So i’m going to start this post on an unusual note, and say that yes, Autism does indeed have its upsides sometimes. As someone who’s been living with it his entire life, it’s certainly been both a blessing and a curse to have the condition at the same time… For example, when it comes to work, my propensity to hyper-focus on tasks helps me a lot, but sometimes the negatives outweigh the positives, especially when it comes to the panic spirals i’d end up going into when it comes to my executive functioning and the times where i’m… rather lacking in it. I also tend to overthink a lot. That has its upsides and downsides as well.
Case in point, imagine the dread I go through when i lose my sunnies on a bright day. Now double than when you realise that I have a bit of a liking for Ray-Bans. At $250 a pair at a minimum… Well, that’s kinda something you really don’t want to lose. Sadly i’ve got a bit of a history of losing sunnies.
It all began when I worked at IKEA. Someone had lost a genuine pair of Clubmasters on a box in one of the racks. I of course, being a stickler for rules, took it to the customer service desk and put them in as lost property. The policy was, if nobody claimed it in a month, the person who found the item could keep it. This means that if nobody claimed it in that month, I’d end up with a brand new pair of sunnies. Sure enough, 30 days came around, and the team gave me the glasses, and boy they were nice. Polarised and everything… Basically a $250 pair of sunnies for free!
So one day, me and my mates decided we’d hit the beach. This was kind of unplanned, and I didn’t exactly intend on swimming on the part of me wearing a collared shirt and everything. But, I gave into a lil bit of that peer pressure and decided, “why the hell not?” I jumped in the water, not realising that I had my glasses clipped to my shirt between two of the buttons. Sure enough, by the time I had left the beach? They were gone. Now there’s a shark somewhere in the ocean lookin’ like the Jazziest shark that ever lived.
My next pair was a pair of limited edition pair of blacked out Clubmasters. They had black coated hardware, black lenses and black tortiseshell frames. I broke these after I crushed them accidentally at work. Shamefully killing a limited edition pair of sunglasses because my dumb arse forgot to put them in a case.
So for my birthday recently, my dear partner bought me a pair of the originals I used to have. Gold and black with green lenses. I guess they were not as cool to others as the blacked out ones I used to have, but they’re even more special in a way, because they were a birthday gift from my lovely partner. That makes ’em cooler to me than the blacked out ones, but also… Even more important to not lose.
Recently I’ve been diving well off the deep-end into Apple’s ecosystem of products. Macs, iPhones, and now, AirTags. AirTags are bloody brilliant little things. Basically they’re these little tags which contain ultra-wideband chips in them, allowing your iPhone to use radio waves to help you find your missing items to within 10cm of your position. They can also track where your items go by pinging other iPhones in the area if it is anywhere near them. On top of this, if some sneaky son-of-a-gun decides to slap an AirTag on your car or slip one in your pocket or whatever to track you? It can detect if that AirTag is unfamiliar, and if so, it’ll ping your phone if it suspects you’re being tracked.
As a person who is extremely forgetful at times, and whose executive function is decent at best, and somewhat non-existent at worst, who also happens to be quite anxious when things… Kinda go awry, well… You could only imagine the kinda panic when these glasses, which not only hold monetary, but now sentimental value, go missing? Yeah. It’s time I engineered a solution to this dilemma of mine.
So… Armed with a Snapmaker Artisan, a set of vernier callipers, some Jarrah, some invisible hinges, some magnets, and the propensity to overthink and hyper-focus, I came up with this.
Looks pretty nice, right? Well. Inside there’s a bit of a secret.
A pair of concealed hinges and Neodymium magnets keep this glasses case shut. The case itself is just the right size to hold my precious sunnies in place. There’s a felt lining on the bottom to reduce scratching… but wait, what’s that thing up top?
Hidden in the right side of the upper compartment, is an AirTag holder with a removable cover. On the opposite side, a magnetically latched sunglass cleaning cloth holder! So, you know… If they’re all fogged up, i don’t have to fumble around for a glasses cloth.
Now you’re probably thinking… Hang on a minute, that’s just going to help you keep track of the glasses case and not the glasses, right? Well that’s the thing. It all boils down to habits. Now, I could have come up with some sort of over-convoluted way to help me keep track of the glasses, maybe something involving some LEDs and a light sensor to tell me whether or not the glasses are inside the case, or an Ultrasonic sensor which detects the distance between the case and the nearest surface, and if it detects that there’s an increased distance, it’ll ping me to put the glasses back in the case when i’m done, but to do this would firstly, do my head in, because my coding skills are rudimentary at best, and for another, it’d be an overly costly measure that would honestly, cost more than the sunglasses themselves to implement.
The engineer’s mantra of “Keep it Simple, Stupid” isn’t about doing things in the simplest way possible. It’s instead about the idea of matching the solution to the problem. If there is a way to make the solution to the issue simple, then do so, for reliability’s sake. But, this isn’t an F35 Joint Strike Fighter, this is a sunglass case, so there’s no reason for me to implement power-hungry circuitry that’ll honestly require more executive functioning to maintain the charge of said circuits, than it would to simply just… Put the damn glasses back into the case when i’m done with them. Giving them an attractive home for them to live in that’ll protect them from nicks and scratches, that also acts as a pretty neat conversation starter, is what gives me the psychological incentive to idk, put them back where they belong when i’m done wearing them.
The best part? This is made with 100% renewable energy, that is either generated in real time, or offset by my solar panels. Never mind me messing up the engraving on the first pass… All good things have some form of imperfection, and whilst my CNC machine does a solid 99% of the work, I finished it and fitted the hardware by hand. It’s clear-coated with some good old fashioned Rustoleum 2x clear-coat in a satin finish.
Maybe I might put these into production, maybe I won’t. Who knows? Either way, I’m happy I could solve a problem that’s been bugging me and costing me hundreds of dollars over the years… and to the shark who’s got my old pair of sunnies… Can I please get them back? I know you wanna be hip and/or cool to all the other sharks in the ocean, but man, sharks are cool enough as it is, let alone a shark with jazzy af shades. For now, I hope that this case is going to keep my current pair safe from the sharks. Especially given how much these mean to me now.
Thank you for reading. Beano out.