The trial results are in and we’re pleased to announce that 92% of people said they would use a GravityLight instead of a kerosene lamp!

Our trial has proved the concept of GravityLight and also given us a lot of useful feedback on how it can be improved and which features are not necessary. We’re currently using this knowledge to develop an improved version (nicknamed GL02). Jim and Martin are developing ways to make it even easier to use, last even longer and continue to cut out costs.

These approaches will then be developed into prototypes and put through rigorous testing. After the testing is complete we can begin to manufacture and hope to launch the final version spring 2015.

If you’re interested in finding out more information, hold tight, we’re putting together a more thorough report of findings and further development which we’ll share with you very soon, or contact info@gravitylight.org for further questions.

Dispatch Update – The Lights are in the Post!

As we write this, GravityLights are currently in the post to all European pledgees!

The European ship has had a slightly faster journey than the ship to the USA and the rest of the World. The European shipment came into the UK, so, if you live in the UK GravityLights will be delivered to your door, as of today. Those living in the rest of Europe will have their lights arriving as of Friday 7th February.

Look out for your GravityLight!

We will be dispatching GravityLights to all pledgees in the coming weeks and will update you as soon as we have the exact dispatch dates for the USA, Canada and Rest of the World.

In preparation for the arrival of your GravityLight, The following links will be useful:

1. How to Install: http://bit.ly/1exbfI0 Video instruction and set up guide showing how to install your light
2. Forum: http://bit.ly/1ioZN1g we have set up a user forum for you to join using your Indiegogo e-mail. Please add any thoughts, comments and improvement ideas you may have. If you have any GravityLight questions, please make use of the forum, where lots of information will be building. As one of the first GravityLight users, you will be able make a valuable contribution towards an improved future product, which we intend to reach as many Kerosene users as possible. Your thoughts and feedback on the trial product you receive will help us enormously as we work on GravityLight Mk2.
3. Trial image gallery: http://bit.ly/1nSWTWz Take a look at the wonderful images of GravityLight in the field trial– a testament to the incredible ongoing work of our trialists, which you as pledgees have all helped make happen. We think you’ll enjoy seeing how your contribution is already helping to bring kerosene and battery free light to those who need it.

Thanks for making all this possible.

Dear Supporters,

We wish you all a fantastic 2014!
We have been a little bit silent recently as we are busy coordinating the global field trial and the shipping of your units among others. Now finally, please enjoy an update.

Units for pledgees

The GravityLights have left the factory and have embarked on the first stages of their journey to you. The lights are being sea-freighted to warehouses in the UK and USA, from where they will be dispatched to all individual pledgees.

We are expecting pledgees in the UK, Europe, USA and Canada to receive their units at the end of February to early March.

If you are living in any country not covered above (rest of the world) we are also aiming for a late February into March delivery date to you. However, this will vary from destination to destination and is subject to change, due to the diversity of the delivery addresses we are sending to.

We apologise the delivery dates given previously have shifted by a few weeks. This is due to the recent Christmas logistic madness and customs hold-ups.

We will keep all supporters updated, as and when areas are dispatched, on twitter @GravityLight, facebook and deciwatt.org/the-journal.

Social impact

In developing countries the GravityLights and SatLights for our user trials started to arrive in late November. The first feedback we have received from our triallists is extraordinary. GravityLight is indeed really improving people’s lives.

We could not resist sharing a few stories with you which have been written by our trial partners:

Liberia

John David is a janitor and lives in the center of the local village. He’s one of the elders and well respected. John struggled a little with the instructions and had a few folks offer opinions, but a younger girl, Sieh, seemed pretty switched on and was able to help with most steps. As you’ll see from the pics, most of the village kids were pretty interested in what was going on. […] John’s got light now: “I feel happy about it… my environment won’t be dark”.

Quaqua (pronounced kwi-kwi) is a 22yo high school student who is a caretaker and groundskeeper at the school. He is a primary breadwinner in a family of 12 as well as attending school full time. Quaqua’s father had a stroke a few months ago and is housebound, so they rely on light, particularly during the wet season. About half of the family’s expenditure is spent on lighting/electricity. The device itself seemed to be a hit, especially the sat lights.

Guatemala

Story taking place during a presentation of the GravityLight in the Guatemalan jungle, as reported by our local field partner:

[…] Let me tell you they were a HUGE hit. They had selected 11 families, so we had to placate 3 of them with excellent solar flashlights, more compact and brighter, but every single one wanted the Gravity Light. […] They laughed about how simple an installation this was compared to the many difficult challenges they face. [...] They followed every step my instructor took with great enthusiasm. She strung the Sat Lights into the 2nd room and they were thrilled. […] They have all hung even the Sat Lights high, and keep them in place to make it possible to move about their small homes during hours of darkness.

Philippines

Mr. Primitivo Saldua is a Carpenter, he is among the residents in Barangay Tiguma, Pagadian City that, ever since, had not enjoyed electricity for the reason that they simply cannot afford it. He lived with her wife and two sons who were both carpenters too. There are about a hundred families living in this area that has no electricity and somehow managed to live with it for the last 15 years.

The Gravity Light was easily Installed, and ready for use.

Mr Primitivo Saldua was amazed of how it can illuminate his small shanty and how handy it is and easy to use.

“Thanks to the Gravity Light, now we can enjoy light in my house for free. My neighbors came and were delighted to see it. This device can help us, we won’t need to buy kerosene for our lamps, we no longer fumble in the dark and we can now enjoy talks with the family under the light of the Gravity Light.”

India near Pune

On https://ixg.jux.com/ you can read about a field trial in another Indian trial in the tribal hamlets of Jamunamarathur in Jawadi Hills, Tamil Nadu.

Updates and general questions

Again, to receive more frequent updates have a look at our twitter, facebook and our website.

We also began a short FAQ page on our website. It answers your many questions on availability for purchase, distribution, use in classes, etc.

Supporters involvement

We are constantly receiving general enquiries and interesting suggestions from people, which is very welcome, so please keep it going. Not unsurprisingly we have a backlog, so please bear with us as we address these alongside all the other aspects of our ever-demanding project.

We plan to launch an online forum for your shared comments in the coming weeks.

To conclude we wish you the best of luck for your projects in 2014 and once again, thank you so much for your continued support and patience.

The GravityLight team

Dear GravityLight supporter,

We are so excited to be able to tell you that GravityLights are now reaching our trial partners, and are being distributed to kerosene users around the world. Already, we are beginning to receive the valuable user feedback required for independent product evaluation.

We aim to produce a comprehensive report from the trial data early in the new year and in the meantime will post further interesting news as the trial rolls out.

Production and shipment

Production of the Indiegogo pledgee’s GravityLights is well underway and we will be shipping the units to arrive from late December to early-February, depending on the destination.

We will post updates for each region on twitter @GravityLight, facebook and deciwatt.org/the-journal.

Supporters involvement

We are constantly receiving general enquiries and interesting suggestions from people, which is very welcome, so please keep it going. Not unsurprisingly we have a backlog, so please bear with us as we address these alongside all the other aspects of our ever demanding project.

We plan to launch an online forum for your shared comments which is timed to coincide with the delivery of GravityLights to pledgees in the first regions later in December.

Once again, thank you so much for your continued support and patience.

Dear Supporters

Apologies for the time that has passed since our last update, but we are excited to say that we have great news to share!

Jim has recently returned home from a critical visit to the factory in China. This was timed to coincide with assembly of the very first GravityLights. We’re delighted to report that the production line is now in full swing. So here we go!

The photos taken on the first day of the visit show the line in the midst of preparations. The process has now been refined, and the rate of assembly is increasing all the time. Every GravityLight is quality tested, and it’s performance logged. As it’s essential that we get the most complete data possible from the trial, we are testing 100% of the products being made.

To meet our first commitment, the initial production units will be sent to our trial facilitators.

This is nearing completion, and the factory is moving on to assemble the remaining larger volume of GravityLights for all our Indiegogo campaign contributors who pledged for a light.

We want to thank you for your patience in waiting to see GravityLight complete its journey from fully working prototype into an improved, ruggedised and manufactured product. We are not yet at the finish line, but we are relieved to share the news that this huge milestone has been reached! We will keep you updated regarding assembly progress and dispatch dates to pledgees.

SatLights

Along with each GravityLight the trial facilitators receive, we are also including a GravityLight accessory called SatLight. The SatLight is a fantastic ‘plugin’ addition to the GravityLight unit and is the first peripheral we have developed for the GravityLight, with your support. We have taken photographs (below) to show you how the SatLights look, how they can be used to distribute the light around a room and also positioned for direct task lighting. The effect is even better than we had hoped for and we are looking forward to the user feedback on the SatLights from the trial.

Simple and effective cardboard packaging has also been developed for both products.

Trial

Our partners on the ground will help us to evaluate, independently, the user’s experience of the products, the efficiency of GravityLight in different environments, the social impact, and the future market demand. We are expecting these results before Christmas. We will be posting updates on www.deciwatt.org. So please stay tuned.

Once again, a huge thanks for your support.

The Deciwatt Team

We are excited to be able to confirm that Coleman, the world’s leading camping & outdoor gear manufacturer of tents, lanterns, coolers, stoves, sleeping bags & more, have generously stepped in at the last minute to provide the bags for GravityLight’s first production run.

In our last update we mentioned that a previous supplier, who has kindly helped improve our bag design, was no longer able to make the bags for our trial units.

Thankfully Coleman have rapidly turned around a production plan for thousands of bags robust enough to hold the weight needed to power GravityLight. They have also generously offered to provide these pro-bono, in support of GravityLight’s global trial. Thank you Luke & co.!

This significantly helps firm up our timeline. Assuming no glitches, GravityLights will be shipped out to trial facilitators in the second week of October and to Indiegogo supporters at the end of October.

We’re pleased to report a great deal of progress following successful meetings with our prototype manufacturers in China last week.

Martin & Jim have returned to London with a small number of samples from first off plastic mouldings. We’re naturally relieved that these units worked, albeit with some manual fine-tuning needed. GravityLight comprises 40+ parts, sourced from various suppliers so the odds of a first time functional build and test were slight. So a terrific start to a week of production engineering trouble-shooting.

Further CAD changes have since been made to address the few areas of concern and this data is presently being used to make modifications to the tooling. The factory working quickly on this and we expect new plastics for further evaluation in the first week of September. All being well, the next samples will work first time - we will keep you posted on this progress!

For those who are interested in the machinations of supply… we’ve had springs made and delivered to the wrong spec, straps a month late (and made by hand rather than by machine!), and regrettably our trusted bag supplier fell at the last hurdle due to more pressing manufacturing issues within their business. It is a relief to say that an alternative supplier is stepping in to support the prototype run.

So you can see that we’re close to trial but cannot be more precise on timing though production across September and shipping out at the end of September is our expected horizon based on our present status.

As our GravityLight trial nears - the core purpose of our Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign - we wanted to share more details about how we plan to test and gather invaluable feedback on GravityLight.

The incredible generosity of GravityLight’s crowdfunders has enabled us to develop an even better design than our original prototype and has helped spread the word globally. As a result we have had a large number of people and organisations contacting us to see how they can be involved or help. Thank you!

A range of inspiring NGOs, charities, individuals, entrepreneurial networks and social enterprises across 26 different countries have kindly offered their time and resources to trial GravityLight across several weeks. They’ll be visiting the users at least twice – the first visit to gather information about who the trialists are, their current light sources as well as to talk them through how GravityLight works and how to set it up. On return visits several weeks later they’ll find out how the users got on with GravityLight and ask questions around the themes below.

Given there will be several different groups of people trialling GravityLight we also have specific questions for:
1) individuals/households
2) Schools & Hospitals
3) Refugee & IDP Camps
4) Local Entrepreneurs:

This trial will be invaluable for us to understand the scale of demand for GravityLight as well as whether any design tweaks or additional features are needed before we look to ramp up production in 2014. Equally important, we will get feedback from and make connections with local entrepreneurs who will be critical to future sales and distribution of GravityLight in both urban and rural settings.

In addition to these >1000 triallists we are also sending over 5000 lights to our brilliant crowdfunders, some of whom pledged in return for a GravityLight. We hope they will also feedback on how they are using their GravityLight, how well it performs in these situations and any suggestions for future features or accessories.

Over the course of the trials we look forward to sharing more information about GravityLight’s different trial facilitators as well as the insights, stories and photos they record from the different user groups.

We’re excited to share the final design and features of GravityLight ahead of the prototype production run.

We mentioned that GravityLight has been made more robust. If it is overloaded with excess weight or it is vigorously handled, it will temporarily run fast and a red LED will illuminate to warn of mishandling.

In addition, the bag shape has been evolved so that it comes to rest on the ground over a period of about 60 seconds, during which the light fades out. This provides enough time to safely reach GravityLight to recharge before it’s dark.

We’ve also improved the quality of the light. Through testing many different LEDs we’ve managed to increase the brightness by finding the LED that is best matched to GravityLight’s power output. Additionally we have increased control options and there are now 3 settings which vary brightness according to ‘drop time’, creating 15, 20 and 25 minute drop rates.

We’ve removed the +/- terminals at the front and replaced with a neat DC socket on the back, onto which different ‘accessories’ can be attached. This provides a much more reliable and simple way of connecting them; for those who prefer the +/- terminal, adaptors are easy to source. More on our accessories coming soon…

Our new mark of quality and authentication is our registered GravityLight logo, which is moulded into the front casing and is visible in light or dark as it is illuminated by the LED.

In parallel to these product developments, Mario has improved our website – making it easier to learn more about Deciwatt, GravityLight, our team and kind supporters.

We’ve had a great response from those of you offering to help with the GravityLight trial. Thank you!

There are respondents who have offered their support in getting feedback on GravityLight from over 27 different countries – not to mention the feedback we hope to get from pledgees who requested a light.The map below shows the range of locations that people have offered to help us trial GravityLight in communities with minimal access to electricity and using kerosene lamps for light.

On the production side, we are continuing to commission injection molding tools for production.

Below are photos of the tool for the sprocket, which the strap runs around [right] and the multi-action injection molding tool for tool for the one-way ratchet, which enables the strap to rewind when lifting up the ballast bag [left].

Bought-in components are now en route to the factory and our final wave of tooling will be started over the next few weeks. About this time we also aim to share what Jim and Rob have been working intensely on: now that the production engineering detail is complete, they will be able to show us what GravityLight will look like in this first production run!