tester. The brood is growing quite nicely, enjoying their coop and the run.

Erika brought up several good questions on her blog. Since my comment was quickly turning into a long entry, I have posted my thoughts here. Some of Erika’s thoughts:

I had wondered how you can compete with the big boxes stores?  [...] I went to Target a few days ago and saw an idea that I had in mind for a stuff animal that I had not seen before (well, similar idea). The cost of it? 15dls. If I would do it myself after buying fabric, threads, etc… I would have to sell for 20-25 dls to make it worth it. So, we come back to this question. Will someone buy it? or just go to Target and buy it for less?

The #1 problem is time. Because time is labor, and labor is almost always going to be your biggest cost. This is why overseas stuff can be sold so cheaply: It might take 2 hours to make, but the person making it is only earning $5 A DAY. For China in particular, it’s cheaper for them to have people hand-make things than to create machines (tooling costs) to do the job.

People who only look at cost will always go to the cheapest source, regardless of the source. It’s a battle that’s not worth fighting. If someone wants to spend $5 on a doll, they will go to Walmart. Nothing you can do about it. What this means is that you have to figure out how to set yourself apart.

Okay, some thoughts on how we are handling all this (because we have overseas competition also):

• Get extremely accurate timings. We built one of our coops solely for the reason of timing the manufacturing process. We had a stopwatch running during every single part of the process. Cutting wood, moving materials, setting up jigs, gluing, assembly, grinding, painting, EVERYTHING. Everything down to the minute. You MUST know EXACTLY how long your manufacturing takes.
• Figure out what you think is a good hourly labor rate for your work. Be fair to yourself and your customers. And realize you aren’t living in the third world, and neither are your customers. You deserve an honest wage. In other words, if you are thinking $10 an hour, I would say forget it. Go work at Target instead.
• Take your timings and multiply that by your labor rate. Let’s say it takes 15 minutes to make a doll, and you want to make $20 an hour. That’s $5 of labor per doll.
• Gather accurate costs for materials. Determine if you can get better pricing through wholesalers versus regular stores. You will always get better prices if you shop around, or go to good suppliers. For example, I could buy a bracket at my local home store for about $1.25. Or, I could order from Grainger for $0.45.
• When you have accurate costs (per doll) in materials, add a 30% markup. This is inventory overhead. It takes time to buy materials, whether it’s online or driving to a store. It takes space to store them. It takes gas to get to the store, or ship it. And there was all that time you took to originally source the materials. And you have to take into account price fluctuations (to absorb at least a little).

Those are some of the things you’ll need to do to properly price your products. If you sell in stores, you have to add other markups. Markups vary by industry. A grocery store might get only 3%, but a big box store is making at least 30% of the purchase price. It’s usually a good idea to put some sort of wholesaler markup on your stuff, just in case you eventually want to sell in boutiques or whatnot. (And I won’t even get into credit card processing costs. Figure at least 5%.)

Let’s take our Doll example:

Labor: $5
Materials: $12 + 30% =  $15.60
Subtotal: $20.60 + 30% wholesaler markup = $26.78 retail price

It adds up REALLY quick. This is why the stuffed animal that took the Chinese $2 to make is sold for $15 on your local shelves.

Okay, but how to go up against the Chinese? Short answer: You can’t. Not head-to-head. But you can use good old innovation. Some thoughts:

• Fly under the radar. There are plenty of opportunities for small scale manufacturing. If you are selling hundreds of products a year, then it’s not going to be seen as a competitor to the overseas manufacturers.
• Realize that if you make a good product, you WILL get ripped off. Great ideas are stolen all the time. The old way of handing this was with patents and legal battles. As a small business owner, don’t bother fighting. Use it to your advantage. “The original” … “often imitated, never duplicated”. And do what they can’t do: Constantly innovate.
• With unemployment at record levels, there is a growing backlash toward imports. Use this to your advantage. For example, we manufacture locally and sell locally. There are plenty of people who will pay more for a local product. Heck, just look at how much people spend for (allegedly) “green” products!
• To paraphrase Steve Forbes: A vibrant marketplace is a good thing. If something is lucrative, others will enter into it. They are not just going to let you profit.

Come up with a list of 5 things that make your product / company unique. If you can’t come up with the list, then you probably don’t have an innovative product / company, meaning that it will be all about price — and that will be a losing battle for a small business person.

This list can be REALLY hard to do. Evelyn and I went though dozens of different product ideas and company concepts. Think about the whole purchasing experience when coming up with your list — don’t limit yourself to the product itself. Here’s an example of some of our personal selling points:

1. Designed and manufactured in Austin, TX. (Buy locally.)
2. All products are designed to be sustainable — not throwaway. (Well made, well chosen components.)
3. Developed specifically for an urban lifestyle. (There are lots of chicken coops, not very many urban coops.)
4. Modular design. The products grow with you (more chickens? easy to add more space — or convert the coop to a greenhouse).
5. Available in either a fully assembled or kit version.

and so on. I personally think “business plans” are BS. It’s like being told that you must write a term paper, but not why.

Okay, this is probably seeming long winded and overwhelming, but bear with me. Let me get to some of the great things:

• Small scale manufacturing can be very inexpensive. Heck, even if you went crazy and had laser cutters and all sorts of gizmos, you wouldn’t be investing more than $10,000. For our coop adventures, we spent about $3000 in tools and materials. That’s dirt cheap. To give you a comparison, a local (very small) grocery store near us has to go through $15,000 A MONTH in groceries to break even. You absolutely must keep your startup costs as close to zero as you can. And if you do spend money, spend it on something you can use in case the business fails (avoid buying specialty stuff until things take off).
• The internet is a cheap — use it. Etsy, Craigslist, Bonanzle, etc. Wonderful outlets for selling.
• You can do things you enjoy. If you are starting a business that isn’t already a hobby, or a lifelong interest, then don’t start. You must have passion about what you are doing, or you are doomed from the start. I’ve seen so many people chase after the dollar. Chasing after money is the best way to lose it. If you have the passion for your work, you will be successful, because you will spend a lot more real energy on it.
• Your success and failure depend SOLELY ON YOU. This is incredibly stressful and incredibly satisfying. If you fail, it’s your fault. You couldn’t market, you couldn’t manufacture, you couldn’t develop a good enough product, you misread the market. But guess what? When you start hearing the kudos you realize that it was all due to YOUR hard work. When the sales come in, they go to YOUR pocket.
• Now is the perfect time to start a business. Disarray is the best time to swoop in. When everyone else has their heads in the sand, you need to look around and grab the next opportunity. Everyone else will be more worried about holding on to their job, and won’t even see you coming.
• What have you got to lose? With the economy in the toilet, jobs being scarce, and materials and equipment being pretty cheap, why not try starting something? You don’t need a physical store for most small scale manufacture. The startup costs are trivial. And we have a lot of time on our hands.

I’m a fan of the work of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the creators of the famous Thunderbirds. We recently had the pleasure of watching another one of their productions: Joe 90.

The stories of adventure cover terrorists, rescues, and other spy-like threats. The difference? The Most Special Agent is a 9 year old boy.

Thanks to a top secret device, the BIG RAT, Joe is able to be “programmed” with the minds of other people. Need an explosives expert? Just “download” the expertise into Joe.

This concept works very well, as it allows a young boy to be involved in complex situations. It’s also a key to his usefulness: Who would suspect a 9 year old boy? (As a side effect, Joe almost never lies in the program — when the Evil Guy asks him how he’s going to escape — well, by flying that jet, of course! It’s a nice touch, not having the child lie.)

Joe 90 is exactly the kind of program I would have liked to watch as a child: Something that makes a child feel empowered and useful, versus being talked down to.

Some have been critical of the situations Joe gets into. Because the brain patterns are taken from adults, Joe does adult things. He has a gun — and uses it. He drives cars. He flies planes. He’s an explosives expert. A brain surgeon. Some might think that these situations send a “bad” message to children. I don’t agree. I think that most kids can tell reality from make believe. (And, honestly, with all the death and sex on TV these days, I think Joe 90 is pretty tame. It would have been very edgy in 1968, though, when it was originally released.)

And the sets, oh the sets! Typical amazing work. So detailed. It puts current CGI crap to shame. And the team knows what a youngster wants to see: explosions. Wonderfully done expositions, scaled expertly. And just when you think the explosion is done, there is another, and another, and another.

If you are looking for a kids program that adults will enjoy, and that treats kids as humans instead of mindless drones, check out Joe 90.

Joe 90 – The Complete Series