Backerjack asked John Milanovich a few questions about his crowdfunded tire pressure indicator, RightPSI
What does RightPSI do and how does it do it?
RightPSI is a tire cap that turns orange when your tire is low, black when not, and yellow if overfilled. You unscrew the cap to your valve stem and screw ours on. You then fill through ours and it changes color when you fill it so you can use it as a gauge. Low tire pressure impacts how a car, motorcycle or bike handles and breaks which directly affects safety. For bikes and motorcycles, it impacts fuel efficiency and pollutants.
There seem to be a number of inexpensive color-coded tire pressure monitor valve caps on the market. What makes RightPSI different
RightPSI is the only cap that you can fill through and acts as a gauge. Also, you can see ours from 20 feet away.
The product won a Popular Science award in 2011. Why has it taken so long to get to the crowdfunding stage?
While I knew about Kickstarter and Indiegogo, we were working on our manufacturing process. We had a two-year time there where we were working to find the right person to supply our plastic parts. I had explored Chinese and European suppliers for these parts, but ended up with a US supplier and consultant. I started seriously reviewing Kickstarter a year ago and we launched a failed Kickstarter in December. We learned a lot from it, and relaunched Feb 15.
Colors are nice and all, but why not have some kind of Bluetooth alert that lets your smartphone know when your pressure is low?
We may have a version 2.0 that does that! We have some initial design work for it. However, our current version is getting a lot of interest and we think in some instances it is preferable. We have had a lot of response from locations where they say we don’t want anything with a battery. We think there is a market for both and we are excited to get this first analog version out.
What have been some of the best product suggestions you’ve gotten from the crowdfunding community?
A lot of people have mentioned the smartphone idea. One suggested that it could light up upon touching so you could check your tires in the dark. Also, people have suggested markets I did not explore prior. A guy emailed me saying, I love your product; I am in a wheelchair and this would make my life easier. I had not thought about that before, but since then I have had other people in wheelchairs e-mail me. That is very exciting to me.