Thank you to everyone that showed interest in the collars enough to make this possible <3
I also said thanks to my Marinebeam contact on behalf of us at BLF, here’s their reply:
“My pleasure. I appreciate your help with the communication. I have been trying for more than a year to make something happen, and while they were very supportive, they didn’t quite have a direction on this ironed out, and they surely had much more critical irons in the fire. They are really just regular guys, not so unlike us, that have mortgaged good jobs and their futures to buy these patents. I spent a lot of time at Wavien also, and they too were good, hardworking, and exceptionally gifted people trying their best to get this technology out there.
Contrary to popular opinion, we won’t make some small fortune on this deal. I wish these collars were some trinket with massive volumes that we could sell for a dollar a piece and make everyone happy. When I factor in the tooling, yield fallout, scrap, license fee, and royalties, it is modest deal for us at best. I am happy to share some of the spoils with Meadowstar too. If they can be successful, it is best for all of us.
I did this BLF deal mainly to get some out there in the hands of some creative hobbyists. Because we deal in so many different products, it is hard for me to spend the available time 100% on flashlights, so a group of keen tinkerers trying different hosts, drivers, and emitters can cover much more ground than we can and push the envelope, further validating the concept. We are all on the same team trying to make cool long-throw LED flashlights. Should someone figure a clever concept for making low-cost collars, that is good too. Same with any host that gets well-enough developed that it is easy to drop in a collar. We can have the host produced (or re-produced using the basic concept), drop in a collar at Marinebeam, and sell to the public. We could even have a BLF version and pricing for BLF members.
Have a great weekend, and let me know of any interesting successes.”