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.

You can see the video here:

If you don’t know Dragon’s Den Show on BBC TWO – here is a short description from their website:

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.

What you can see on the show

• Chris and Richard entering the scene via some dark stairs, perfectly dressed
• asking for a 200.000 pound investment for 10% share of the company
• quoting Arthur C. Clars third law of prediction:
  “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
• pointing to the really large and still growing fantasy market with the likes of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and such
• presenting the wand and accessories by letting a large black silk cloth slither down
• Richard: “looks pretty much as you expect for a wizards wand”
• “being a real wand it actually can do something”
• letting it play Harry Potter theme on an iPod touch deck
• controlling volume by turning it, switching tracks – and making the investors smile
• telling them it could control anything in their house
• Richard shows controlling TV, fans and even lighting a candle
• the history of business, started in September, by Christmas 10.000 units sold.
• ask for money, expertise to take the company to a 18 million GBP company over the next three years
• they hand the investors the wands to have a try for themselves
• we even spot one of the rare dragon serpent wand stands that was designed by Chris (I got one of my own)
• James Caan wants to know what is behind the magic
• the infrared emitter tip is supplied by one of the largest remote control manufacturers in the world
• the wand also contains a universal remote control chip for learning and sending the codes
• meanwhile the others look at the beautifully laid out manual
• its gesture based approach is compared to the Wii-remote
• with its internal orientation sensor it always know which way is up
• Chris refuses to say what the next product is – but it is awesome, so stay tuned
• “and it’s all based around magic?”
• Richard answers that TheWandCompany will become a brand for all sorts of surprising and magical products
• zoom in to the wand and dragon wand stand
• the Dragons are clearly absorbed by the product
• Duncan wants more information about the inventors
• they tell about their electronics company (where they met) that already sold (about 2 mio) advanced remote controls and embedded displays before
• speaking again about sales they were asked about prices
• impressive margin, great product, Chris and Richard are clearly doing well in the Den
• then Theo asks them about revenue and profits, he is wondering what they want the 200k for if their numbers are already that rock solid
• Deborah talks about the Harry Potter movies, of which the last two will air this and next year
• Chris speaks about people who like fantasy and wizarding things and of the appeal to people who play online games like World of Warcraft and the like, also about other fantasy themes like Narnya and LotR
• the wandmakers speak about deals with Target (US) and the Sky magazines of airlines
• Duncan is the first to break the ice, he offers 600k for 30%
• Duncan being dubbed “Voldemort” by “Hagrid” – Peter who offers 200k for 25%
• then the game starts with Theo asking them “what would make them happy”
• and Deborah offers half the money for 10%, ask they asked for 23% and two dragons
• James sat there listening and as he likes the product and the wand makers he offers what they wanted 200k for 20% later scaled back
• after the real time discussions of 2.5 hours have been cut down to five minutes for TV, Duncan increases his offer substantially and gets accepted
• Now there is money and a strong business partner to look forward to

The awesome GBP 900.000 (in sum) offer got quite a lot of press coverage

• Daily Mail – Dragons’ Den panel in record £900,000 bidding war for the ‘Magic Wand’ they think could replace your remote control
  

  It’s just the thing that Harry Potter could use while watching TV at Hogwarts – a wand that changes channels or turns down the volume at the flick of a wrist.
  And this buttonless remote control certainly seems to have magic properties because it has just attracted the largest investment in the history of Dragons’ Den, BBC2’s entrepreneurial reality series.
  Chris and Richard have already sold more than 20,000 Kymera Wands since the launch in September last year and it is now on sale in 41 countries. They expect to turn over £2million in the next year with the help of Duncan Bannatyne.

• The Guardian – The most successful Dragons’ Den pitch ever?
  

  It sounds like the far-fetched plot of a fantasy movie: crazy inventor enchants dragons with magic wand. But on last night’s episode of Dragons’ Den that is exactly what happened.
  Barnado reckons he has been inventing since the age of 14, when he wrote to Tomorrow’s World with an idea for an artificial limb controlled by nerve impulses; more recent brainwaves include a new form of cheese packaging, a one-piece baby- bottle – and a scatological version of Top Trumps called, er, Plop Trumps.

• Stroke of genius: magic wand entrepreneurs secure highest ever Dragons’ Den investment
  

  Richard added: ”I didn’t expect all five to like the product and I thought we would have some of them saying ‘fine but it’s not my cup of tea’.
  ”They were all pretty good offers so we just picked one.”

• smarta – Dragon’ Den: episode seven, reviewed
  

  That concluded a fantastic spell in the Den for the Wand Company. They left with all their cash, retaining 90 per cent of their business. It makes you wonder if maybe the founders had a few magical powers themselves. Their performance in the Den sure went like a charm…

• Steve van Dulken covers the patent of the Kymera Wand on his Patent Blog
  

  The patent application for the invention was published in May 2010 as Remote control device, in particular a wand.

  I am unlikely to buy it, as I would forget which command meant what. Maybe that is an attraction — different waves of the wand would mean different commands for each person’s wand, making it a truly personalised remote control.

• Technology on MSNBC – Harry Potter-style magic wand conjures big money
  

  The Kymera wand buttonless remote control claims no direct affiliation with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter empire, but there’s a reason it’s selling like pumpkin pasties on the Hogwarts Express.
  The need for such a product is obvious to anyone who’s endured those Hagrid-sized commercial breaks that muck up each and every ABCFamily Very Special Harry Potter Weekend Event.
  The U.K- based Wand Company’s Kymera wand — that operates via wrist movements rather than buttons — remains one of the website’s top 150 products, out of thousand-plus products ThinkGeek sells.

• Telegraph – Record Dragons’ Den investment for Harry Potter-style magic wand
  

  They expect to turnover £2million in the next year with the help of Mr Bannatyne.
  The Dragon said: “I see the magic wand rolling out very quickly over the next six months and I think it will do very, very well.”

There are lots of comments like

• useless gadget
• I don’t need it
• patent infringement
• how to switch 500 channels
• to pricey
• how to memorize 13 gestures

But I think after you tried it for yourself for the first time you perhaps think differently. And who needs 500 channels and can’t memorize 13 simple gestures?

Some positive comments

• Excellent idea I would love one if you have any going spare. Have you thought about making limied edition versions with different designs of handles etc or trying to approach the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings people to see if they are interested in a specially designed version. Can’t wait to see your next invention
• Well done to Richard and Chris, looks like a great idea! Will be looking out for your next products. Looking forward to seeing your company at the Autumn Fair. Hope Duncan can give you the help you need.
• When you reach 45 years old your eyesight starts to go for close up reading. Most remotes have really small text on the buttons so you’re scrabbling around for your reading glasses or pestering the kids to change channels or operate the TV guide for you. This gadget will be so useful. I’ll probably get one… I hope it works OK! Well done guys.
• I love it…much better than having 4/5/6 remotes sitting around (all needing batteries!!)…If I buy one I think I’ll get hubby to make a ‘holster’ to go on the side of the sofa to hold it..looks like it could be a brilliant invention for those not able to use buttons too….well done to you both and good luck!

And some shots from the video as a gallery

The old account @The_WandCompany is discontinued.

I already changed the twitter widget of kymera-wand.com to point to the new account. So you also stay informed if you visit us regularly.

Charlie also presents the Kymera Wand in this unique collection of high quality images provided by TheWandCompany.

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.

But it looked like the name, the wand maker Chris Barnardo used for several years to present his creative projects on instructables.

Thats Kaptin Scarlett for you. And here is how he got his name (from the beautifully made description of the making of theGolden Filigree Dragon’s Eggcase:

After our extensive journey, our supplies were running low and in order to finish the presentation case we used to store and later show the egg, the luscious scarlet velvet lining of my favourite all-weather coat had to be cut up for to make the pillow covering. I made such a fuss over this calamity that the rest of the party nicknamed me Kaptin Scarlet, and name that has endured to this day.

velvet scarlett eggcase box

Of the many projects he presented there, the mentioned one as well as those may be of interest to the dear reader:

• Make a real wand out of paper and glue gun glue which inspired the Kymera Wand
• a magic wand for lumos and revealing your secret charms
• Distress your Kymera Wand
• Make a gorgeous Dragon Egg

Even more projects of the Wand Makers inspiration can be found on the amazing DadCanDo site that is dedicated to parents caring for the fun and joy in the lives of their children.

Especially the Wizadry and Magic and the Dragonry categories offer a lot to the lovers of these fantastic things. But it is worth to explore the whole site for lots of ideas and inspiration.

In his splendid role as Kaptin Scarlett the Wand Maker Chris Barnardo spent some time tarnishing a Kymera Wand so that it looks like it was made of ivory or bone.

He also offered use to use the images and text, so we’d love to quote from the instructables introduction:

This instructable will show you how to make (almost) anything look like old ivory or bone. The technique I have used is also called distressing. I am distressing (you might want to call it a creative hacking) my beloved Kymera Wand. However you got one, hacking a $90 gadget takes some guts, but I think the result speaks for itself and you end up taking something original and turning it into something completely unique.

Below you can see how the wand is transmogrified in 13 well documented steps from being your usual wooden colored magical instrument to an elegant creamy white beauty.

Please look at the instructable and comment and rate it or comment here. And spread the word, it is worthwhile.

Before starting you should perhaps consider the Chris’ last words:

At last it is time to remove the masking tape and review your handiwork.

Phew, either it looks fab or you have just ruined a hundred dollars of high tech wizardry. Perhaps it might have been better to practice on an old wooden spoon first. …

If you don’t like what you see, mask up and go back to step one and start again… remember as it says on the Kymera Wand manual…

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT.

Wand in the Pocket

The Wand Makers were kind enough to offer us the chance to present the wand pouches to you first.

Pouches for the Kymera Wand

So here they are – available first in an amazing fine red Chinese silken fabric, embroidered with golden dragons. Your wand slides into the pouch easily and is hidden and protected by some powerful charms the Wandmakers put into the golden threads.

This pocket is not only for the lucky Kymera wand owner but for everyone who has a magic wand of his own. It is also the perfect gift for every aspiring or experienced wizard you happen to know.

The pockets are available for just EUR 9,95. When you order them with your wand they’re included in the free shipping offer, otherwise we ask for a flat 2 EUR worldwide shipping fee.

Only available in red.

So don’t hesitate and “Pocket Your Wand”

Order Pocket for your Wand

Order Wand with Pocket

Envelope with pouch

Please bear in mind:
That wand’s batteries should be isolated, i.e. turned round or taken out before
transporting the wand. As because it is a motion sensitive piece of
equipment, transport activates it, uses up the batteries and can put the
wand in to various modes including a sequence which completes a factory
reset.

Envelope for pouch

All the information you need

Hello.

Sorry for the trouble you’ve been having – it sounds most likely that you haven’t quite got the hang of the gestures yet. In case you haven’t seen them already, we’ve put some short video clips of each gesture on our website to help show you how to perform the gestures – see http://www.thewandcompany.com/Manual.html and click on the typewriter-style buttons. Also, a few hints that might help:

• If you’re having trouble, stop and hold the wand steady and horizontal for a couple of seconds before trying again.
• Waving the wand more vigorously doesn’t tend to work well – short, positive movements are best.
• For the rotation gestures, you need to rotate the wand very slowly and smoothly one quarter-turn, keeping the tip steady. Once you’ve gone just over a quarter-turn, the wand will register the rotation and go into fine-resolution rotation mode, where it will register an event every 15 degrees – this allows you to control the volume with only small movements of your wrist.

There are a few videos on YouTube that might be helpful too:

• practising with the wand
• programming the wand
• using the wand
• a video made by one of our German resellers
• an example of controlling a TV and set-top box with the wand

Once you get the hang of it, you should find that the gestures are quite straightforward to perform, but it is like an instrument requiring dexterity, it takes a bit of practice to get used to it. If you’ve already learned some IR codes onto the wand, then it would be a good idea to do a factory reset to put in back into full practice mode, as Michael suggested :

• Put the wand into learning mode (point upwards and double tap)
• Do any gesture to make it start the rapid pulsing
• Instead of sending it some IR from a regular remote, do the “big swish” gesture while the rapid pulsing is going on
• The wand will do a few fast strong pulses to acknowledge the erase request, then the same again shortly afterwards to confirm that erase is complete.
• Take the wand out of learning mode (point downwards and tap)
• The wand will now be back to its factory-default state, in full “practice mode” for every gesture.

I hope that helps, but do let us know if you’re still having any problems.

Cheers,

Richard

_________________
Richard Blakesley
The Wand Company Ltd

There are a few different types of Virgin Media remote controls, and some of them use alternating infra-red (IR) codes which are different with each button press – these are sometimes known as “toggle codes”, and are intended to avoid multiple commands being executed accidentally if the IR beam is broken during transmission (by the cat or your wife walking between the remote control and the Virgin box).

So, the first time you press the “channel up” button (for example, though this also applies to most of the buttons), it will send one IR code (let’s call it “code A”, which will repeat for as long as you hold the button down), but the next time you press the same button, it will send a second IR code (B). On the third press, you’ll be back to the first code A again, and so on. The Virgin box will action a channel change when it sees code A, but it won’t change the channel again if another code A is received consecutively, but is instead waiting to receive code B before it’ll change channel in the same direction.

The wand can only learn the IR code it sees when the button is pressed once during learning mode, which will be either code A or code B. So, repeated gestures will send the same IR code each time, and that causes the problem you’re experiencing.

Fortunately, there is a work-around:

• Whilst the set-top box is expecting to see A,B,A,B for repeated channel up (and, say, C,D,C,D for channel down), putting any other IR code in between the repeated A’s will also work OK (e.g. A,X,A,X for two channel up changes, or C,X,C,X for two channel down changes).
• An undocumented feature of the wand is that you can actually learn more than one remote control button onto each gesture (as a kind of macro) if you press two buttons in quick succession whilst the wand is doing the fast pulsing during learning mode.
• Therefore if you first press the button that you want to use (e.g. channel up) and then quickly press another button which has no effect (e.g. the yellow button on the Virgin remote does nothing most of the time), then the wand will learn two IR codes (e.g A,X) onto that gesture.

Now when you perform repeated gestures for channel up (e.g. flick upwards), the Virgin box will receive code A (to change the channel up), then code X (which will do nothing but make it forget that it had just received code A), then the next code A (on the next flick upwards) should cause the channel to change again as expected. We’ve tested the wand with two different Virgin boxes – on the first one it didn’t use these “toggle” codes so there was no issue, but for the second box we had to do this workaround, then everything worked fine. It might take you a couple of attempts to get the timing right for learning the “macro” of two buttons onto each gesture, but it’s not too difficult once you get the hang of it.

Sorry for such a long-winded explanation – I hope it all makes sense, but please let us know if not.

Cheers,

Richard

_________________
Richard Blakesley
The Wand Company Ltd

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.

Techno magic

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

He also put new gorgeous pictures of the Wand online on the Gallery. These should make your eyes gleam with greed and your mouth watery.

Photo Plate taken of the Kymera Wand

Update: I added the twitter stream of the wandmakers to this site in the sidebar at the lower right.

Well, right from the start, we wanted to give the wand a proper name
rather than a rather boring title of what it was. That is, we didn’t
really want to call it “Magic Wand” for example. The Kymera is all
about fantasy and making that fantasy real for everyone using modern
technology. I drew inspiration from the name of the sword that Bilbo
uses in Lord of the Rings, called “Sting”. It is such an evocative
name that really describes the sword and what it stands for.

For our wand we wanted something powerful and also with a meaning that
tied in with what it was. The name Kymera is a version of the more
traditional spelling of the word Chimera. This change in spelling
allows us to register the name and make it ours. As Chimera (or thus
in our case Kymera) is typically a mythical creature made from two or
more other creatures.

Two of the dictionary definitions of Chimera are as follows:

chi⋅me⋅ra (actually pronounced as we spell it with the K)

1. a mythological, fire-breathing monster, commonly represented with a
   lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail.
2. an organism composed of two or more genetically distinct tissues,
   as an organism that is partly male and partly female, or an
   artificially produced individual having tissues of several species.

The wand is a cunning blend of old fashioned quality of ownership and
design, packed with very hi-tech modern sensors and intelligence,
hence the name Kymera.

I hope that this gives you a little bit more of an insight into the Kymera Wand.

The overall length of the wand is designed to be 353mm (the 71st prime
number),
the wand breaks down into three sections (three is a prime), the shaft, the
crisscross (magical engine) area and the handle body and they are 173mm,
79mm and 101mm, respectively – themselves all prime numbers.

You know something magical has to come of it.

Cheers

Chris

Original Design

Here is one of the early concept sketches of the wand. All the basic
features were there from the start.

The aim of the design was to provide balance in the hand and a good
weight distribution.

The look had to borrow cues from Victoriana, so
that the finished item looked and felt like something that you really
wanted to touch and hold and to keep.

The design had to give a clue about the magic that was within.

Of course the design also had to house all the necessary
components. In this case the magical engine at the heart of the wand
has to draw its power from somewhere. Exotic power sources and even
real magic was considered, but given the rather patchy availability of
these we felt that the simplest solution was to draw all the power
needed from two AAA primary cell batteries.

Two other pictures show some of the reference we gathered to help the
design process.

Cheers

Chris

handle studies

Handle Studies from Pens