Bird Feeder Idea Yields Foot Device

By Jim Schlosser
Staff Columnist, News-Record.Com, North Carolina

Many would love to depart this earth knowing they've improved the human condition in a major way.

Few do.

Bill Sykes could be an exception. He has invented, patented and licensed the manufacturing rights of the SSD, or Step Sensing Device.

Sykes says SSD will do just as the name says: alert people their feet are firmly planted. Millions suffer peripheral neuropathy. They lack feeling in their feet because of diabetes and other medical reasons.

Sykes, 73, says sufferers live in fear of falling because they can't feel if their feet are grounded.

Relaxing on the back porch of his home in the Green Valley neighborhood, Sykes passed on a chance to pontificate about noble, world-changing goals that led him to invent the SSD.

"I did it just to solve a problem," he said. "When I see a problem I try to solve it."

As for the prospect of making a boatloads of money, he would welcome that. But not for himself.

He's living comfortably from owning a professional cleaning service. Money from SSD sales would benefit his children and their children.

Behind his porch chair stands a bird feeder that provided the spark, so to speak, for the SSD.

As with all who own bird feeders, Sykes became fed up with squirrels hogging the bird chow.

He went to his basement workshop and rigged up a device with a tiny battery-operated motor. He attached it to the bird feeder. When squirrels climbed the poll or landed atop the feeder, it activated the motor. A vibration zapped the rodents, sending them fleeing through the air. Problem solved.

He made a few of the devices and gave them away. He didn't think about it again until an entirely different problem confronted him.


In 2003, while volunteering at Wiley Elementary, a teacher told Sykes her mother had diabetes and had lost sensation in her feet.

"Bring me one of her shoes," Sykes told her.

Back in his basement workshop, he modified his vibrating bird feeder device.

He took a strip of Velcro and embedded a tiny motor like those in cell phones into the material. On the Velcro is an N-size battery that powers the motor.

The Velcro is strapped around the leg below the knee. A wire connected to the motor extends down the leg to a round padlike device in the bottom of the shoe, called the "step-switch."

When pressure from the foot hits the step-switch, it activates the motor in the Velcro. That causes a vibration behind the knee that lets the user know the foot is firmly planted.

The step-switch can be transferred when the user changes shoes.

After getting good feedback from the teacher's mother and others who tried the device, Sykes hired local patent attorney Walter Beavers. In 2005, the federal government awarded Sykes Patent No. 6,958,681.

Sykes then hired Millennium Marketing Group in Overland Park, Kan., to find a manufacturer. The prospectus Millennium sent to medical supply companies included a letter to a doctor from a Greensboro resident who had lost sensation in one foot from a crushed disc and pinched nerve in her back.

"When you treat other patients with similar issues, this device could be of great help to them," she wrote.

She ended it by writing, "It works GREAT."

Millennium says 15 million to 20 million Americans suffer peripheral neuropathy — and an estimated 1.8 billion worldwide.

Sykes held off saying anything publicly about his invention until Millennium found a manufacturer and distributor, which it recently did with a West Coast medical products company. Sykes says he's not yet at liberty to reveal the name.

He says he has entered into a 20-year licensing agreement and will serve as a consultant for five years. He hopes the SSD will be available by fall.

As for price, he again says he must remain mum, except to say it will retail for less than $100.

He's not sure he'll last another 20 years but is confident his children and grandchildren will. If the device proves successful, they'll be stepping in high cotton.

As for Sykes, he's not looking for awards and praise, but who doesn't have an ego? He wouldn't mind seeing a few headlines that say:

"Local invention could help millions worldwide."