Where Are They Now: Terrible Kickstarters

August 14, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 92 Comments

Kickstarter started out as a platform for group buys, low-volume manufacturing, and a place to fund projects that would otherwise go unfinished. It would be naive of anyone to think this would last forever, and since these humble beginnings, we’re well into Peak Kickstarter. Now, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and every other crowdfunding platform is just another mouthpiece for product launches, and just another strategy for anyone who needs or wants money, but has never heard of a business loan.

Of course there will be some shady businesses trying to cash in on the Kickstarter craze, and over the last few years we’ve done our best to point out the bad ones. Finding every terrible Kickstarter is several full-time jobs, but we’ve done our best to weed out these shining examples of the worst. Following up on these failed projects is something we have been neglecting, but no longer.

Below are some of the most outrageous Kickstarters and crowdfunding campaigns we’ve run across, and the current status of these failed entrepreneurial endeavors.

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A Homemade Bubble Robot For The Kids

August 13, 2014 by Bryan Cockfield 10 Comments

bubbles-machine

Kids generally can be amused pretty easily, but when jangling keys stop holding their interest you might want to take a look at [drenehtsral]’s new project. He’s created an automatic bubble robot (YouTube link) that keeps the kids endlessly entertained!

The project started as an idea at a festival where one of [drenehtsral]’s kids took great interest at a bubble machine. [drenehtsral] had never heard of a bubble machine before, but it turns out that it’s pretty simple in practice. All that’s required is a tank of soapy water, a motor to turn the bubble wands, and a fan to form the bubbles and make them waft gently through the air.

[drenehtsral] also used a 12V battery for power, some other hardware to hold it all together, and a 5V regulator and some other control electronics for the fan and the motor. He notes that he could have bought a bubble machine but in true hacker style found it fun to build himself. The next step in this project could be something to vary the size of the bubbles, or perhaps a set of wheels for the robot so it can entertain the kids on the move!

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SOAP Drama: Another Go At Crowdfunding

June 11, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 73 Comments

SOAP

SOAP, the people behind what was initially a sketchy Kickstarter that turned into something reasonable is having another go at crowdfunding their touchscreen router with every radio imaginable. This time, however, they’ve crossed all their ts and dotted all their lowercase js to turn what was a very…. odd Kickstarter into something really cool.

The original specs of the SOAP router were impressive – basically, a touchscreen tablet with an ARM Cortex A9, USB 3.0, 802.11ac, gigabit LAN, and every radio module you could imagine. The goal, of course, being a completely open, hackable home automation system capable of talking to Zigbee and Z Wave, and X10 modules, all while being an easy to configure 802.11ac router with a touchscreen. It’s a great idea, and considering you could spend $200 on an ac router alone, without all the radio modules and touchscreen.

Judging from the updates to the original Kickstarter, the SOAP guys have come a long way in three months. They’ve moved away from a custom-designed iMX6 board to a Congatec System on Module in a move that could be described as the smartest move in the history of Kickstarter-funded consumer electronics. They’ve also fixed the Ethernet bandwidth limitation of the iMX6, although there’s no word on how that works.

To be fair, the SOAP Kickstarter should be studied by business students as the exact opposite of how you should run a Kickstarter. When the project first went up, there were inconsistencies that ranged from not having a functional prototype to lifting images from unrelated open source projects. In the past three months, though, it looks like the team has managed to pull something together. Whether or not the SOAP router will see the light of day remains to be seen, but the team is now in a much better position than they were three months ago.

SOAP Drama: An Interview With The SOAP Creators

March 11, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 59 Comments

A few days ago, we caught wind of SOAP, a Kickstarter project for an Android-based home automation router. With a quad-core ARM, quad gigabit Ethernet ports, 802.11ac, SATA, and every radio under the sun – all for $100 (sans display, $170 with display), it seemed too good to be true. At the time, it probably was: the images from the PCB prototype were taken from [Bunnie Huang]’s open source laptop, there weren’t enough Ethernet ports for a router, and the hardware just seemed all wrong.

The guys behind SOAP have decided to respond to these accusations by posting a huge update on their Kickstarter page and answering a few questions from me. Interview follows below.

HaD: There’s a BOM/cost analysis breakdown for the Essentials package (the SOAP sans display) that puts the total cost at about $130. This is the reward for pledging at the $100 level. How accurate is this cost analysis, and how do you plan on meeting that reward level?

SOAP: This cost analysis that you mention is very accurate. We will not profit on the early release pricing of $60.00 we have taken the loss leader pricing to attract backers and press (and we think we have done a good job). We are working with a large router manufacturer and this is really the link that makes the pricing possible without them we couldn’t do this.

HaD: You’re using a Quad Core Freescale i.MX processor for SOAP, and putting a four port Gigabit router in there. The Quad core i.MX chips only have one Gigabit port, and that’s limited to 470 Mbps. How are you solving this problem, and what are you using as a MAC/PHY?

SOAP: First off let me state that we are very aware of the CPU limitations and we have done a lot of work on finding a solution and we do have a unique solution. We have support from a big player in the router industry that has offered us a unique solution that we have been working on to bypass this issue. We will post more on this after our trip to San Jose. This is our fallback method and yes its benchmarks are not as pretty as we want them but they are getting there and we feel with enough tweaks we can get this to decent level.

This is from our layout guy: We are planning I.mx processor’s gigabit port will be connected to external IC working as a switch. 1Gb ethernet -> 1 to 4 switch -> 4x Gb Ethernet ports. Possible http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tnetx4090.pdf. Use 4 ports from there plus put RGMII Ethernet transceiver from Marvell for each ETH port and we will have on board Ethernet switch.

HaD: What WiFi chipset/chipsets are you using? Will that/they be able to do 802.11ac at full speed, and how are you doing this with (I think) only one antenna on the updated board images?

SOAP: The speeds have varied greatly on the chipset and how buggy the software was for the day but we have clocked speeds over 1 gigabyte per second and we will continue to develop this further to achieve maximize speeds this is where our new Union with the guys over at Droidifi will help.

In our prototype we tested Avastar 88W8864, Broadcom 4360 , and a couple more that failed to actually work. We didn’t get those all functioning like we would have wanted as there is little support for android and router chipsets to date. We demo with a Broadcom chipset.

We want to use Quantenna QAC2300 but at current funding we will be using the Broadcom we have received a lot of suggestions from our backers and a new big player behind us that thinks they have the right match we are waiting to announce this after our meeting in San Jose.

We have one antenna on the most current design but we are planning on adding two more for the final design. We didn’t place them on the most recent design because we are waiting to see how much funding we get to finalize the wifi chipset. We didn’t want antenna design that worked best with a Broadcom when we switch to Marvel or Quantenna.

HaD: What is the status of the software? Do you have a repo somewhere that people could look over?

SOAP: We have been working with a new player from the older kickstarter project called Droidifi. We will be working with them on the software. This is a something we haven’t been able to announce till we lock it down but you are the first to know about this union. Check out our update later today.

HaD: Finally, do you have a functional prototype with the quad-core i.MX, four Ethernet ports, and WiFi? Can we see a video?

SOAP: If you mean a mass production ready device that can be used by an end user then no. We have a solid functioning proof of concept prototype. We have a lot of Demo videos of our POC that show what we have developed so far. We have to have the current PCB design manufactured to get down to the more rigorous testing and qualifying. All the specs listed on our kickstarter are what we currently are planning and we hope to fulfill the tech specs.

HaD: There are some other questions in the Kickstarter comments section, but honestly I don’t care about how many Twitter followers you have.

SOAP: Twitter was our marketing company. We thought people actually were following us but we have since found out that half of them are not real. Check this out though.

All in all we understand how ambitious this project looks and we also know that it technology development can run into roadblocks and things but we want to be clear we are not a scam and we are quite aware where these attacks have originated. We will continue to work hard on this project, we will not be running off to Costa Rica and we plan on seeing everyone at CES next year.

The TL;DR for everyone without an attention span:

Yes, the $100/$170 price is too good to be true. It’s called a loss leader to generate interest. This part was a success. The SOAP guys are partnering with the DroidFi guys for the operating system. The Gigabit Ethernet will probably work, and the WiFi is limited by *nix chipset support. No complete functional prototypes yet.

So there you go. It’s not the ideal update with the SOAP crew showing off a shipping container of units ready to be shipped, but the project isn’t in as bad a shape as I originally thought.

SOAP: The Home Automation Router And Kickstarter Scam

March 7, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 141 Comments

How would you like a 7″ tablet with a Quad-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, USB 3.0, 32 GB of storage, 802.11ac, four ports of Gigabit LAN, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, SATA, HDMI, built-in Zigbee and RFID modules, a camera, speaker and microphone, all for $170? Sound too good to be true? That’s because it probably is. Meet SOAP, the home automation router with a touchscreen, that’s shaping up to be one of the largest scams Kickstarter has ever seen.

There have been a few threads scattered over the web going over some of the… “inconsistencies” about the SOAP kickstarter, mainly focusing on the possibility of fake Facebook likes and Twitter followers. There’s also the question of their development process: they started building a router with an Arduino, then moved on to a Raspberry Pi, a Beaglebone, Intel Atom-powered Minnowboard, the Gizmo Board, PandaBoard, and Wandboard. If you’re keeping track, that’s at least six completely different architectures used in their development iterations. Anyone who has ever tried to build something – not even build a product, mind you – will realize there’s something off here. This isn’t even considering a reasonably accurate BOM breakdown that puts the total cost of production at $131.

The most damning evidence comes from screenshots of the final board design. These pics have since been removed from the Kickstarter page, but they’re still available on the Google cache. The SOAP team claims they’re putting USB 3.0 ports on their board, but the pics clearly show only four pins on each of the USB ports. USB 3.0 requires nine pins. A closer inspection reveals these screenshots are from the files for Novena, [Bunnie Huang]’s open source laptop.

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Soap, Candles, And Toiletries From Deer Fat

November 23, 2012 by Mike Szczys 36 Comments

Here’s a hack with more of a survivalist flair to it. [Ligament] and some friends used the fat from butchering a deer to make soap, candles, and toiletries.

It’s hunting season and [Ligament’s] dad is processing the deer which he harvested. Wild game doesn’t have the amount of fat you’d find on a domesticated animal, but there is still a fair amount. The group cut off as much as they could before cutting up the rest of the meat. The trimmings are put in a pot with water and boiled until the fat starts to rise. It is ladled off and strained through some cheese cloth. The fat hardens overnight and can be picked up out of the container as a big disk. It is reheated and strained through a mesh coffee filter to achieve the final product. From there the fat was used as an ingredient in the recipes for candles, soap, and things like lip balm. For details on that heck out the comments for each image in the gallery linked above.

It’s a good thing to waste as little as possible. But this skill will be indispensable once the Zombie Apocalypse comes. You might also want to know how to chlorinate your own water.

[via Reddit]

SOAP Compatibility For SQLmap

June 25, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[_coreDump] was doing some database vulnerability testing using SQLmap to automate the process. To his dismay, the package was unable to test using the Simple Object Access Protocol. Faced with having to manually test all of the SOAP vulnerabilities he decided to work some Python magic and add support. His solution allows SQLmap 0.8 to parses XML data from the SOAP protocol by modifying three files from the package. He’s made the diff files available if you need this functionality for your own security testing.