So Chris and Richard the Wand Makers from The Wand Company, took the step and offered investors a possibility to invest their money in Magic.
The Dragons were left spellbound by duo Richard Blakesley & Chris Barnardo and their universal remote control which looks like a magic wand.
Well done Wand-Makers, I hope the investor money will allow you to continue to invent and create such awesome products. All the publicity through the show should empty your stocks quickly.
First launched in Japan, Dragons’ Den is now an international brand with versions airing in countries across the globe.
Entrepreneurs pitch for investment in the Den from our Dragons, five venture capitalists willing to invest their own money in exchange for equity.
Since series five, the five Dragons have been Duncan Bannatyne, James Caan, Deborah Meaden, Peter Jones and Theo Paphitis.
You must take a look at the really long blog post by dohcjhw. He put on a darth vader helmet which is unusal for a wizard, but perhaps closest he could get to Lord Voldemort and tried the wand on himself.
Unfortunately all the Korean text is within the images so, I can’t have it tranlated.
There are also nice instructional images like this one:
There was an awesome discussion of the Kymera Wand by the Guys from Daily Giz Wiz in their show number 1054. Dick DeBartolo and Leo Laporte have much fun showing off the wand. They are very excited about about it and discuss it in great length.
They did a very good job in describing its applicability and potential uses for home equipment and Macs in particular. They also pointed out some disadvantages like the limited number of gestures and the missing "switch gesture set"e;-gesture.
Here are some quotes from the post:
And in practice, it’s truly magic, or at least the kind of magic that your standard magician would perform, making it perfect for kids and the young at heart.
The manual details all of the steps necessary to get you from muggle to magician in no time. You can really get a sense of how much attention to detail is put into this product just by visiting The Wand Company’s web page. I love how their website is different from most, because their product is, too.
They also point out a special annoyance. If you don’t train all the gestures, those you didn’t will result in pulsing their gesture numbers when used accidentally. That takes quite a long time especially for the higher numbers and renders the wand unusable for that time. So it is better to program all gestures (provide a unused ir-function for those gestures not in use – e.g. from an older remote control).
After that’s all done, using the wand is a breeze. The most satisfying thing you can do is shout a “magical phrase” while using a long swipe to turn your TV on or off. And while most of the people to whom I showed this wand initially thought it was lame or extremely nerdy, all found it necessary to do exactly what I just detailed.
Of course they discuss using the Wand with a Mac, as I detailed in the Control Your Mac post, this is easily done.
It’s worth noting that navigating Front Row with this device would work perfectly since you can assign the right IR codes to the same left/right/up/down gestures in the wand. You could use the same gestures to change songs on your Mac from across the room. And honestly, if you’re going to say that a certain computer works with a little bit of magic, it really should be a Mac.
The app SofaControl is recommeded for using a remote with a Mac, I still have to check it out.
They close with the following comments and give the Kymera Wand a 3/5 rating.
And I guarantee you’ll have the coolest universal remote in town if you buy one of these, though you will be accused of being a nerd. You should only buy one of these to have fun, not to replace remotes, because you’ll be disappointed if you’re expecting to do the latter.
I think this product would make a great gift for any kid who’s a Harry Potter fan or just has a general wonder towards magic. And honestly, what kid doesn’t? Could you imagine getting one of these things when you were ten? That would have been awesome.
Chris and Richard published a whole lot of beautifully crafted image and animated resources for the press and resellers of the Kymera Wand.
We’ll publish a post with some background information of the making of of those gorgeous images later this month.
If you want to point to the Kymera Wand site you can use one of the eye catching moving images.
This clever move generated a lot of interest and was covered by all major and minor press publishers. A great step to make the Kymera Wand known throughout Germany.
Fernsehzauber: Die Fernbedienung hat zu viele Knöpfe? Kein Problem: Der Zauberstab von TheWandCompany (vertrieben u.a. von getdigital) steuert den Fernseher, indem er auf Bewegungen reagiert. Mit einem Streich nach links oder rechts lässt sich der Kanal vor- und zurückschalten, mit einer Drehbewegung regelt sich die Lautstärke. Der Zauberstab ist lernfähig – und kopiert einfach die entsprechenden Signale der Originalfernbedienung. …
Dieser clevere Schachzug rief eine Menge Interesse hervor und wurde von allen großen und kleineren Presse Verlagen berichtet. Ein wichtiger Schritt, um den Kymera Wand in Deutschland bekannter zu machen. Gut gemacht!
Arno Oesterheld ist ein stolzer und begeisterter Besitzer eines Kymera Wand, seine Erfahrungen, Tipps und Tricks, Fotos und vieles mehr postet er auf seiner Seite: zauberstab-fernbedienung.de.
Hier ein paar Zitate:
Die Fantastische Universalfernbedienung
Manche Dinge muss ich einfach haben. Und der Zauberstab von Kymera gehört definitiv in diese Kategorie!
Tipps und Tricks
Leider kommt der Zauberstab derzeit nur mit einer (wunderschönen) englischen Bedienungsanleitung. Auf der Website des Herstellers gibt es auch einige Hinweise in deutsch. Da nicht alles ganz praxisnah beschrieben ist, hier noch eine weitere Anleitung für Deine Zauberstab-Fernbedienung aus meinen persönlichen Erfahrung.
Videos und Bilder
Der Zauberstab kommt in einer edlen Verpackung – außen Schwarz mit “Schlangenhaut” – innen mit edlem, roten Stoff ausgeschlagen und mit Goldverzierungen. Die Anleitung ist ebenfalls sehr aufwändig gestaltet und großformatig zum auseinanderfalten.
Es gibt Verweise auf Händler und auf zukünftiges Zubehör.
Sehr schön gemachte Seite, mit viel Liebe zum Details und wichtigen Informationen.
Ich hoffe, Arno behält die Begeisterung und findet die Zeit, die Seite weiter auszubauen.
Besides other items presented during this Thrillist introduction at w9usa, the Kymera Wand got some coverage.
If you’re still stumped about what to get your husband, brother or boyfriend this holiday…listen up. There’s a virutal place that helps to uncover the coolest gifts and gadgets for guys. And no matter their profession or pasttime… you’re bound to find something different and unique.
Your significant other can get his Harry Potter magic on with the flick of a universal remote wand.
“It kind of works like an Nintendo Wii. You wave it around and program it to different motions that work to function different appliances,” says Joseph.
Fast Forward to 01:10.
One of our customers told us that she found the Kymera Wand in the biyearly addition UniKing of the German University magazine UNICUM. In the November 2009 issue the wand is featured with the following text:
Gut, das Date hätte besser laufen können, aber bei der WG-Party im Haus gegenüber kannst du dich später sicher ablenken. Bis dahin verplemperst du deine Zeit beim Zappen durch die TV-Kanäle. Um wenigstens stilvoll hin- und herschalten zu können, nutzt du natürlich den „Magic Wand“ von Kymera. Dreht man den Zauberstab im Uhrzeigersinn, wird die Lautstärke erhöht, ein Schnickser nach rechts bringt Dich zum nächsten Programm. Insgesamt beherrscht der Magic Wand 13 verschiedene Gesten und kann so alle Grundfunktionen von Fernseher oder CD-Player steuern. (www.thewandcompany.com, ca. 60 Euro)
Kymera Wand Feature in UniKing Nov/2009
Title Page UniKing Nov/2009
Kymera Magic Wand within its exclusive Box
Two English inventors, Chris Barnardo and Richard Blakesley are leading the way in a remote control revolution that will have users controlling their home entertainment systems with natural and intuitive gestures instead of button presses.
Developed over the last two years, the Kymera Wand is the latest consumer electronics gadget to employ emerging motion detection technology to give the user a richer and more intuitive user interface. Technically the Kymera Wand is a universal remote control, but as Chris Barnardo explains, that that was not what was originally intended by the design.
“Essentially we set out to design a magic wand that uses modern remote control technology to give the user a magical experience.” Says Barnardo.
“The result not only delivers a magical experience but is the first gesture based remote control that doesn’t have any buttons,” Barnardo adds.
Both the packaging and website have also been very carefully designed to be part of the fantasy experience. Visiting the non-traditional website is like a voyage of discovery, and opening the Chic black Kymera Wand box for the first time and seeing the dark brown, elegant wand cradled in its luxurious silk brocade, certainly does set the heart racing. But don’t be fooled, the old fashioned look and feel of the wand hides a highly advanced piece of technology.
The wand understands 13 different movement “gestures”, each of which can learn and replay the remote control function from any button on almost any existing infra-red (IR) remote control. All of which means that the Kymera Wand can be used not just for changing channels on your TV but for controlling hi-fis, DVD players, set-top boxes, iPod docks, Apple Macs and even remote-controlled light switches and curtains for example.
Kymera Wand Rear View
The technology that powers the wand is based on science, but it is so advanced and so miniaturised that it might as well be magic.
Based on the advances in motion sensing, the accelerometer that tells the wand’s microprocessor how hard it is and in which direction accelerating was originally developed for use in cars. These tiny silicon architectures are microscopically small but can detect the force of gravity even at rest. They are the sort of thing that detects if you are slowing down very rapidly in a traffic accident and signals for the airbag to deploy, or you’ll find them in mobile phones and cameras telling the device which way up to put the picture.
The wand has a special three axis accelerometer that can measure the g force in x-y-and –z. Using this information, and constantly updating the programme for the orientation of the wand, a special program on the onboard microprocessor can tell how the wand is being moved about.
Using some clever maths the microprocessor determines if the move made by the wand bearer was a deliberate on and if so, whether or not it was one of the predefined gestures programmed into it at manufacture. If it recognises the gesture then the wand’s microprocessor plays back the infra red remote code that it has been taught by the user to associate with that gesture.
A very small vibration motor similar to that found in a mobile phone gently pulses inside the wand to give what is called haptic feedback to the user so that they know that the wand has understood the gesture and has emitted an infrared remote control code.
The whole assembly is squeezed into the shape of a wand, and put together so that there are no visible seams and no unsightly screws to give the game away and that’s it, the Kymera Wand.
It’s simple really.
Spin back 50 or 100 years and what the wand does would have been real magic, but if you spin back a further 200 years it’s likely you would have been burnt at the stake for using the Kymera Wand. But then you wouldn’t have had a 72inch plasma screen to magically control.
© C.Barnardo The Wand Company 2009
