TECHNOLOGY

Chaotic Tech Startup Stirs Up Pedal Industry

by: Landon McCoy, Chaos Audio

Anyone who has practiced pottery, painting, or even put together a LEGO set will tell you, “You don’t always get it quite right on the first try.” The same goes for trying to develop a new piece of technology. As with all creative processes, your initial idea is just a starting place. Where you eventually end up is a completely different story.

Chaos Audio is a startup comprised entirely of engineering students at FSU-Panama City. No one would expect a bunch of college students to start a digital audio company. But that is exactly what happened, and thus began a long journey of constant revision to create a viable product to compete in the current market.

Stratus is a smart guitar pedal and effects platform blending new and old technologies to create something unlike anything seen before. Stratus is technologically different by how it marries software and hardware to create a seamless user interface. It accomplishes this by using a smartphone application connecting directly to the actual guitar pedal over Bluetooth, allowing users to customize parameters and create preset effect chains right in the palm of their hand.

For those unfamiliar with the wide world of guitar pedals and accessories, here is the breakdown. Generally, electric guitars and other electric instruments are plugged directly into an amplifier. The vibration from the guitar strings are picked up by magnets and turned into a signal projected by the amplifier. The amplifier itself adds a bit of color to the sound, but to get distortion, echo, wah, or any of the other sounds found in your favorite songs, you need effect pedals, or stomp-boxes. These are either analog or digital. The mechanics of each are a bit different, but the end result is a sonic transformation of your instrument’s tone.

Using traditional analog pedals, one is needed for each unique sound or effect and are about $100 each. Not exactly ideal if limited on space or budget, especially if you want to experiment with many different sounds. Digital effects are just ones and zeros, and therefore, a ton of them can be packed affordably into one pedal. This compromise comes at the cost of having less than stellar effects or overly complicated user interfaces. Stratus aims to fill the gap in the market between these two extremes. Technically, it is a digital effects pedal, but actually so much more.

Chaos Audio and Stratus both started as a fleeting thought in the mind of CEO Landon McCoy, who came up with the idea to start an audio company at nineteen years old. Soon after, McCoy registered Chaos Audio, LLC.

The initial idea was to forgo buying analog guitar pedals in favor of just building them from scratch. It seemed more cost-effective in the long run and, as a broke college student, he could hardly afford any otherwise. Out of pure creative passion and curiosity, the first prototypes were created. They were crude, ugly, and far from usable, but it was a start. Now the revisions could begin.

An original sketch of the first Stratus prototype Early prototypes

Along the way, McCoy recruited his younger brother, fellow classmates, and friends to flesh out the company. Each new member took on a specialized role from marketing and finance, to production and coding. Soon after, the young startup, with their rudimentary prototype, captured the attention of technology incubator TechFarms. With the backing of TechFarms, and eventually software development company Teknika, Chaos Audio continued revising and updating their prototype.

With the assistance of Teknika, the team soon had a functional mobile app to pair with their pedal prototype. Much like the game of life, however, each step forward often leads to a step back. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it definitely wasn’t built by five college kids on a shoestring budget. Undeterred by things like software glitches and mechanical issues, Chaos Audio pressed on.

Chaos Audio used the time from the Covid-19 shutdown to focus on refining their invention. Building out a platform intertwining software and hardware for Stratus is like putting together a 100,000-piece puzzle with half the pieces missing and the rest are the same color.

On the software end, each glitch is like searching for a piece of hay in a needle stack, where finding it potentially means filling the stack with even more pieces of hay you need to find and certainly more needles. The actual hardware is even more daunting. Each pedal enclosure is milled out of a solid block of space-grade aluminum. The printed circuit boards for each unit are designed by hand on special software, and must be ordered from a third party at great expense, leaving very little room for error. There are countless unique parts all needing to work correctly on their own and function as a cohesive unit, but even despite these steep odds, the team was able to cobble together a Minimum Viable Product or MVP. Essentially, they had a complete working prototype and they weren’t even halfway finished.

Designing software and hardware from scratch is expensive, especially when your main source of income is residual payments from your high school YouTube channel. The next step was to get more funding. Chaos Audio had survived from one small investment up to this point. The next logical step was crowdfunding. With a working prototype in hand, the team created a successful Kickstarter campaign to generate the funds necessary to take Stratus to production. Again, everything doesn’t always go quite as planned.

The initial Kickstarter was a success. The team knew mistakes were made and they could do better. Before the campaign ended, Chaos Audio decided to pull the plug. They now had a much better understanding of the process and some incredibly valuable feedback. They took the knowledge gained from the first Kickstarter and applied it to a re-launch of the same product. The team revised Stratus again to fix issues presented by the previous prototype.

Some potential users expressed concerns about the stomp switch design, so the switch was completely redesigned using premium parts. Head of mechanical design Robert Copsey slimmed down the pedal profile to make more similar to traditional analog pedals. This allows Stratus to be more easily integrated on any guitarists traditional pedalboard.

Alpha testers encountered unwanted noise when using Stratus. McCoy consulted with electronics experts to discover the source of this design flaw. He redesigned the PCB to cancel out some of the extra noise. He also redesigned the actuable knobs board to be incorporated in the main printed circuit board to save space inside the enclosure. The team implemented other features like the rechargeable battery and looper setting, which allows users to record up to 5 minutes of audio and unlimited layers to play with. These revisions brought Stratus just inches from the finish line before the product had even launched.

Chaos Audio knew the product needed to cater to the needs of their consumer base with clear marketing and branding. The best, most innovative products will fail if not pitched to the correct people and packaged appropriately. Chaos Audio revamped their targeted ads and redesigned their logo and other imagery. The effort has already paid off as their subscriber list has nearly doubled. As they move towards relaunching their Kickstarter campaign, they are in a much more desirable spot.

It is easy to find yourself in an echo chamber where only receiving feedback from those around you. In the realm of creating technology, this mentality can be devastating. Don’t lose sight of the big picture, or missing the important small details. As an inventor working to bring a new product to an unsuspecting public, it is imperative to listen to all feedback. Trust your gut, follow your passion, but don’t let pride blind you from what is truly important. At the end of the day, your product needs to be something end consumers will actually need if it is to be successful. This fact is a large contributor to why many startups fail, and a key point in Chaos Audio’s plan to succeed.

24 BAY BIZ / SUMMER 2021

DOWNTOWN PANAMA CITY

Approved October 8, 2019

The strategic vision for downtown and its waterfront was created to direct future growth while also preserving the city’s history, providing a foundation for Panama City to become the premier city in the panhandle of Florida. The below cornerstones, created for downtown, can guide rebuilding and recovery for all of Panama City.

10 CORNERSTONE IDEAS FOR DOWNTOWN PANAMA CITY

1. Waterfront access 2. Downtown activity 3. Downtown living 4. Safety & security 5. Sustainable building 6. Resilient infrastructure 7. Connected 8. Placemaking 9. Gathering spaces 10. Update community standards

MILLVILLE

Approved March 23, 2021

Millville was one of the original frontier settlements in Bay County. The community rests between Watson Bayou and St. Andrews Bay. Rich in history, the area was built around a lumber yard in the late 19th century. In 1913, Millville was incorporated and citizens elected W.I. Singletary as Millville’s first mayor. In 1926 Millville was annexed into Panama City. Millville is home to a true working waterfront, including an established shipbuilding and marine repair industry and paper mill.

Millville Big Ideas

Create a complete neighborhood

Open up waterfront, neighborhood centers, and compatible infill

Create Great Streets

3rd street as main street, east ave design, business 98 revitalization

Create resilient open spaces & infrastructure

Infrastructure, existing open spaces and natural areas