Join us each issue as we discover HackerHouse—where eight engineering geniuses will live, eat and create for three months under the guidance of eight mentors.
Michael Coleman
The main project I am focusing on in HackerHouse is an app called MyReps. It is currently live and can be viewed from any web browser by going to MyReps.me. The premise for this app goes something like this: The average American citizen does not know who his/her congressional represen tatives are. This is a major problem since these people in Congress are supposed to be representing us and our opinions, but often do not. To solve this problem, MyReps aims to bring the average citizen back into the political process. Currently, by simply entering a zip code, the user will be shown who his/her three representatives are (one from the House of Representatives and two from the Senate). The user can also find contact information and view what bills each representative has voted on and how the representative voted. The next step will allow the user to give feedback and vote on these bills, too, to see how well his/her representative is representing.
Jonathan Burnett
Living at HackerHouse is a blast! We’re constantly being challenged to work harder, both by mentors dropping in and by each other; but we play hard, too. So far the highlights include: winning AngelHack Atlanta, which gave us the idea for our product, Chime; fishing off Augi’s dock in St. Augustine; and running down to the beach in the rain while at HackaNUI in Boca Raton. Our prototype for the Chime is coming along well, and we’ll be looking to sell units to beta-testers within the month.
Sam Gregory
So far the experience at HackerHouse has been positive. I have been working on an iPhone app called iFishEarth with my design partner, Brad Pettigrew, which we brought into the program. Theapp was built to organize the Internet’s fishing reports, making the information universally accessible and simple to discover. Since starting HackerHouse, we have received great advice from the mentors and fellow cadets in the house, helping us form a more concrete short-term plan. Our focus for the duration of the program will be to increase the virality of the product, promote more user engagement/interaction and develop a system to “gamify” the app — where users will be able to unlock badges and achievements for adding content and interacting with all of the app’s features (a la Foursquare).
During the first month of HackerHouse, we’ve developed and shipped some exciting new features and improvements. We added real-time buoy weather information for 1,000 locations worldwide and implemented a push notification system to complement the new following feature. This lets users receive notifications when their favorite outdoor writer or fishing buddy has added or commented on a report.
Currently the iFishEarth app has been downloaded 25,000 times, has 10,000 registered users and is getting 15,000 visits a month. For the remainder of the program, our goal is to continue innovating and improving the product before we take it to market.
Ty Parker
In the first weekend of Hacker House, we all went to Atlanta for a Hackathon. Not being a software-oriented person, I wasn’t sure how I would contribute to the team. However, as we were brainstorming ideas on the ride up, I thought about how people spin warm cans of beer in ice to cool them faster and wondered if a device could do the same thing. During the Hackathon, Trevor and I went to Walmart and looked for things that could make the dream a reality. I ended up breaking an $8 drill in half and duct-taping it inside a kid’s sippy cup with a toggle switch and a piece of a 6-pack holder epoxied to the end of the drill. The first test came during the pitch to investors, where the 6-pack holder successfully held a beer as the drill spun it in ice. The investors were impressed when they noticed the significant difference in temperature and taste of a beer sitting in ice versus one spun in ice. We took second place.
Since then, prototypes have been flying out of the 3D printer as we print molds and fill them with two-part pour plastics over-molded onto drill bits. The minimum viable product is called the Chillbit and works by spinning beers in ice using a preexisting drill. We’ve sold a few to validate our market and to have some data from real use. A standalone device called the Beerouette has been 3D printed and uses a motor and battery to spin beers in a cooler of ice automatically. Patents have been filed and the designs are still being tweaked as marketing/funding/manufacturing strategies are researched and implemented. The process has been very exciting and rewarding so far.
Eric Pheterson Since HackerHouse has started, we’ve bonded with our fellow cadets and formed the ideas we’ll be developing throughout the summer. I came in with a project that I was already working on and formed another project within the HackerHouse. My existing company, GOOD Inc., was to design and build a smart pet feeder this summer, and at the first Hackathon we attended, in Atlanta, we formed the second idea, which is an app to engage citizens in the political process.
Feeding dogs is a chore which most pet owners perform twice daily and sometimes reluctantly. Owners have to wake up early (as their dogs love the morning) and go straight home after work to keep their feedings on schedule. Automatic pet feeders exist for this purpose, but they all suck. They suck for two reasons: 1) They’re as easy to program as a VCR, and if you have two pets in your house, they’re rendered useless, as one dog can eat the food of two; 2) Amazon reviews report that feeders malfunction while the owners go on vacation, leaving the pets to starve for days. Our solution connects users to their pet’s feeder via Wi-Fi, letting you set the feeding schedule conveniently online. This also allows two-way communication; imagine a notification that you’re low on food, that your dog isn’t eating, or, heaven forbid, a jam occurs — you know right away. Most homes in America have a dog, and a quarter of all homes have two. Having two dogs is no problem for us because we put a unique tag on each dog’s collar. If you have two dogs, you get two feeders. Each dog’s respective feeder will open a drawer with their food bowl when they walk by and close when they leave. If the other dog approaches, the bowl closes to protect the food from theft. In this way, we’ve solved the two major hurdles for customer satisfaction that existing feeders do not address. Our feeder is clean and simple, easy to program and works, regardless of how many pets you own.
You pay taxes, and a portion goes to your state and congressional representatives. Who are your representatives? What have they voted on recently? If you can’t answer these two questions, you can’t be sure that you’re actually being represented. MyReps was created to address this issue. Head over to https://myReps.me on any web-enabled device, and within 10 seconds, you can discover who your representatives are. One more click, and you can see what they’ve voted on and how they voted, plus educate yourself about the bills. The magic comes in our future feature: We’re going to allow you, the citizen, to vote on bills alongside your representative. There’s only a hand full of bills each week, so it won’t be overwhelming, and we’ll send you notifications for each bill to keep you engaged. A database filled with representative’s votes, and yours, provides valuable insight to you — whether you should keep or vote out your representative — and to your representative, on how to better represent constituents and write future bills. MyReps will involve everyone in the political process and reshape the future of American politics for the better.
Mathew Chandler
Thus far in The HackerHouse, things have been going great. We have heard from a wide array of mentors experienced in many different areas and learned a lot. We have also attended two Hackathons, which are locally organized events where attendees spend a designated amount of time (24 to 48 hours) trying to complete an internal goal or an assigned task. At our first Hackathon, AngelHack Atlanta, my sub-team of HackerHouse, consisting of Juan Rios, Peter Borenstein, Jonathan Burnett and myself, won First place! Here we created Chime, an environmental music device. Think of it as a modern-day wind chime, except rather than simply making music from wind, it does so with sensors including wind, barometric pressure, humidity, light, motion, sound and more. It then composes music on the fly from the hyper-local data and streams this to your computer or to a local speaker via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. This is an exciting project and is just the beginning of reconnecting people to nature using the technology of today. The project has already evolved immensely and we are excited for where this will go. That’s all for now, thanks!