Farnham, Surrey ... Yesterday, Damon Hill took on all challengers in a marathon one-lap race. Four, pre-teen and two post-teen enthusiasts raced Damon around a special course in aid of Disability Challengers' fund raising appeal for the Farnham play centre for disabled children.

On a course specially constructed to test driving skills and, as it turned out, blocking maneuvers, champion and challenger drove, sometimes backwards, their adapted Dream-Racer Venus trucks along a tricky course watched by excited spectators.

The champion regained much pride following a convincing win in the fifth race: narrowing the score to 3:2 behind the challengers. The sixth and final circuit was crucial. Could the champion take the flag ahead of his determined challenger and draw the series?

Alas, not! The champion was out-driven 4:2 and the Dream-Racer Disability Challengers' championship title went to the six very determined challengers - now champions each.

Hamish put in the best lap-time and his mum was rewarded by £50 of food vouchers - the food of champions - kindly donated by Waitrose.

Many thanks Damon for being such a great sport and to everyone that joined in.

Mike

Pictures next week - I hope.

Over the last few blog entries I've mentioned two new products we are working on - Dream-Gamer and Dream-Mouse. I talked about Dream-Gamer last time; today I thought I'd introduce Dream-Mouse.

We designed Dream-Mouse so that two individuals can share equal access to a PC - at the same time.

Dream-Mouse captures head movements (or other body movements) to give the user full control over applications such as games, e-mail, documents or a browser to access to the internet. It uses similar motion sensors to those built into Dream-Racer to control the cursor on the screen and input switches to control actions within the application.

Four external switches can be plugged into Dream-Mouse and each can be programmed to do tasks such as 'enter', 'open', 'save', 'print' etc. All input switches designed for children and adults with physical disabilities, fitted with standard 3.5 mm jack plugs, can be connected.

Working together ...

Dream-Mouse is designed to allow two users to work together, at the same time, on the same application. Simultaneous dual access creates the possibility for new teaching and learning experiences, teamwork, cooperation and inclusion. With Dream-Mouse, both users can control the same cursor or menu bar in an application.

Typically, the co-worker, perhaps a tutor, would, use a normal mouse or even an adapted tracker-ball pointer to assist or guide the pupil through an exercise. 

Dual access will benefit a whole range of individuals, teams or groups that wish to work together, on the same PC. For some it could be a teaching, learning, skill development scenario. Others may like the challenge of competitive team-gaming events.

Our friends at QED suggested we should give consideration to how folks with different physical disabilities could use Dream-Mouse. That go us thinking and, so far, we have produced three control devices.

1. Cap-Mouse: which captures head movement through sensors similar to those used in Dream-Racer and Dream-Gamer.

2. Pistol-Mouse: which uses hand movement.

3. Mini-Mouse: that relys on finger or thumb control.

I'll have more to say on these as we move through the testing stage and get them ready for commercial release in October.

Disability Challengers fund raising event ...

It's time to pack the Dream-Racer units. Tomorrow, Friday July 27th, is the Disability Organisers fund raising event in Farnham, UK. Damon Hill will be driving a Dream-Racer Venus truck against all would-be challengers. If you are available why not come along to help raise some much needed cash for a new play centre.

More next week.

Mike

Monday started out with a meeting at the Manufacturing Advisory Service - West Midlands with Cecilia and Mike from Wemtech. We met to review the testing Mike had carried out on Dream-Gamer and check the results. Excellent news! Dream-Gamer passed all the tests and it can be CE marked.

We've just the admin to complete, buy-in the various components and we will be ready for the first production run in August. I'll be updating the website shortly to reflect the new CE status of Dream-Gamer. 

The second meeting; notwithstanding the hassle of negotiating the M6 motorway from Wolverhampton, past Birmingham and on to Coventry, was with Mike at Rempoly Automotive.  Early on we decided that building Dream-Racer, and everything else we design, would best be carried out by specialists and Remploy fit the bill very nicely. They have started the production run of Dream-Racer units and in August will begin work on Dream-Gamer. Followed in October, if everything goes well, with production of Dream-Mouse.

It occurred to me that whilst many people will have heard of Remploy not everyone may have a good understanding of what the organisation does. I copied the next paragraph from their website:

"Remploy is the market leading expert in the provision of specialist employment services for disabled people and those who face complex barriers to employment. Our comprehensive range of services enable disabled people, people with a health condition and others to make the most of their skills and abilities, to gain or retain sustainable employment."

Source: www.remploy.co.uk

Mike

Dream-Racer is creating masses of interest. The PR and support we are receiving from Bruce at Actinic and Jane at Dexterity has really helped to get the Dream-Racer web site ranked in the search engines, blogs and specialist magazines. But, the single biggest awareness boost happened on May 9th when Geoff Adams-Spink, Age & disability correspondent, BBC News website, wrote an article about Dream-Racer and featured it on the BBC web site - technology page.

The response was amazing: that week the phone never stopped wringing and my e-mail box was crammed with requests for info and general encouragement from parents, carers, teachers and other inventors.

By Tuesday afternoon the article had been picked-up by bloggers all over the world and our story, cap and car pictures began to appear on a huge number of sites. That afternoon I did a live radio interview with Sean Moncrieff at Newstalk, Ireland and then two film production companies approached us to do a short documentary. No pressure !!! 

All of the media attention and PR is helping to kick-start sales.  QED, our sales partner covering UK and Ireland, are excited by their results since the launch of Dream-Racer's at Naidex 2007.

Early on we decided to concentrate on R&D and prototype production and to ask Remploy to carry out the manufacturing for us; that's now starting to get underway. Remploy will also produce the Dream-Gamer units and, when it's ready, the Dream-Mouse we have been working on for the last month or so.

I'll be updating this blog again next week when Dream-Gamer comes back from the Wemtech test labs - hopefully with all of the CE testing complete.

Thanks to everyone out there for supporting Dream-Racer.  Stay tuned for more about Dream-Gamer and our latest idea Dream-Mouse.

Mike