Cookie Vario | Devpost

I'll try to make my text as compact and as specific as it is possible in the realias of lack of sleep.

Inspiration

In the beginning of this week Kacper came to me and told me there are variometers - devices useful for paragliders - by telling them whether they're falling down or flying up. But they are very complicated, overloaded with functions and simply expensive. As I love to construct things we quickly come up with an idea that we can create such a device during the hackaton.

But - we decided not only to create a prototype but a complete product - prepare enclosure, branding, marketing strategy and even - a crowdfunding video! Actually we wanted to find ourselves a graphics designer and a marketing specialist, but we couldnt match with any people of these capabilites and we finally build up the team out of moslty hardware-programmer people, but with hidden talents :-)

The device itself is simple, this time we've rather focused on selling the MVP rather than developing something large and unsellable.

What it does

The device is meant to be placed on paragliders helmet and it simply signals the speed of climbing or falling. Quick beeps mean climbing (so the user can quickly react and turn into thermal) and slower beeps occur when the user is falling down. The silence means that the paraglider is quite stable in vertical (speed lower than 1mps). The thresholds has been set to values actually useful while paragliding but there were no chances of testing the device appropiately because of the lack of wind during the wind so we change thresholds to values allowing us to show the effect by simply moving it up and down.

Challenges I ran into

Data filtering which we've needed to model first in matlab and then move the working logic into the microcontroller. It has seriously increased the speed of developement.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We have working device. We have pretty good and efficient data filtering. We have put it into pretty lovely 3d printed enclosure. We have created the logo, and the website, and the facebook profile. We have a decent, in the realias of technical possibilites, crowdfunding video. All of that during these awesome 48 hours... With zero sleep for some of us, lots of fun and fantastic atmosphere.

What I learned

This universal idea once again - Keeping It Simple just works :-)

What's next for Cookie Vario

We would like to build a startup out of this project. It does not end here. We will be looking for knowledge and support from people in Kraków Startup scene - we hope that we'll find people who will believe in us and help us reach our goal and build a startup.

If it does not work out, we already have at least three first customers for whom we might build these devices manually anyway :-) And try harder with another idea.

But for now, lets focus on Cookie Vario, such an simple but useful Cookie! :-)