Our Products:
Motor control technology has been relatively unchanged for decades. It requires a motor control board, a knowledge of electronics, and if you wish to do more than just spin a shaft very fast, a microcontroller.
We have simplified this; gone are the project boards and wires needed for normal motors. With our motors, all you need is a wifi-capable device and an interesting idea. Everything else is built into the motor. Every motor/control board we make can be controlled over wifi, either via an existing network, or through the devices’ own network. Our products are based around the powerful ESP8266 system-on-a-chip, which enables us to control motors while offering a wealth of built-in features.
We are launching with two motor types. The first is a NEMA 17 wifi stepper motor that can move to specific positions at any speed. It is useful where continuous rotation or strength are needed.
Our second product is a wifi control board for up to four hobby servo motors. Hobby servos come in many shapes and sizes, specialized for many tasks. For this reason, we chose to make a wifi board that controlled motors, rather than a wifi motor with our board built in. Hobby Servo motors are useful where size and weight are a concern.
Controlling the Motor:
When a device is first plugged in, it puts up a wifi network that you can immediately connect to. From here you can control the motor directly, or instruct it to connect to your home network. The motors can be controlled from anywhere on the network and, when restarted, will attempt to reconnect to the most recent network they were attached to.
We will have apps and programs for scheduling commands and controlling the motors in real time. The motors also have built-in webpages for queuing commands directly. Our goal is to make the apps and programs usable by anyone, not just experts.
For the more technical users, our motors offer even more benefits. There is no need for the obligatory mess of wires that usually accompanies motors. There is also no need for programming microcontrollers. The motors can be controlled with simple network packets or JSON queries. This means the user can use any programming language they want.
Pricing and Kickstarter:
We are approaching the launch date for our Kickstarter campaign. Although some costs are not yet finalized and the price at launch may change, the intended costs for basic packages are 60 USD for the wifi stepper motor and 35 USD for the wifi servo controller with one basic hobby servo.