We have also partnered up with Skinnyr, so now you can buy our eScale through them and take advantage of the great weight tracking tools they offer. Click HERE to sign up!

We have partnered up with DailyBurn, so now you can buy our eScale through them and see your progress on dailyburn.com. In this video Andy (CEO of DailyBurn) shows off the BodyTrace eScale and explains how it connects to DailyBurn.

You can actually follow my weight changes on Twitter now,
it will be available for everyone SOON!
CLICK ON THE PICTURE! :)

For the first few hundred customers we added a personal message on the postage. Unfortunately we won't be able to do it in the future since we switched from USPS to FedEx. It was really funny to see all those boxes with a personal message on them. I actually wanted to highlight it to make sure that people see it when it arrives. I really thought about it..... but going through hundreds of boxes, I don't think I have time for that. :)

We are very excited to finally ship the eScales. We have been working so hard on this product, it definitely feels good. I love the packaging, it looks great.

It's not an accident that the label fits perfectly! :)

OK, maybe we are not faster, but it sounds good. We are definitely better though, since we just lowered our prices. Starting today, we have 2 new plans on our website that you can choose from:

Before you email me: YES, if you placed your pre-order, you will get these prices as well. We already sent you an email, so please check your inbox! :)

Finally the first shipment has arrived. Fortunately we had no issues at customs and everything went according to plan. We will just do some quick testing, then we will start shipping them ASAP.

Since our eScales have to be uniquely identified, we developed a system to track them. After each scale is manufactured we put a barcode on the box and we scan it. Once we have 5 scales ready we put them in a carton that also receives a barcode:

Our database looks like this:

3 steps of using the BodyTrace eScale for the first time:

1. Insert batteries
2. Tap to power on
3. Wait for pattern & step on

It can't get much easier than this!

Just a few examples of the avatars that we will have on our site:

I just got an email with the new box design. It's amazing how a creative idea like this can make my day. :)

We will be at the Charlotte's Weight Loss Super Show in August, so if you would like to see the eScale in action, this is your first chance!

We visited the molding factory again and took a close look at the new plastics. We made some modifications again, but we are basically happy that things are going according to plan.

We have the website on the Internet for a little over 24 hours now and we had visitors from 50+ countries which made us very excited.

On the other hand we already learned a lot from the feedback and reactions, so we will make some additional changes to the product.

The first and most important lesson:
1. PRIVACY
Some of you thought that using our product means that everybody can see your results and pictures online. We will have usernames on our site, so you can take advantage of the product without revealing your real identity. You don't need to upload pictures of yourself, and even if you do you can keep them private and use them only for your own motivation.

2. How it works
It is not using Wi-Fi connection because that is very complicated and requires a set up. We want you to have a great user experience, that is why we designed the eScale so it works straight out of the box.

3. "Can we tweet this?"
We get a lot of emails asking about Twitter. We thought about this before, but the demand is so huge, we will have this function earlier than we planned, so you can tweet your success as soon as we have the product available.

I think these were the key issues, we will make some changes on our website tonight, so there is no confusion anymore.

It is amazing how much time we can spend discussing tiny details like this one below, but we really think that it will make a difference and people will notice them. Or at least we hope....

That hole will make it easier to open the box when it arrives.

I just had to post these pictures...:)

The first design ideas for the boxes has arrived today, they look nice. There are no unnecessary design elements on the box since we will use it for shipping. Our priority is the toughness, that is why we will do Drop Tests. We want to make sure that they will arrive everywhere safely.
These boxes look more like pizza boxes so that will obviously change, but the design will be similar to these. I prefer the first one personally. Also, we might use brown paper (like the inside now) simply because that is more environmentally friendly.

We were in Zhuhai today which is a beautiful city not far from Macau. We spent the whole day just walking around on the beach and parks.
At night we had dinner with the owner of the factory, his wife and a few of the engineers. There were so many different food on the table and not surprisingly we couldn't recognize most of them. I have never seen so many animals' eye on the table before, but the most horrifying part was actually eating them... :) To be honest I actually liked most of them, maybe that is the most horrifying part! :)

One of the Chinese engineers surprised us today by saying "rossz". It is actually a Hungarian word that means "bad". Eventually me and Andy said it so many times that he memorized it.

I have no idea what we were thinking. This design just doesn't make sense, but it's easy to be smart now. It would break as soon as someone steps on it...

This design was done not too long ago, so its almost the same as the final version of it. Well, maybe we should wait until there is a final version before we say something... :)

This is the 1st prototype. It is more beautiful than any of the drawings. We had to change a few things on it to make it as close to perfection as possible, but it's all coming together now.

We met the owner of the company and the engineers as well. It was good to finally meet everyone, they all worked really hard on this project.

We installed the software quickly and put the PCB in the scale which fit perfectly. We were excited to see the first measurement, but unfortunately there were no results.... and we also had no idea what the problem was.
It took us 7 hours to fix the issue but we finally did. It would have been way too easy to arrive to China and have everything work perfectly right away.

The signals from the sensors were noisier than we were used to due to the extremely high temperature. Since we tested and calibated our scales in room temperature, the extreme heat (over 100 fahrenheit) at the factory caused us some difficulties. We want very accurate results and since the sensors were not accurate enough, the scale didnt display any measurement result. We fixed the problem and now everything functions perfectly.

At the end of the day we were exhausted but proud at the same time... issues will always come up, but this time we fixed them relatively fast and it made us happy. Looking forward to tomorrow!

We took a ferry today to the city (see above) where the scales will be assembled. We met Nick, who is the sales manager at the factory. We have never seen him during the 18-month development time. It was great to finally meet, we celebrated with a dinner together.

I have met Andy today in Hong Kong and we stayed there for sunday night. We had a few extra hours so we went for a walk and discussed the "plan of attack". It was good to meet up after unlimited hours of talking on the phone almost every day and thousands of emails.

Hong Kong is amazing by the way, the skyscrapers and mountains with the ocean create a really special landscape. Hopefully we can return sometime soon.
I also tried shark's fin today which is a famous delicacy but it's not a great choice if you enjoy flavours. It doesn't taste like much.

Please DO NOT try shark fin!
I have learned that nearly 100,000,000 sharks are killed annually, most of them "finned" and thrown back into the water where they sink and drown.

Google Translate is very useful. Also very funny sometimes.

I designed half of it and Andy did the other half. You can guess which parts belong to me... :)

We have ordered the prototype today, so it should be ready next week. We are very excited to go to China and we can't wait to put our hands on it. It will be interesting to see how well it functions. The plastic is made in China but the PCB for the prototype is manufactured in Hungary. I am flying from New York to Hong Kong just to make it even more complicated.
I really hope that the PCB will fit in the plastic case perfectly, otherwise I dont' know what we were doing in the last 6 months. I might start to question our ability to do this. :)

The LAST modification before the prototype is ready:

It's the switch between lbs and kg. It was our proposed design, but it looks different on the final product. Of course. :)

I actually didn't sleep last night because I received an email right before I went to bed. We have the ALMOST perfect design in our hands. I was so excited, I couldn't wait a few hours to take a look at it, especially that I should get back to them before the morning comes for them in China, so....

Anyways, we love the latest design, me and Andy were just looking at it for hours. We looked at it from every possible angle, and we need 3 tiny modifications and we are ready. According to our plan it takes 1 week for the prototype, so hopefully we will be at the factory in China sometime next week.

Such a huge step forward, we feel so much better. It has been a long journey, and even though we are not even close to the end of it, we are moving forward and that is exciting.

I have been on a very strict diet lately and I actually lost 16 pounds in 2-3 weeks. You can see my own chart below. :)

Snap your snack: Taking a photo of your plateful of food can keep you slim. People who took pictures of everything they ate for five days reported consuming fewer snacks and being less likely to go back for seconds than during a week-long period in which they kept a written food diary, a study from the University of Wisconsin at Madison finds. Try capturing your meals for a week to help eyeball portion sizes as well as color variety—aim for more green, less white (unless it's cauliflower).

I have been doing network (and all types of) tests with our scale, the one that already has the latest software and almost the latest hardware built in it.
I have to be honest here, this testing makes me really nervous. Every time I step on it and measure myself, I am afraid that something will not work properly. It won't be able to measure my weight or it won't be displayed on our website instantly....
So far we only had issues once. When there was no network, the BodyTrace eScale could not transmit the data (it's normal, just like you can't use your cell phone without coverage). Next time I used it with good coverage it was suppposed to send both measurements but only one was displayed on our site. Of course I could show this issue to the programmers over and over again and the problem is resolved already.
We are getting closer and closer to the manufacturing and I feel the pressure of putting something perfect together. Our expectations are very high, so testing is really a 24/7 work for us. Even though everything seems fine, I am still nervous. The real test is still in front of us.... when thousands of users start to use it.....

This post doesn't have much to do with manufacturing or design but it's a funny story. At least I think so.... :)
I took a little break and went to Las Vegas for 4 days. I didn't gamble, but had a great time anyways, I strongly recommend this trip for everybody.
One afternoon I decided to go and see the Grand Canyon but all the tours were 8-10 hours long and I didn't want to spend my valuable time on a bus. I decided to go on a helicopter ride which was an hour and a half long. Before we were getting on the helicopter they asked me about my weight. Without thinking for a second:

- 76.4 kg or 168.4 lbs.

The guy started laughing, and that made me realize how much testing was involved in creating these scales. Today for example I measured myself about 10-15 times....

I know this picture doesn't look real but I took it myself from the helicopter.

We are in the final stages of the design process. We should have a final plastic design in a few days. I don't think anyone can imagine how much work is involved in something like this. I honestly thought that it's much easier.
We tell them what we want and how we want it, and that is it. That was my idea....
In reality we are talking about 1 mm plastic parts and have a whole conversation about them. Of course it takes valuable time, but we are really focusing on the final product's quality instead of the speed of introducing it to the market.
We are constantly being asked by Family and friends about China, so for me that is the most hated question right now:

Just to give you a few examples of the "issues", here are 3 pictures:Have you ever had a 3-hour conversation about the size of a bathroom scale? We did.

We wanted the side walls to cover the top plastic (here is on the bottom).

We also had a long discussion about the PCB holders. The final method will be similar to this, but it will look totally different. :)

Thank you everybody!

Everything is going well with the plastic design. It really seems like we are on the right track. We have the final design of just about everything. The design process takes about 2 weeks and then we will actually build a prototype to see if everything functions properly. This is our last chance to find out if something won't work properly or just won't look good.
No worries though, we have been testing the scales for over 1 year now. The only major difference between those and the new one is that the test scales are very ugly. I actually have a picture for you, so you can see it with your own eyes. :)

This is how I imagine the front page. Of course it will change a lot, but it's a good start.
Btw it was a terrible pen and I was drawing in the dark... otherwise my handwriting is extremely pretty!

We are developing a sofware for calibration and testing. Every single BodyTrace eScale will be tested to make sure that everything works properly. Since we can not be there for the entire manufacturing process, we had to translate the software so the factory workers can understand it. It looks different, to say the least....

We have received a sample production of the PCBs from China and we are testing them at this laboratory.

I am sure that everyone at the company would have said no to post this picture.... I sent this picture to Andy showing him a mistake we had on our site. Working 15-20 hours continuously makes you do crazy things.....

We finally launched our website, just to see how it works out, plus it's good for the search engines to see it up and running. We hope to have at least a 100 users before we even introduce the BodyTrace eScale. We like the overall design and the clean look. Of course it doesn't have many functions yet, but it will come just on time. We have so many ideas, I can't wait to start developing the final version of it. I know it will never be final, but I mean the final version that we will use when we launch the eScale. :)

We have received the shipment from China after some trouble at customs. This package included our planned solution for the display. We wanted a totally dark and simple bathroom scale that only "comes alive" when it is being used. You can't even see that there is a display until you step on it! Looks awesome, we are very satisfied with the recommended solution.

We heard this advice many times: "Just tell the factory in China what you want and they will do it!"

So far it seems to work and we are very excited about it!

What more can I say? We have 1 working device.
We have got to start somewhere....:)

While we are developing the scale we are also working on many other things such as shipping, online payments, website development, marketing and sales strategies, just to mention a few.
One of the things we did in the last few days is developing the mailing solution for the scales and identification. You might not thought about it, but for us it is a lot more complicated to ship our product out than to many other companies. We need to know exactly which scale we shipped out to somebody.... imagine seeing someone else's weight online when you log in to our website! :)
We are using barcode scanners and codes to make sure that everything is organized, and here is the first barcode we created.
Well, we all know that: "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." :)

You might wonder about how it all started, so I will take you back in time. Don't worry, we are not going far... only 3 years back.

- Did you grab your chair? Are you ready?

- No? Ok, I will wait a minute...

- Are you ready now? OK, lets go. :)

I was sitting in my living room with 2 of my friends, watching TV. Commercials came on and some of them was about weight loss and my friend (Andy) told us that:

- We should make a scale that displays the results online!

So the idea of the BodyTrace eScale was born and that is the end of the story.

Wow, that was exciting.... it get's even better, keep reading! :)

A year later I was sitting in my office, running my own company, having about 20 people working for me when the phone rang. It was Andy:

- Hey, do you remember my idea about that scale?

- Yes, kind of.... why?

- I am making one, it's almost ready...

We met a few weeks later and agreed on doing this business together. I closed my company and decided to invest 100% of my time and energy in this adventure.

In the next couple of weeks we came up with the rest of the business plan, and started working on bringing this product alive.

The reason why I got involved is very simple. First of all I loved the idea, I truly believed in it. I saw the endless opportunities with this revolutionary device. I knew it can change people's life, and I am not being corny here. Weight loss is a huge problem and if we can provide the motivation & expertise that people need, I really think we can make a difference.

I was also very excited about the complexity of the project. It is more complicated than anything else I have done during my career.

The work will be done in 3 different continents, 3 different countries, languages, cultures.... and that is exactly what I love.

I don't look at BodyTrace as a business, I look at it as a journey.

I know it sounds funny for some people, especially that we are talking about a bathroom scale.

I don't look at it as a bathroom scale though. I guess you are not surprised by now..

This product is our vision, it's a product that we created and we will actually travel all across the world to make it available for everyone. It just happens to be a bathroom scale. A very special one. At least to us.....:)