sprint product development for a thermal rangefinder 

Your engineers are busy focusing on the high value projects that have been greenlit for the year. That leaves you with little time and resources for those exploration projects. The ones based on ideas that could turn into next year’s high value projects. So what do you do?

One solution is to contract out the exploratory projects to an engineering firm like Sherpa.   We have a passion for exploratory projects. It’s something we do well, a lot and with a fast turnaround.

Here is an example of one we did for a handheld thermal rangefinder.

Sprint Development

• Mechanical Engineering
• Industrial Design
• Prototyping

handheld Thermal Rangefinder

We started by researching the marketplace and looking for opportunities to extend or improve the capabilities of these types of products. From that information we started to build a list of product requirements or a product requirements document.

Brainstorm Session

The core product would be used for thermal imaging, but in our brainstorming session we looked at what else could we add to increase its value. A few examples included a Range finder (measures distance to target), magnification (increasing size / resolution of what is seen) and a green laser illuminator (for marking targets).

We investigated accessories like kits for vehicle mounting to a car/truck, an ATV/UTV or a boat. We considered a tripod mount and the addition of Ad-hoc Wifi (like the GoPro).

We looked at the use case for the product (the potential buyers in the market) and what they might look for in the product. They included the following:

• Hunting
• Home inspection
• Surveillance
• Search & Rescue
• Law Enforcement/ Military

Thermal Product Market Research

We looked at many products on the market that acted as thermal weapon sights or handheld thermal products. We were looking for gaps in the market in terms of features and pricing. One of the requirements was to get the cost down to a credit card purchase at Cabelas.

Thermal Weapons Sights

• Expensive, > $2,000
• Limited use cases

Handheld Thermal Products

• Seek Reveal - Handheld thermal imager w/ flashlight - $399
• Milwaukie M12 7.8KP Thermal Imager - $499
• FLIR Scout TK – Thermal imaging monocular - $599

Package Development

We determined the product requirements would include a thermal imager along with a rangefinder complete with rugged housing for a price point under $600.

We started laying out the components and doing space claims for all the components. The goal was functionality while being as small as possible. We had to determine what the components will be made from and how to manufacture and assemble them.

The components that we needed to incorporate included the Thermal Core, Objective Lens, OLED Micro display, Boards with Wi-Fi and LE BT (low energy blue tooth), the eyepiece, laser, receiver and batteries.

Concept Generation

Our industrial design team developed lots of concepts, incorporating a form that will lend itself to easy handheld operation with branding influence to make it distinct.

Modeling

One of the advantages of working with Sherpa is that we have both ID and ME under one roof. This means we were able to bring them together early in the design process with faster results and reduced manufacturing issues.

Here you see many housing design sketches from ID that all worked within the housing requirements established by ME. We chose the design that best fit the brief to move forward.

Refined Sketching

We refined our sketches to include controls for brightness and range. We also added a menu to the camera board and the ability to take a photo. This while still tightly incorporating all the needed components for a functioning thermal rangefinder.

Prototype

We developed a prototype utilizing our 3D printers for agronomics checks, button placement and size evaluation.

We would be happy to develop your ideas into a working prototype. Let us know how we can help you take it to the next level.

This would be a fixed price sprint effort that would allow an internal marketing team to give a quick thumbs up or down as to whether this is a project they would like to pursue further.

It could include rapid concepting, prototype development, manufacturability, develop costed BOM. All done in parallel and without taking up any of your internal resources.