Thing Scanner – 3D Scanner

About Thingscanner

Thing Scanner was a prototype 3D scanner. Take a real world object, place it on the scanner, press a button and hey presto! A 3D digital version of that object appears inside your computer, ready for whatever software program you want. Check out the video below to see it in action!

Image Gallery

Below are some images of the project.


The Business

We secured 50,000 Euro development funding from our local government agency, Enterprise Ireland, to build the prototype and explore the business opportunity. A very talented programmer Brian Cullen and I built a working prototype including a very basic software suite and a one of a kind hardware assembly. The plan was to release the product to Kickstarter and to raise finance to complete the product through crowdfunding. However, a super high quality 3D scanner was released on Kickstarter, and we decided not to continue with the project after seeing the amount of investment and work which was required to complete it. We were way in over our heads! So this project was never released commercially.

My Role

Below is a list of things which I was responsible for.

  • Wrote the business plan, pitched for and secured 50,000 Euro investment
  • Product design – From sketches to final design concepts
  • Hardware prototype – Hacked together various iterations of the prototype using electronics and recycled product parts
  • Art direction – Created briefings for artists for the software design
  • UI design – Created mock ups of user interface
  • Developer management – Created design briefs, guided and directed developer
  • QA management – Tested, prioritized bugs and assigned to the development team
  • Project management – Created, tracked and approved all tasks for the project and team
  • Video production – Directed and wrote the script for the video for Kickstarter
  • Operations- Ran the business admin and operations for Breakout Interactive
  • Hiring – sourced and hired the team