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

We finally made it. This week Dream-Racer is being shown to the general public, healthcare and occupational therapy professionals at Naidex 2007 (NEC Birmingham) and Special Needs North (GMEX Manchester).

Leading up to these two exhibitions we asked Quality Enabling Devices Ltd to act as the distributor of Dream-Racer and to introduce our radio controlled technology to special needs children and young adults in the UK and Ireland. 

QED is a family business led by managing director Richard Bullock. They manufacture and distribute a large range of innovative products for people with special needs from their headquarters in Gosport, Hampshire. We first met them at the Special Needs Fringe Exhibition in January. Over the next few months got to know Richard and Nadine Farris (sales director) liked their approach, their enthusiasm for Dream-Racer and the other ideas we are working on.

With Richard and Nadine leading the commercial introduction of Dream-Racer we should have more time to focus on completing the development work required for Dream-Gamer.  We also have an early stage concept for a PC accessory we plan to scope out.

With QED focused on UK and Ireland my next commercial challenge is to identify potential distributors across the rest of Europe. Interestingly, my visit to Naidex today already pointed me in the direction of two companies, one in Denmark and the other in Sweden that have similar expertise to QED.

Now I'm wondering what I'll find Manchester.

Mike

Regular followers of this blog will know a little about Dream-Racer and our goal of developing radio controlled toys for children and young adults with physical disabilities. Today we made another leap forward by completing a programme of regulatory compliance.

We have completed the testing and risk assessment required to enable us to delare Dream-Racer radio controlled cars and trucks meet the requirements of the 1999/5/EC directive. I know that all sounds very technical but what it means is that Dream-Racer can be CE marked. I must admit I found the process rather daunting but fortunately we had some very capable admin help from John Watts, a consultant specialising in these requirements and from Derek Barlow at DB Technology (Cambridge) Ltd.  Derek Barlow was responsible for checking the electromagnetic compatibility of the transmitter and receiver used in the Nikko radio controlled cars and trucks.

This link connects directly to the EC Declaration on the Dream-Racer web site. Now that CE marking is behind us we are pressing ahead with our search for an electronics assembly operation to build the various Dream-Racer components. 

You can also find more background on CE marking at Wikipedia.

Mike 

The Dream-Racer web site has been up and running for nearly two months and already it's getting noticed. If you type Dream-Racer into Google the site is listed on page three. But, when the search is restricted to Google UK Dream-Racer is listed on page one and the main catalog page on page 2. (Excuse the spelling that's how Actinic spells it.)

The same search on MSN World or UK lists both the catalog page and this blog on page 1. Additionally, one of my other sites, Excitim also features on page one because of the case study reference linking through to Dream-Racer.

Alongside these there are lots of other pages because of references to Dream Racer and other items that are not relevant to either this blog or our Dream-Racer site.

To get high up the listing I need to help Google, MSN, Yahoo and all the other search engines out there rank the site and this blog more effectively.  I've learnt that the process - getting a better ranking - is the goal of search engine optimisation (SEO for short)  Perhaps the gurus will disagree but, to me, SEO appears more of an art than science.  Log onto any SEO forum and you'll hear opinions and counter-opinions all the time.

The one thing they all agree on is the essential use of keywords and phrases in your web text. I've worked on selecting a series of keywords and phrases that seem most relevant to describe the radio controlled toys we designed for children and young adults with physical disabilities and special educational needs.

The other essential ingredient to a high ranking site is the quality and number of links your site attracts. Except it's not the ones you create by pointing outwards; it's the links that point inwards to your site that matter most.

The gurus also suggest that you need to build these links slowly: too many in one go is bad news. A bit like the game of snakes and ladders were climbing up ladders is good but, a wrong shake, sends you sliding back down the snakes.

Yesterday I contacted two organisations keen to list sites that referenced adaptive technology products for individuals with disabilities. Robin at Ableize and Alpha at Enable Together were both very willing to create links from their sites to Dream-Racer. Robin has done even more. Thanks guys.

Over the next weeks and months I'll be looking to increase the number of links to Dream-Racer. If anyone knows of other suitable sites were the focus is adaptive technology for individuals with physical disabilities then let me know and I'll take a look.

Mike 

A couple of weeks ago we went to the BETT exhibition at Olympia to take a look at the new products and technology being developed for children with disabilities and also to gauge how Dream-Racer would be perceived by the specialists in the field.

Today I received an e-mail from the organisers saying they had produced a review of the event.  If you couldn't get there yourself but would like to get a flavour for the event click on this link BETT Video.

Mike 

Today is a perfect day to add a new post to this blog.

Yesterday John Homer finished editing the "Dream-Racer" song he composed for us and I couldn't wait to get it up on the site.  John sings and plays guitar and George is on synthesizer. Have a listen and let us know what you think.

January whizzed by so fast that I was left thinking what happened and what did we do.  Actually we did a lot!  Mid-month we went to the BETT exhibition and, even more relevant for us, we found the Special Needs Fringe Exhibition just across the road from BETT.  Later in the month we visited the Toy Fair 2007 to meet up with the guys at Nikko Toys and a series of other companies.

We started the CE registration work on Dream-Racer and Dream-Gamer and also got the Dream-Racer web site up and running.  Out of the blue I was contacted by Jane Lee from Dexterity with an offer to help us promote Dream-Racer to the press sponsored by her client Actinic.  These are the folks that produce the e-commerce engine, Actinic Catalog, at the heart of the Dream-Racer web site.

We also made a lot of progress with our Dream-Gamer concept.  I've not mentioned too much about Dream-Gamer so far but, as a reminder, it's our concept to enable disabled children to play games on the Sony PlayStation without needing to use the standard controller.

So to end this post we would like to say a special thanks to John and George for composing and recording the Dream-Racer song.

Mike & Mark

I had planned to write this addition to the Dream-Racer blog yesterday, in daylight, but that was before the power went off because of the storms. Luckily, we have a few candles around the house and the darkness was an opportunity to light up.

Regular followers of this blog will know that we are developing radio controlled toys for disabled children and young adults. For the benefit of new readers this blog is about Dream-Racer a "black box" we have developed that enables children with physical disabilities to drive radio controlled scale model cars produced by Nikko Toys.

Last week I finished the Dream-Racer web site.  You can find it at www.dream-racer.com.

The site uses Actinic Catalog as the e-commerce engine. At the moment we only have two Dream-Racer rigs on the site but that will change as we move ahead. The next thing we are planning is a series of ads to promote broader awareness of Dream-Racer and its potential for disabled children and young adults.

Have you ever looked at the sponsored ads on the right hand side of a Google search and wondered about them? Well, their structure is very strict. The title has a maximum of 25 characters and both lines one and two only allow 35 characters each including spaces. Sit back and think about this; with so few characters it's actually quite tough to get your message across.

This is my first attempt:

Title: Toys from Dream-Racer

Line 1: Radio controlled model cars for

Line 2: children with physical disabilities

If you do see our ads when surfing please don't click on them because it will cost us at least 10p or so. Instead go direct to the Dream-Racer web site by typing www.dream-racer.com into your browser.

When you visit the site you may spot a new product announcement we call Dream-Gamer. It's a new idea we have that will enable disabled children and young adults to play games on the Sony PlayStation. I'll be writing more about this next week.

All comments welcome.

Mike

Earlier this week Mark and I went to the BETT exhibition at London Olympia. BETT is all about the use of technology in education and how information and computing technology can help children learn.

It was an early start on Wednesday morning. I left the house at 5:20, met up with Mark at 6:00 and by 10:30 we walked into Olympia. Wednesday was the first day and I had expected it to be fairly quiet. The reality was a little different - it was already heaving. Our main interest was in visiting the special needs section to take a look at the range of products on offer and to check if there we could see anything similar to Dream-Racer on the market.

To help explain our ideas behind Dream-Racer I had made up a simple slide in Powerpoint - this one here.

We had some good discussions, met a number of people and companies that we will be contacting shortly.

A few hours later it was time to leave. Only to find the service on the District Line was suspended, so we set off walking back to Earls Court for the Piccadilly Line.

As we walked over the bridge we noticed a sign announcing "The Special Needs Fringe" was open. As neither of us knew anything about it we decided a short detour was in order. Our first thought was that it was an overflow from the BETT exhibition just across the road. Actually it's not: it's an entirely separate organisation that has been running for I think ten years.  To cut a long story short we spend more time with people in the Fringe than we did at BETT.

We had some excellent discussions and the opportunity to talk to some very knowledgeable people about our ideas for Dream-Racer. Overall, a worthwhile visit and especially after we found toured the Fringe.

I'll be writing next week about our web site: it's just gone live at www.dream-racer.com

Mike

Regular readers will know that Mark and I have developed a technology we call Dream-Racer that can be used by children and young adults that have physical disabilities or loss of limbs. Dream-Racer enables users to "drive" a scale model racing car in a similar way that an able-bodied person would using a hand held joystick.

If this is the first time you have come across this blog and would like to know more you could jump to the first post by clicking here or here if you want to skip back a few entries to get the gist of how Dream-Racer works.

Before Christmas I said that I had taken one of the Dream-Racer demo rigs to a school in Shropshire. A week later I went along to collect it and, I must admit, I was eager to hear how they had got on with it.

Well, first of all, I would like to say thanks to Gill Flannery and Pete Smith for being so welcoming and willing to have a go with Dream-Racer. But, most of all, a special thanks to the students that tried it out.

Overley Hall School

I've taken this text from the home page of the Overly Hall School web site.

"Overley Hall is a co-educational, independent, residential Special School offering education and care for children with Severe Learning Difficulties, Autism, Epilepsy and associated challenging behaviours.

The age range of the children is from nine to nineteen years. Children may join the School at any age within the age group. All the children at Overley have statements of Special Educational Need.

The catchment area served by the School is the whole of the UK. Overley Hall offers a new beginning and support for children and young adults, whose educational, managerial, social, emotional and behavioural needs can best be met by residential, special education."

If you would like to know more about Overley Hall School take a look at their web site by clicking here. Based on my experience the staff are very friendly and open to new ideas.

The feedback

Overall, not bad. The equipment survived well and was still in one piece when I took it back the base. The students had found it fun although difficult to fully grasp how to control the car. Discussing this with Pete, he felt that the car was probably moving too fast for most of the students and it may be better if we used a slower one.  Secondly, a car that could be controlled on a fixed track would be useful for some students.  Excellent feedback: something we will take into consideration in future designs.

The speed issue we are able to address immediately. Using one or two dummy batteries in the car alongside the regular AA's slows it considerably and makes it more controllable.

Many thanks to Gill and Pete and their students for giving Dream-Racer a test drive and their positive feedback.

Mike  

I collected the first of our Dream-Racer caps today complete with the embroidered logo and they look good. Take a look at the pictures in the photo album.

We had a bit of a debate over which colours, font and letter sizing to use at first. I even went to the extent of mocking up some labels in Adobe Photoshop, sticking them to the hat and photographing them to see how they looked.

In the end the specialists at Smart took charge and suggested Dream-Racer embroidered in gold or sky coloured thread would look good on the navy cap and changing the font to one called "speedy" would work better. And they were right!

Even better, Muna Dilling at Smart said if I brought two caps in on Saturday morning they would set-up the pattern in the computer and embroider them for me while I waited. One hour later I walked out of the shop with the finished job. Not bad service just one week before Christmas.

 So, continuing to sing their praises, if you need an embroidery job doing on your school uniform, workwear, or something you want personalising I suggest you get in touch with Smart. You can find their workshop in the Barracks, Newcastle-Under-Lyme, West Midlands.

On Monday I'll be collecting the demo rig from the special needs school that borrowed it earlier this week. They will have had it for about a week and I'm looking forward to hearing how they got on with it - more on this next week.

Mike

Regular readers of this blog will know that Dream-Racer is toy for disabled children. For the benefit of new readers, Dream-Racer technology enables children with physical disabilities to "drive" a radio controlled scale model racing car using simple head movements instead of using a hand-controlled joystick. 

Over the last few weeks the Dream-Racer web site has been taking shape and it's now time to move it from the trial server into the real world.  Steve Ashdown at Phoot Creative is going to host the site alongside my other e-commerce business Opulus Gifts.

Choosing the e-commerce software was easy.  The Opulus Gifts site is built with Actinic Catalog and, rather than hunt around for something new, it was an easy decision to use Actinic for the Dream-Racer site as well.  All being well the site should be up and running in early January.

Getting a project like Dream-Racer ready for the commercial launch is a time consuming process. But, we have now finalised the source of caps, Geoff at Nikko Toys helped Mark with some of the critical electronic components he needed, we purchased our first consignment of printed circuit boards, we found a company that can produce the cap liners, etc., etc.

And the big news is ...

The first demo rig is with a special needs school in Shropshire. I took it along earlier this week and left it with them for the children to play with. At this stage we are looking for feedback - hopefully positive but even some of the other type will be helpful as well. I'll write about this next week.

Take note, if you are a teacher at a special needs school for disabled children and would like to try one of our demo units in your school get in touch.  Call 08707 117153 or e-mail me at: michael@dream-racer.com

Mike

At the risk of showing my age, who remembers Bernie the bolt ?  Saturday night (or was it Sunday?) started out with "up a little, right a little, down a little ... shoot !!  Now it's probably stretching the imagination to think anyone following this blog will know what I'm talking about so here's an interview featuring Bernie himself.

The whole point of that reminiscence is to show that the technology used in Dream-Racer is very easy to visualise. 

Since a picture can paint a thousand words I thought this one would help to explain how Dream-Racer is used to drive a radio controlled car - just like the cars in the photo album produced by Nikko.

The user wears the Dream-Racer hat and drivers' the car by moving their head forward or back, left or right. Each Dream-Racer hat can be fine tuned to the capabilities of the driver and their car can be made to run faster or slower depending on how proficient their driving skills become.

The same technology can be mounted in a glove or shoe to cater for various levels of disability the driver may have.

Next week we'll be finalizing everything to get ready to take five or six demo sets to the special needs schools around Telford, West Midlands.  No doubt we'll get some 'real' feedback from the kids as they start playing with them.

Mike

The last few weeks have been intense.  Followers of this blog will know we are working on a project to develop toys for children with learning difficulties and physical disabilities. (read Daniel's story)

Yesterday we visited Nikko UK to meet with Geoff Brice and Andy Price and what a welcome we had. Many thanks guys you are tremendous hosts !!

Nikko were involved with the project right at the beginning and so it was natural that we would want to talk to them again now that Dream-Racer is nearing its commercial launch. For those that don't know, Nikko are one of the largest producers of radio controlled cars, boats, planes etc in the world.  Click on the link to seen their range of toys: Nikko-Toys or take a look at the photos in the album.

After a quick cuppa and stretch - we had spent nearly 4 hours in the car - Geoff took us on a tour of their demo room and workshops.  For boys-that-like-toys this was special to say the least.  Better still, we got to play with all the cars as well. (Pity they don't have a pool - I wanted to try the radio controlled boats and submarine.)

But, what impressed us most, was the eagerness Geoff and Andy showed in helping us.  We drove away with a boot-load of model cars and parts we will use in the demo units Mark is building (see the "Now it's your turn challenge" blog entry)

Driving home our minds were buzzing with new concepts, possibilities and what-ifs.  On reflection, it was one of the best business meeting I've every had thanks to Geoff and Andy.

Mike

Anyone following this blog will have seen me mention Daniel.  I said Daniel was the first person to receive a radio controlled toy "driven" by what we now call the Dream-Racer technology.

This morning I contacted The Sentinel Newspaper and asked them if they could send me a web link to the original story, written by reporter Iain Burchell, published on December 24th 2002.  Unfortunately no link exists but Sentinel's Philip Corrigan sent me a copy of the story they published.

Many thanks to Philip.  By the way, this is the link to The Sentinel Newspaper: http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/

Boffins put Daniel back at the controls

Robotics firm design toys so a paralysed boy can play again

BY Iain Burchell

Little Daniel Reeves is overjoyed at receiving his radio controlled car and boat from Father Christmas Picture: Dave Trumble

ROBOTICS wizards have teamed up with a national charity to make a youngster's Christmas wish come true. Little Daniel Reeves, of Sandyford, was left paralysed from the neck down when he was hit by a car while on holiday in Greece last year. But the five-year-old's frustration at not being able to play with his toys has now been ended by the Round Table charity and boffins at Rehab Robotics Limited.

The robotics firm designed customised remote control toys for Daniel as part of the Roundtable's project to make dreams come true for children with life-threatening or terminal illnesses. Daniel can control the model car and boat by wearing baseball hats fitted with sensor equipment, which make the toys move in the same direction as his head.

His mum, Jillian, said he is thrilled by the presents. She said: "It's brilliant for him to have something he can control himself. He gets really bored and frustrated because he can't play with any of his other toys. "He didn't enjoy Christmas last year because he couldn't really play with anything, so it's wonderful to see him now.

"He hasn't stopped playing with the car since he got it and he can't wait to take the boat down to the lake. "He's picked the controls up really quickly. He loves James Bond and the car is an Aston Martin like in the films. "We're very grateful to the Round Table and Rehab Robotics for doing this for him.”

Peter Bone, area co-ordinator for the charity, donned a Santa costume to give Daniel his presents. He said: "His face lit up when he saw me. He's a plucky young man and we are delighted if we can help to make his life a little bit happier."

The toys were made by Rehab Robotics' senior design engineer Mark Heath at the firm's base on the Staffordshire University campus in College Road, Shelton. Mr Heath said the company, which specialises in rehabilitation systems and medical equipment, hopes to make more toys for Daniel in the future. He added: "It was very pleasing to see Daniel playing with the toys. It's like an extended arm and has given him the freedom to be a child again."

Just coming up to 7:00 PM and I'm whacked.  It seems like I've spent most of the day in the car rushing north, south, east and west on the Dream-Racer quest.

It started this morning when I switched on the mobile and received Mark's text from the night before.  "urgent: get me some red and green leds from Maplin.  Need eight of each.  Need them to finish the Dream-Racer calibration unit.  Get them from Stoke opposite the Sainsbury's.  Only get those with code numbers CK46a and CK46b"  As it turned out CK46b was a typo and should have been CK47b - but that's not much between partners. 

Obviously it was going to be one of those gofer days !!

Just a recap, Mark (I've just realised Mark rhymes with Spark and all of the electronics guys in the movies are called Sparks ...) So, Sparks has built a radio controlled interface - Dream-Racer - that can be mounted into a cap and can be used for "driving" model racing cars similar to the ones produced by Nikko (see the photo album)

He did this so that individuals with upper limb disabilities or restricted hand movements can still play with radio controlled cars.  Sparks and I believe that this technology could be used to design a series of toys for children with learning difficulties and could be very helpful to teachers of children with special educational needs.

As it happened I needed to go to Telford to discuss some aspects of the Dream-Racer logo and caps I had worked on last week.  Actually, there is also a Maplins in Telford so this worked out nicely.  They did have eight reds but only three greens so I needed to drive to Stoke for the five remaining green leds in the West Midland (perhaps I exaggerate a little but not much!)

Now, when you look at one of these very specific CK leds they don't actually look very special at all but you probably don't know what I now know - they contain an inbuilt resistor.  How's that.

Eventually we met up at 4:30.  I delivered the parcel and after a brief chat was back in the car.

I'll give you all an update later in the week.

Mike

PS - LED stands for "light emitting diode" but I guess you all knew that.

If you have been following this blog - many thanks for your support.  Or, if you've just found it by chance here's a short recap of the story so far.

This blog is about Dream-Racer an electronic device - let's call it a "black box" that can be used to control, for example, a model racing car such as the ones in the picture album.  Effectively the black box replaces the conventional joy-stick.

Why would anyone be interested in doing that?  Well, the big difference from a joy-stick is that the black box allows us to do some things in a different way that creates opportunities for others to take advantage of.  So, for example, we can be built the electronics into a cap (glove or shoe) and you don't need to use your hands to control your car.

By mounting the black box into a cap individuals with severe upper limb trauma or lost upper limbs or restricted movements in their hands, can use simple head movement to control their racing car.

The idea was originally developed by Mark whilst working at the local university.  The first system was made for a young lad that had been paralysed after a road accident.  Almost immediately he found he could "drive" his racing car using head movements. This helped to boost his confidence and helped his general condition to improve.

Recently Mark and I go together and became enthusiastic about making this technology more broadly available.  This blog is about our experiences in turning Dream-Racer into a small business that support less advantaged individuals.

Now it's your turn to give it a go

Here's your chance: if you are a teacher at a UK school for children (8-15 years) with special educationals needs and would like to see if Dream-Racer could help them to learn new skills please get in touch.

We have built five sets (caps and cars) that we are using for demos and trials.  E-mail me if you would like to try Dream-Racer with you pupils. My e-mail address is: michael@dream-racer.com

If your school is in the West Midlands I'll bring it along and you can keep it for a week or so.

Mike

I'm trying-out the "Windows Live Writer" today to add entries to this blog mainly because I wanted to do stuff off-line and upload it when it was more convenient.  Also seems like a better idea than sitting at my desk all the time.

This should make it a bit easier - eh, when you have a wireless laptop you may as well make the most of it ...

The good news is that we are making good progress on the business model.  Although, sometimes it seems like two steps forwards and three back.

Over the last few days Sarah has been working on some logo ideas we will be able to transfer to caps, shirts, bags etc so I thought it would be good to show off one of the ideas.

Tomorrow I'll be adding a web page to the Excitim site to show how Dream-Racer will work.

If you like the way this blog is developing why not bookmark it and check back in a few days.

Mike