Evolution of the Vestaboard 'Bit' - from concept to factory produced
The factory produced Bit in August 2019 means the parts for this Bit have all been made from molds, tooling, and an assembly process that set us up for scaled production. You’ll see some final cosmetic changes to make it even more wonderful.
This post shares more information about the evolution of the Vestaboard Bit. The Bit is the character unit of the Vestaboard. Discover how the Bit has changed since its first renderings in 2015 into its final design: elegant, modular and factory-produced. We have just finished the first ever production run at our partner factory of 200 Bits, which marks a big milestone in the manufacturing of your Vestaboard order.
The Vestaboard Bit is key to your Vestaboard
We present the first ever factory produced Vestaboard Bit! She’s a dream come true.
She’ll work as a team with the other Bits inside Vestaboard, spinning her inner wheel and motor to cascade through the 64 split-flaps, landing in the perfect spot every time. With each spin, she’s fulfilling her single-character role in displaying your messages, colors and patterns while using much less energy than a glowing screen!
The Vestaboard Bit’s materials, from its sleek black encasing, to the matte printed flaps, to the spinning motor that lands on the right letters, numbers, punctuation and colors every time, were carefully selected and vetted by our engineers and our sourcing / industrial design teams.
The industrial design team at Bould Design custom-created the Vestaboard font and colors for elegance, legibility, and to stand the test of time. The font looks gorgeous up close and at a distance, legible from over 50 feet.
This is the final artwork of the Vestaboard characters. Each Bit contains every character shown.
Concept and prototypes
The Bit has been rendered, prototyped, iterated, tested and vetted since the idea of Vestaboard emerged in 2015, including early concept prototypes that validated the Bit and were shown at CES in 2018. Below, see how the Bit changes from a metal case with wires and a motor on the outside, through iterations during '16, '17, and '18, to the final prototype with no wires and a sleek case, finalized August 2019.
The first ever prototype of a Bit, manually powered, in 2016.
The first working prototype of a Bit with the motor stuck to the outside in late 2016.
By CES 2018 we had discovered we could put the motor inside the spinning wheel, but hadn’t realized that not having any front plate was a requirement.
It took us nearly all of 2018 to get the Bit functioning at the level we needed to confidently build our first ever Vestaboard in November 2018. That Vestaboard did not run very well on its first trip to London that month but has been running near flawlessly every day since with the same parts.
The final prototype, printed in white to allow us to observe wear and tear. Many of these have been run for more than 2 million cycles and counting (see streaming image below)! In 2019 we incorporated a latch mechanism (silver part top left) to keep the Bit attached securely in the final design of Vestaboard and that we should mold in the stopper that stops the flaps.
The factory produced Bit, all black except the characters and color flaps. No wires!
As you know from your patience a huge amount of engineering time has been required to take the Bit from concept to factory with confidence in its reliability and durability.
The character units of traditional split-flap signage have been larger than Vestaboard and upwards of 20-50 times more expensive!
For the Vestaboard Bit the size of the individual character unit meant that we had to be extremely creative to make it work at the cost and quality customers expect. When you first see the Bit it may seem obvious and simple it in its design but we can assure you it was not an obvious and simple process to get here.
Our talented team of engineers, industrial designers, hardware professionals, production specialists and advisors have been the key to bring the Vestaboard Bit to reality.
The Key features of the Vestaboard Bit: Beauty, Longevity and Serviceability
The Vestaboard Bit is the critical component of the Vestaboard. When you review the above evolution of the Bit we hope you can appreciate why we did not rush out with one of our first prototypes as the model of manufacturing (not to mention the Vestaboard would weigh over 200 pounds if we had!)
Importantly the most recent prototype Bits have been undergoing “lifecycle testing” in our lab since April, now registering 2 million cycles and counting of accurately landing on the desired character without fail.
Bits have been running in our lab day and night every 5-10 seconds
One of the more challenging design issues we faced after the first build of Vestaboard was how to get the modular Bits in and out of the Vestaboard. For the first build we bolted them in with screws but knew that was not a scalable or serviceable model.
Our engineers worked on a variety of ideas and concepts earlier in 2019. As it turned out some solutions were too complicated to manufacture, some too expensive and some added too much weight. A latch mechanism checked all the boxes.
Jeff Servaites, mechanical engineer, conceived of a clever latch mechanism to keep the Bits attached to the Vestaboard. The latch mechanism enables you to easily swap in a new Bit if ever needed, no tools required.
Although this took a “bit” more time to achieve design-wise, this feature is critical for serviceability should anything go wrong with an individual character unit. We’ll be sharing a demo of this latch mechanism with a fully assembled Vestaboard using the manufactured Bits very soon!
Our founder and CEO Dorrian Porter celebrating the receipt of the first ever factory produced Vestaboard Bits, setting us up for scaled production runs.
Moving to the production of the full Vestaboards
During the summer we completed the milestone of creating tooling, molds and production equipment for the Bit. After years of prototyping, sourcing the right materials at the right price and ensuring it works for the long term, our first run of 200 Bits have now been manufactured for the first time by our partner factory.
The next step for the Bit is the manufacturing of more than 3,000 Bits in the coming month which will allow us to build the first 30 manufactured Vestaboard units. To meet current demand for Vestaboard we will need to produce more than 250,000 Bits and anticipate building more than 700,000 Bits between now and the end of 2020.
Any failure of a Bit in your Vestaboard (not caused by physical interference or damage) will be covered in your warranty period. With over 2 million cycles under our belt for our test Bits we expect that most of you will not be shopping for a replacement Bit for a long time to come!
In future posts we’ll share information about the production for the overall Vestaboard. See this update on production for more information.