On sale now · $49.99 + $9.00 US shipping + tax

FAQ, shipping & returns

What ordering a Blinky Hawk will look like — before, during, and after.

On this page
  1. Ordering & payment
  2. Shipping & delivery
  3. Cancellations & returns
  4. Warranty
  5. Repairs & replacement parts
  6. Care & handling
  7. Design, firmware & copying
  8. Still have a question?
Ordering & payment

Buying one

Can I order one right now?

Yes. Blinky Hawk is on sale — the buy button is on the main page. Units are built to order in small batches rather than pulled off a shelf, so see the lead time below before you order.

How much does it cost?

$49.99, plus $9.00 USPS shipping and handling within the United States — $58.99 before tax. Sales tax is calculated from your delivery address at checkout, so the final figure depends on where you are.

Beyond that there is nothing else to pay: no subscription, no consumable, and nothing further to buy to make it work.

How do I pay?

Through Stripe, on their hosted checkout. You can pay by card, Cash App Pay, Affirm, Klarna, or direct bank transfer. Your card details go to Stripe, not to me.

Do you offer bulk discounts?

I can offer a bulk discount on orders of three or more. It is not automated yet, so email me and we will sort it out.

For smaller numbers, just change the quantity at checkout. Shipping is charged once per order rather than once per unit, so ordering several together already saves you something before any discount.

Do you invoice, or take purchase orders?

If your workplace needs an invoice, a W-9, or a PO rather than a card payment, please email me.

What color is it?

The current color is purple with green text, seen in the photos. I will update here if that changes. If you have a different request, please email me.

A purple Blinky Hawk standing upright on a stone countertop, the BLINKY HAWK name moulded into its side in green, with the metal toggle switch on top and a red lead looping around its base. An orange multimeter with a second purple unit attached is blurred behind it.
The current housing: purple with green lettering.
Shipping & delivery

Getting it to you

Where does it ship from, and how long does it take?

Everything ships from Illinois, USA, by USPS. Expect somewhere between one business day and three weeks between placing an order and it going out the door — the same window you will see at checkout. These are built in small batches rather than pulled off a shelf, so the honest answer is that it depends where your order lands relative to the batch I am building.

If you want to know the lead time before you commit, email me and I will tell you what it looks like that week. And if a batch runs long, you can cancel for a full refund right up until it ships.

Why the variable lead time? Is this your full-time job?

I have a different full-time job, plus family. I can only sell Blinky Hawks so long as it does not interfere with those other aspects of my life. Instead of not selling it at all, I am selling it on the terms I am able to.

I need it by a specific date.

Tell me when you order and I will prioritize it at no extra charge. If the date is not realistic I would rather say so up front than take your money and disappoint you.

Do you ship internationally?

Not yet — United States addresses only for now. Blinky Hawk contains a rechargeable lithium cell, which carries real packaging, labeling and carrier restrictions, particularly by air. I would rather work out exactly which destinations I can ship to properly than promise everywhere and fail.

If you are outside the US and want one, email me. Knowing where people actually are is what decides which country I sort out next, and I will update this page as that list grows.

Cancellations & returns

Changing your mind

Can I cancel an order?

Yes — any order can be cancelled at any point before it ships, for a full refund, no questions asked. Email me and it is done. Because these are built in batches, there may be a real gap between ordering and shipping, and you should not feel trapped by it.

What is the return policy once it arrives?

Thirty days, no questions asked. If you are not happy with it for any reason, send it back within 30 days of delivery for a full refund of the purchase price. You do not need to justify the decision to me.

Return shipping is at your expense. If a unit comes back damaged well beyond normal handling, or with parts missing, I may refund a portion based on its condition rather than the whole amount — but that is the exception, not the default.

What if it arrives damaged or does not work?

That is not a return, that is my problem to fix. Email me with a photo and I will repair, replace or refund it — see the warranty below. You should not be out of pocket for something that arrived broken.

I am sending it back. Do you want to know why?

Very much, if you are willing to say. I cannot improve the thing without hearing what went wrong, and a return with an explanation attached is worth more to me than the sale was.

Warranty

How long it should last

There is nothing inside a Blinky Hawk that is designed to wear out. It is a small circuit in a solid housing, and I expect a unit that is treated reasonably to keep working into the indefinite future.

The formal warranty period is one year from delivery. If something goes wrong within that window, you are entitled to a refund, a repair, or a replacement.

That one-year figure is the commitment I am prepared to put in writing, not a prediction about when it will fail. If a unit gives up at fourteen months I would still like to hear about it — both because it probably should not have, and because that is exactly the sort of thing I need to know to build the next batch better.

Report problems directly to me at Nick@OIHDesigns.com. There is no ticket system and no phone tree; it is one person reading the email.

Repairs & replacement parts

When something breaks

Can I order replacement parts?

Yes. The external, losable, breakable parts — the housing, the stacking banana plugs, the short lead — can be replaced individually rather than replacing the whole unit. Depending on which part it is, the cost is often minimal or nothing at all. Email me and describe what happened.

Can I repair it myself?

Yes, and doing so does not void anything. The housing comes apart with ordinary screws and the full schematic is published. If you would rather fix it than ship it back and forth, that is a perfectly good outcome as far as I am concerned — tell me what failed and I will help if I can.

The battery has stopped holding a charge.

Within the warranty period that is covered like any other failure. Outside it, contact me about a replacement cell rather than binning the unit.

Care & handling

Keeping it working

Is Blinky Hawk waterproof, weatherproof, or anything of the sort?

No. There is no gasket and no ingress rating. Absolutely do not submerge Blinky Hawk, and do not use it in wet conditions. Wipe it down with a dry cloth and nothing wetter.

If you suspect water has got inside, open the top and allow it to dry completely before any further use.

Anything else?

Design, firmware & copying

What is open, and what is not

Can I see how it works?

All of it. The full schematic and the firmware source are published, deliberately. You are putting this across your probes; you are entitled to know exactly what is on the other side of them.

What MCU does Blinky Hawk use?

The current batch uses a Seeed Studio XIAO RA4M1, set up for the Arduino IDE. Please note that this may change in the future. The firmware manual covers the configuration keys and the serial command reference for the current build.

Can I buy the plain board and use my own MCU?

Yes — please contact me directly for that. The pinout fits the Seeed Studio XIAO / Adafruit QT Py footprint, but with a few jumper wires you could adapt it to any board and give yourself, for example, Bluetooth for the beeps, or a process-control application.

Can I modify my own unit?

Yes. Change the configuration over USB, or reflash it with your own firmware entirely. It is your hardware. Doing so does not void the warranty on the physical device, though I obviously cannot warrant code I did not write.

Can Blinky Hawk be used as a standalone device?

Yes. You can use it by itself if you do not need to know the value of a voltage beyond the fact that it is above ABS ~0.6 V. With some programming you could rewrite the firmware to give different numbers of beeps or blinks for different voltage levels, if you wanted that.

Used this way, the banana plugs that normally go into your meter should have the cover installed.

Is the design set in stone?

No. I may make design changes to improve performance and/or reduce cost. These changes will be documented, and the schematic I publish will always be the schematic for the device I am selling at the time.

Can I build my own, or sell copies?

Build one for yourself, absolutely — that is part of why the design is published. Selling them is a different question: Blinky Hawk is patent pending, so publishing the schematic is not a grant of manufacturing rights. If you are thinking about producing these commercially, email me and we will talk about it rather than guess at each other.

Either way, please do not use the Blinky Hawk name on your own work, or present it as coming from OIH Designs.

Still have a question?

Just ask me

If something here is unclear, missing, or seems unreasonable, tell me. It is a short page and it will get better with pushing.

Nick@OIHDesigns.com