One of my long-time customers approached me last week about a theory he wants to prove. He currently maintains a bunch of industrial machines running on Windows NT that he would like updated to XP and newer hardware. Rather than spend nearly $20,000.00 per machine, he wants us to develop a $2,000.00 solution.
Hours ago, after several days of cursing, one of my store managers called to tell me we successfully prototyped the first in the series of upgrades. Starting with a failing hard drive and antiquated electronics, my team built and rebuilt the controller until its final iteration. Although it doesn’t look like much, our sample can now replace a 20 year old industrial PC.
Throughout my history with computers I’ve always had one of these systems kicking around. Basically it’s a PC motherboard screwed to a piece of plywood. Looking at the simplicity of a circuit board sandwiched to a scrap of wood one would never guess it’s been used to test theories and prove ideas.
My favorite is the automated photo booth project that a customer approached me with many years ago. To prove her theory I buried the contraption in a photo booth enclosure with a webcam and printer and put it on the street during a festival. The idea proved robust; however, the customer decided the project wasn’t economically feasible.
Another long-term customer approached us several years ago to create an automated DJ that would play a selection of songs for a dancer’s set. Essentially, the dancer would preselect a series of three of four songs she could play during her dance routine. This little plywood machine helped replace a DJ and much more expensive software and equipment.
Two years ago a customer who manufactures and repairs industrial imaging equipment asked us to package a small computer with several cameras for field testing their equipment. This little board-on-a-board went into the field for nearly a month before the customer purchased the final design. Now our design is checking the quality of workmanship of much more expensive machinery.
One of the oddest projects this motherboard has assisted with has been the brains of a mall kiosk trivia game. The customer created a list of trivia questions that were randomly queued. Before the customer could collect the prize they needed to enter their contact information. We got paid to play with a unique interface even though the machine never made it to a mall floor.
When people approach me with an idea they always tell me a PC isn’t what they really want, but they definitely need our solution to be computerized. My archaic looking computer impresses most who want to believe the giant tangle of wires, circuit board and plywood is something more than it really is: a five year old Intel motherboard that’s been used to test many peoples’ bizarre, unique or useless ideas.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)