Startup Weekend Montreal

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

RoboBrrd & I were at the Startup Weekend Montreal, it was an interesting experience! Considering the price of the ticket was free (won it from MGG->VCTV), I think it was quite a good value. I didn’t have any real goals in mind going in, I just wanted to see what it was all about and hopefully learn some stuff.

The first day (Friday) was when we all gave rapid pitches. The one I gave was about how cool robots are and what I want to make. It ended up making it through to the next round, and there were 3 other people who were interested in working together for the weekend!

The Edubotics team was…
@marekweb as web dev
@jonotron as web dev
@aly_eska as business
and myself as leader & robot builder

Saturday was pretty cool. We figured out what we wanted to make and how it would work. What we wanted was a math game where depending on how the screen was oriented, then it would be a different operation. The answers would trigger a response from the RoboBrrd.

Marek suggested that the app on the iPad could just be a web app, and communication from the web to the robot could be done through callbacks.

This is *really* cool because that means that ALL devices can have the same app, and they will be able to communicate with the robot.

With robotics and software on devices, you will always need a native app in order for the communication to work. But, if you have the actual playable content as a web app, then that means you can easily roll out new updates and features.

I’ll make an indepth post about this coming up soon. In the meantime, here is the code! Marek made the math game, and Jon made the memory game!
- Math game
- Memory game
- iOS App

Alyeska worked really hard on the business side of things. I learnt a bit about this, which is kind of good! She created a survey to learn what the important parts to the robot would be. One of the running jokes was how important a biology game would be. The people responding to the survey didn’t think it was that important XD

The pricing of the robot was hard to figure out, but it came out to $96 in materials, and $179 after the fact. The apps would be free.

We demoed the robots on Sunday so that everyone could try them!

(i’m off to the side next to the robots there)

On Sunday it was the final pitch day, our pitch was pretty good. We had a real demo that was actually working! I had my pockets stuffed with tools that I might need just incase something bad happened, like a 11.1V and 9V battery… I guess you could say there was a lot of potential there!

The demo was of the math game and the blue RoboBrrd. It worked! A ROBOT DEMO WORKED IN FRONT OF A BUNCH OF HUMANS! YESSSSSSS! This was really spectacular in my books

We didn’t end up winning anything, but we did get a lot of media throughout the weekend which was great. VCTV interviewed me a lot of times, that was pretty nice! Our website even got a hit from South Africa, how cool is that!

Afterwards one of the judges said to me that the robot would have to be less than $50. I said back to him that if it was that, it would be some cheap toy made by Hasbro. He said something like “yeah but it would make more money!”
I said back to him that I’m not here for the money, I’m here to make robots. A $50 toy would not do this robot justice. It’s designed to be a kit that you put together.
…Eventually it ended with me telling him that I’m the one with the robots, and he isn’t, and that this *will* work out in the end.

(I don’t really know if anything will work out in the end, but at least it is open source hardware & software)

So that little discussion was interesting. I actually don’t know the name of the person anyway. (By the way, if you’re reading this, it was nice to talk with you and I don’t mean any disrespect at all- it is just two different perspectives that don’t match up ^_^)

I plan to keep doing this thing that I have been doing which is actually called ‘bootstrapping‘. I don’t really wear boots though and don’t have straps on my shoes. That would be kind of strange. Although it’s not really ‘bootstrapping’ since I have had a lot of help from friends (thanks!) that is getting things rolling. So maybe something more like shoe-laces-auto-tied-now-go-run-’ing.

All in all, it was a pretty good weekend! It was great to work with like-minded people on the team. Most of us will see each other again at the robotics hackathon!

Sometimes during the interviews I forget who/what/when to namedrop. So here is all the namedroppingness that needs to happen here all in one place! Sorry in advance if I didn’t namedrop in a video or interview. I am really thankful for ALL the help that peeps have given, sooooo if I didn’t namedrop you, next time we see each other: ICE CREAM IS ON ME (and the sprinkles)!
- Adafruit Industries: for the servos and electronics!
- Redpark: for the redpark serial cable!
- WyoLum: for the WyoLum Open Hardware Innovation grant!
- Chris the Carpenter, Eaglesnest Robotics, Lenore/EMSL: for the most amazingest experience on the Robot Party that always makes a good story to capture the Robot Party hangout spirit, LOVE IT!

And special thanks to EVERYONE who has been supporting the robots. WOO!

Ok, and special shout out to the FIRST team that I mentor for not getting too angry at me for skipping an important robot weekend!

More blog posts to come up later!

chirp

Posted in: WyoLum Progress.