Toys and Crafts of Canada

Two products, one principle

I make things that move without a screen. A disc spins, light flashes, and your eye fills in the rest. That trick has worked since the 1830s and it still stops people in a hallway.

Two products come out of it. One is nearly finished. The other I am not talking about yet.

Magisc

Analog animation kit In assembly

A printed disc, a light, and a picture that starts moving in your hands. Nothing on the disc moves. Your eye does that part.

No chip, no app, no screen. Getting the image to settle takes a little patience, and that is the point: you don't read about persistence of vision, you go looking for it and then you find it. Everything needed to run it comes in the box.

Swap the disc — every classic animation comes alive differently. Tap any one to hold it.

Built for classrooms, after-school programs, robotics clubs and camps · Swappable discs · Fully analog — no firmware, no app, no screen

The second one

Electromechanical display Disclosure held

A greeting card that plays a moving picture. No screen in this one either. It is meant for gifts, for company cards, and for classrooms where a display is out of reach.

The hardware works and the software behind it works. I am not describing how until the provisional is filed.

Working prototype · Encoder and firmware running on it · Details held until the filing goes in

What has actually been built

Aug 2025Registered the business in Ontario.

Mar 2026Joined Cohort 7 of Rise at Sheridan EDGE. Nine months, March to October.

Jun–Aug 2026Built the second product's software from scratch — file format, encoder and firmware — running a Sheridan engineering placement through the summer to get it done. All three run on real hardware now.

Jul 2026Patent landscape studies came back on both products, through Conestoga's Centre for Commercialization. Trademark knockout search done.

Jul 2026The Magisc PCB arrived from the fab. Started bring-up.

Sep 2026Put two more student projects into the autumn round: go-to-market research, and brand and packaging.

How I work

I think on paper before I think on a screen. Ideas go up as sketches and charts, and then I spend a long time drawing lines between them, because the useful answer is usually sitting where two unrelated fields touch. A nineteenth-century optical toy meets a microcontroller. A machinist's tolerance stack meets a file format. Most of what I have built started as a mess of boxes and arrows that would embarrass me if you saw it.

The range is deliberate. I machine, I solder, I draw, I write firmware, I write enterprise software, and I have taught all of it to somebody. Working across all of them means a problem that dead-ends in one place often has its answer sitting in another, and I can go and fetch it myself rather than wait on a specialist.

Then I write it down. What I don't know goes on paper before I try to solve it, and what actually happened goes down after — failures included, which are usually the ones worth keeping. Partly because one person cannot afford to learn the same thing twice. Partly because the funding programs want evidence, and notes taken as you go beat notes reconstructed a year later.

Where the IP stands

The IP work runs through Conestoga College's Centre for Commercialization, under IPON. Landscape studies are finished on both products, the trademark knockout search is done, and a provisional is being prepared.

Until that is filed I am not describing the second product. Not at trade shows, not in demos, not here. The Centre advises; the filing itself goes to a registered patent agent.

The two products get different treatment on purpose. The kit is covered by copyright on the teaching materials and by keeping the circuit to myself, and I am not chasing a patent on it. The card is where the patent goes.

Who I work with

Rise, Cohort 7 — Sheridan EDGEA founder program running March to October 2026 — coaching, a cohort of fourteen other founders, and credit toward professional services.

Centre for Commercialization, Conestoga CollegeThey handle the IP advice, the landscape studies and the trademark work, funded through IPON.

Sheridan Work-Integrated LearningStudent engineering placements. One finished this summer, two more submitted for the autumn.

Vidhyasagar “Sagar” Chitharanjan Doss

I am a mechanical engineer and CNC machinist who spent ten years writing enterprise software. It is an odd combination, and it is the reason this company can design its own board, write its own firmware, cut its own parts and file its own paperwork.

Sheridan alumnus. Based in Mississauga, and usually in the workshop.

The longer version — projects, machines, and everything I have built →

MAGISC^™