HWTrek sponsored 30 hardware creators and accelerators to visit Taiwan, Beijing, and Shenzhen on Asia Innovation Tour 2015 in August—and also in April 2014. We’re doing it again this spring. Register on the HWTrek platform and create a project  to apply to join the next Asia Innovation Tour 2016 cohort destined to meet manufacturing industry experts, see assembly lines, and gain insights about China’s market in April 2016.

We reached out to Chris Zhao-Holland (CTO and Managing Director at Tivitas) to learn more about the development of Sinister. Chris participated in Asia Innovation Tour this past August.

HWTrek: Please introduce yourself and your project?

I’m the founder and development officer of Tivitas Interactive, an awesome group in Ontario, Canada. Our first project is Sinister, which is a new kind of peripheral. It’s not meant to replace the keyboard, but augment it like the mouse did 50 years ago. We think of it as a hybrid device that utilizes the accuracy of a mouse with the intuitiveness of putting your hand on a controller to maneuver in games. By plugging any mouse into Sinister’s USB port, it convinces the computer that the pair functions as a single controller and you’re able to play any games without downloading any new drivers.

fea-home-intro-sinister

Furthermore, the device has unique buttons and wrist rest curves to support a left hand comfortably, while having all the necessary buttons in a personalized layout, thanks to our interchangeable, cross platform modules that we call Flux Elements. Users can further customize Sinister’s appearance and button layout by upgrading to new Elements over time. Customers will be able to buy a device that they can configure to match their playstyle. We have replaceable ‘Skins’ which will change the look of the product, vibrational haptics to create physical feedback, swappable magnetic Flux Elements that can be upgraded as the customer desires and a smart phone APP to control options and link our Internet of Things.

My game style rank:

  1. Story
  2. Tie: Visuals; Gameplay
  3. Sound (so underappreciated in games)
  4. Experience and innovation
  5. Multi-player

HWTrek: What’s the inspiration for your project? What problem does it solve or address?

NEED.

hand-gaming-customization

All my life I was a console gamer, however due to 4 main reasons, 5 years ago I decided to transition over to the PC.

  1. Indie games are more prevalent on PC because:
    1. The barrier to entry do not include large fees (i.e. MS Xbox and Sony PS). Indie, by definition, are mostly individuals, or small groups, they don’t have the spare resources to enter the console platform;
    2. The community tries to perpetuate indie development through programs, such as Steam Green Light;
  2. Console controller: while really comfortable, doesn’t work for all game types, such as RTS (real time strategy). This is what the STEAM Controller tries to solve.
  3. Until recently, all new consoles generations used ground breaking technology, capable of pushing the highest-end performance for games, for the time period, and always sold at a loss, made up by licensing and game sales. When I heard the announcement details for this generation’s console (XBOX one, PS4), I was disappointed. They are not pushing the envelope as in past and changing the business model. It wasn’t all bad, just not sticking with the traditions that got the industry to the current scale. At the time of the announcement, I was already anxious as the typical 5 year life cycle had passed by 2 years, and not having best possible graphic hardware was disappointing, as I’m a visual person.

Now here’s my NEED. Once I had finally built my very expensive PC after 4 years, I was eager to start enjoying it. But, I had a difficulty trying to transition from a simple, single, minimum button handheld device to two separate devices, 100’s of buttons, and nowhere near the comfortability of the controller. Because of my determination, I tried for weeks only to develop hand cramps. I went out and bought two different peripherals that I thought would make my transition easier, but they were actually more difficult to use.

What I wanted was a controller, and it turns out that IF you can get your hands on a Wired Xbox controller, it will work, but only in 80% of games, and usually not indies or RTS. On top of this, of those games, in 60% of them once you plug in a controller, you lose access to keyboard and mouse. Thus what I NEEDED, was a simple device that was like an XBOX controller, but for a surface, which allowed me to use my mouse.

It’s actually easier to do this now, because the XBOX One wireless controllers are USB micro, but 3 years ago they were next to impossible to get.

usb-port-for-mouse

HWTrek: What solutions did you use for hardware design?

My background is in sciences, I only had my intuition, and builder / hacker experience going in. I really wanted to do this on my own at first and fund it through something like Kickstarter. But analyzing successful campaigns, I saw a trend, they usually have teams. As I have no idea of how to take my clay and cardboard models to the virtual world, I decided to seek those who could help perpetuate the goal, on a ramen budget, I looked to the new graduates.

Now I know 90% of the various aspects of hardware designing and manufacturing. Now I know there are ODMs, which is possibly what I should have originally looked at, but even being a tech enthusiast, I didn’t know they existed back then. For future projects, the current plan is to do some design in-house, but seek out a good ODM to finish the job so we can focus on sales and marketing until we get big enough.

HWTrek: What solutions did you use for prototyping?

Actually, one of the driving forces for me to do it on my own was 3D printing and now we’ve gone through quite a few makes and models, rip-rap, 3D systems, Stratasys. Wow, don’t we have lots of iterations! I would love someone to invent a way to reuse some of the plastic, #hint hint#. For a long time, we had our printer working 24/7, but it’s in hibernation now that the Sinister design is finished.

Now we have the really good CNC model, so we can show it off to the investors.

fea-discover-sinister

HWTrek: What are the takeaways and lessons learned from working on this project that you’d like to share with other hardware startups?

  1. Know your market well, become an expert. Try to define your target customer as quick as possible.
  2. An industrial designer should be your best friend, partner, or first hire.
  3. Prioritize: desires, core competencies, business model:
    1. If, like me, one of your goals in life is to learn how stuff is done and do it yourself, then you need to stamp that in the ground quickly, if not, consider an ODM or OEM.
    2. If you are not like the above, and even at a certain point you will need to refine your focus and stick to your core competency. HWTrek has a lot of resources for the other aspects.
    3. Business model seems to mean different things to different people, but generally it means: What will your company do? Design, manufacture, and sell? Or design, ODM, and sell?
  4. Find an accelerator/incubator, which specifically knows hardware, ASAP, there are so many aspects to starting a hardware business, it’s impossible to not only do them all single handedly (at least effectively) and they will be your guide.

HWTrek: What trend do you see that is changing your sector/industry or what shift would you like to see happen?

What I would like to see:

  1. Bring more human senses into the virtual world, like tactile sense through haptics, and the recognition that haptics≠vibration. This is a long term thing and involves:
    1. Ensuring customers understand tactility is more than just a vibration;
    2. Hardware developers incorporating components to provide true haptics, motors can only do so much;
    3. Someone (possible software developers themselves) getting together to define a new standard API for how to use the hardware;
    4. Developers taking advantage of developers;
  2. More open standards and less locked down private proprietary ones. I understand why many companies do this, but I’ve seen lots of great technologies that died due to this type of strategy. Generally, commonly accessible standards and APIs win long term.
  3. See more big companies collaborate with start-ups;
  4. See the community as a whole actually work together to work toward the above.

Trends I see:

  1. Very concerned about VR. I feel hardware and software developers are not doing enough to inform the customers that VR is not just “3D next”, but requires you being active and constantly moving, thus very different to traditional gaming. I’m afraid the VR hype is a bubble because of this.
  2. More integration between handheld and PC, resulting in the vanishing of the need for traditional consoles.

realistic-haptic-feedback

HWTrek: What’s next for your project?

We are very close to manufacturing Sinister. We’re just looking for the right partner to help us get the quantity produced that we need to hit the markets effectively.

HWTrek: What are your ‘go-to’ sources for tech information and news? (Do you have any recommendations for a must-read/watch/listen article, book, blog, film, or podcast, etc.?)

My daily news sources are Engadget, techpowerup.com, BBC News, ArsTechnica, and Anandtech.