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Family coding project finds its star in Ringo

Robot drums up enthusiastic Kickstarter support

By Adam Littman, Columbian Staff Writer
Published: September 13, 2015, 6:16am
4 Photos
Siblings Hailey and Parker King play with Ringo, a robotic toy they helped design with their dad, Kevin King, center, on Thursday. Kevin King recently raised more than $80,000 on Kickstarter to start manufacturing and selling the robotic toys out of their Vancouver workshop.
Siblings Hailey and Parker King play with Ringo, a robotic toy they helped design with their dad, Kevin King, center, on Thursday. Kevin King recently raised more than $80,000 on Kickstarter to start manufacturing and selling the robotic toys out of their Vancouver workshop. (Ariane Kunze/The Columbian) Photo Gallery

Kevin King’s first attempt at naming his family’s robot didn’t go too well.

King, 38, along with his two children — Parker, 9, and Hailey, 7 — designed a toy robotic bug that can act in anger, fear, confusion and other moods, so they named her Moody.

“When we first put her up online, two different people wrote in and said, ‘You have a female named Moody. What are you trying to say?’ ” King said. “We hadn’t even thought about that, but didn’t want to upset anyone.”

Sitting around a table one day in search of a new name, one of King’s friends suggested playing off the name of a bug species. The shape, mostly designed by Hailey, resembled a beetle, so King searched on “names of beetles.”

If You Go

What: OMSI’s Mini Maker Faire.

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today.

Where: OMSI, 1945 S.E. Water Ave., Portland.

Cost: Tickets are $15 for adults, or $10 for seniors and kids.

What came up weren’t scientific names of beetles. It was “John, Paul, George and Ringo.”

“Of course,” King said, laughing. “We went with Ringo.”

It’s that go-with-the-flow attitude that originally helped robotics go from family project to the family business fueled by a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $85,000 and left their house swarming with robotic bugs.

Ringo is a palm-sized robot based on a board by Arduino, an open-source prototyping platform using flexible hardware and software. Ringo comes with an accelerometer, gyroscope, six LEDs and a music chirper. The toy comes loaded with a few behaviors and can be taught many more through coding.

“I’ve always been into hacking pieces and parts together,” said King, who taught himself to code.

One day more than a year ago, King attached an LED to an Arduino board and showed Parker how to change the color and blinking pattern of the light.

“He practically pushed me off the keyboard,” King said. “He never took an interest in code like that before.”

Hailey was also interested in what King and Parker were doing, so King told his kids they could build a robot together. After telling his kids the robot couldn’t do things like fly or clean their dishes, they came up with a variety of behaviors for Ringo. The toy can drive in set shapes or distances, follow light, travel along lines and even go into an “attack” mode in which, if Ringo is pushed, she will turn to face that direction and drive toward the attacker. There’s also a “scaredy bug” mode where Ringo drives in the opposite direction of a disturbance.

Parker likes to play with Ringo in attack mode, while Hailey likes when Ringo’s eye change colors, especially to light green and pink. King recently programmed a setting that changes the robot’s eye color to match color it detects in a sensor; placing the robot on a pink shirt turns the eyes pink.

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After seeing how his kids took to designing Ringo and changing the settings through coding, King realized it might make for a great educational toy for others.

“We were originally going to make two for the family, but as I looked around, I didn’t see a lot like this on the market,” King said.

With a new name, sleek design and emotional bug, all the Kings needed to bring Ringo to the world was some money.

They created a Kickstarter asking for $12,000 for tooling and parts.

They cleared that in about three days.

“Things that incorporate coding seemed to do well on Kickstarter, so I thought we would get to $12,000,” he said. “I thought maybe if things went well, we could get to 20.”

When the Kickstarter ended in three weeks, the Vancouver family was looking at $85,478 from 738 backers. King originally expected to make a batch of 100 or so toys, ship them out and then move onto something else. Instead, he was looking at a full-on infestation, as he had to figure out how to build 1,000 bugs.

King still isn’t sure how Ringo blew up. Kickstarter listed it as a “Staff Pick,” giving it a more prominent spot on the site, which helped.

He finished shipping out all the Kickstarter orders in early September, so the public is just getting their hands on Ringo. He’s also had a few orders from his site, www.plumgeek.com, where people can buy kits to build Ringo for $89. Through his site, King also set up a forum for people to talk about Ringo and share behaviors they programmed for the robot.

“There’s been nothing really surprising yet,” he said. “I think that’s coming, though.”

King said he’s also been in touch with a few teachers who are interested in bringing Ringo into the classroom, which is where he’d like to see the toy go. Ringo comes with a 64-page guidebook that is set up like a lesson, starting off with simple topics and getting more complex.

King and his kids are going to bring their work to the public today, when they’re part of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s Mini Maker Faire, which continues from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at OMSI, 1945 S.E. Water Ave., Portland. The event is a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness.

“Being a part of educating people and a part of the open-source world is exciting,” King said. “I want to see what my kids and other kids who grow up around making this kind of stuff can do.”

King, who worked on nuclear power equipment in the Navy and designed radio control equipment for flash photography in the past, said that since Ringo took off in a way he didn’t expect, he’s going to just go with it and see where it takes him. Next up, King has some other designs he’s hoping to roll out, including a smaller robotic bug named Jerry, after Jerry Garcia. And perhaps what’s most exciting to him about the whole thing is his family is right there with him. His wife, Nona King, organizes the books and oversees the operation.

“I’m amazed at what he comes up with in his mind,” Nona King said. “I can’t wait to see what they all come up with together. Even if an idea the kids have isn’t something they can program themselves, Kevin will figure out a way to do it.”

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Columbian Staff Writer