How to invest $ 100,000 in your own karma (part 1)
Hello!
This is a story about how we created “the coolest and most convenient personal gps monitoring system” and what finally happened.
I must say that we are far enough from programming, engineering, design, gps technology and everything else necessary to create such a system. But with the help of the universe, fucking mother and a huge number of talented people with whom we were lucky to meet in the four years of work on the project, we got what we got.
')
Those who may be interested in our ordeals, as well as those who cherish the idea of creating their own startup, but are afraid that he does not have enough knowledge, we invite under the cat.
Any business starts with abatthurte idea. And if it was not there initially, then in the process of its search, the devilish heap of affairs - kind and different, perishes in obscurity. We (and the two of us, Sergey and Zhenya) thought a lot about what to do so that everyone just gasped (well, after a year of an IPO, a yacht and all that), but only proved that it was practically impossible to give birth to an idea.
The idea of the project or, if you will, a startup, came, as it happens with everyone, I apologize for the pun, by chance. I wanted to have a device for tracking the car. At that time, anti-theft systems with GPS tracking functions were on the market, but their price, and even the monthly fee, was completely frustrating. And not only wanted to follow the car, because you can worry not only about the four-wheel, but also about the four-legged and two-wheeled friends, about the children, after all.
We focused on finding a GPS device that would allow us to always stay abreast of the location of vehicles and loved ones. An Internet search showed that almost all the gps trackers that existed at that time worked, to put it mildly, not user friendly. Without technical education (or better than two), a tambourine and a box of beer, it is better not to approach their setting. A simple system that would work “out of the box” and would be as elementary as a “grandmother” would not exist at that moment. The trackers themselves were either of inadequate size, or as scary as an atomic bomb, or they worked on a single charge for a few hours. We also wanted to have a miniature tracker that could be put in a briefcase for a child. And so that on one recharge it worked for days (or better than a week). And so that they can be controlled via the Internet.
And suddenly she clicked: here she is - an idea! Simple and, most likely, necessary not only for us, but also for other people.
It was June 2009.
Work began on the detailed drawing of the idea. Through deep meditations, intellectual operations and collective brainstorming, we created a more or less concrete image of our future creation. Simply put, we determined that we would need: (a) to develop our own tracker, (b) connect it to our own server and create a super-convenient web-interface for managing this economy. Candy, not an idea! And all you need is to develop a tracker, embody it in hardware, build a server and create the best interface.
The idea is, of course, good. But its implementation requires a hand sharpened for this business, growing from the right places and connected to the right brain. We, at first glance, meet these requirements. However, there is a nuance: both of us are humanists. And such humanities that neither in electronics nor in programming, we are "not alo". One word - lawyers. From this followed the only conclusion - you need to look for people for all the work. It did not scare us. It seemed to us that we, as customers and real potential consumers of this service, can more than anyone else explain to developers what we want and how it should look from the end user.
Literally within a couple of weeks after our determination, the first successes appeared with a view. These were two very intelligent and creative programmers from St. Petersburg who worked as a team. (It should be especially emphasized that they are still with us for which many thanks to them!) By that time, they even had experience in developing a car GPS tracking system. In general, we were clearly on the way. We rushed to St. Petersburg, met with the guys, met and discussed the details. The jointly developed TZ for the system (server part and web interface) included the following features:
In this case, the universe, as they say, "helped people." But I immediately came to my senses and showed that “you are not here”. So as not to relax.
The search for a specialist in the development of the tracker was a long and energy-consuming. We tried to find an intelligent engineer for several months. Wool spetsialforumy, got friends to the seventh knee and white heat.
According to the theory of six handshakes, you can make contact with any person you need through a chain of people you know. Even if you need the Queen of Great Britain. The devil knows, maybe, maybe ... But not in the case with the right specialist! Then how lucky. This is not a queen, which everyone knows where it lives and what it looks like!
In the end, contact was made with four masters of a soldering iron and an oscilloscope. From them the price was requested for the development and creation of a prototype tracker with the characteristics we need. Specialists immediately showed a significant gap in their price ambitions. Moreover, these ambitions, apparently, were poorly connected with experience, quality of work or seriousness of intentions. Everything is simpler and more prosaic: the prices depended on the residence of the engineers. So:
And the Oscar goes to ... ... immediately to two engineers - №3 and №4. Let them work in parallel, not knowing about each other.
Every project as it is incarnated is “overgrown with meat”. Gets the name, "face" and form. Work on the hardware and software was in full swing, but we still haven't come up with the names for it. In addition, it was time to think about the logo, the appearance of the tracker itself, and other details of the materialization of the idea.
In the third version of the short list, we stopped at Patrolife and Patrolbox. The first was the name of the project, and the second was intended for the tracker.
But for some reason they did not suit us. And suddenly they send us this:
Yes, this is not at all like a satellite. And the wings are not exactly solar batteries, but we somehow even fell in love with it.
The site did not even exist in the project, but under the impression of the logo, we had the idea of “populating” it with small creatures based on our bee.
And a few days later we got such a pretty sketch.
In the meantime 2010 has come. The guys finished working on the server core, screwed a web interface to the server and ... What is all this testing for? Trackers do not yet exist in nature, but you need to drive the server and evaluate its performance. Fortunately, our developer somewhere borrowed autotracker, programmed it according to the protocol of our system and “ta-daam !!”
For the first time we saw the tracker marker crawling on the map. Hooray! Pulse is!
The development of the tracker has become a real stumbling block in our project. What we conceived, did not want to be realized in any! Both engineers who worked on the tracker, with a creak finished work after three months instead of the stated seven days. We received the finished devices by mail and tested them.
Both prototypes seemed to work, but this “like work” did not suit us at all. They barely saw the satellites and lost them at every opportunity. Even when they were covered by a wing flying crow.
We came to the conclusion (do not forget that we are humanists) that the whole thing is in the patch antenna: it is too small. It was decided to put the Geo-Helix antenna (pin), and at the same time make the board a four-layer, in order to minimize the background from the GSM path on the GPS.
It took another two or three months. We got prototypes with a new antenna. Past
We lost time, money and faith in success. There were first doubts about the correctness of the chosen path. But the idea to write off about a year of work seemed blasphemous. Having tuned in to the positive, we stubbornly in our intentions. A third freelance engineer was hired. And the fourth, at the same time.
A few more months passed. The summer of 2010 has come, the famous WWDC has ceased, where Steve Jobs presented iOS4 with multitasking. And here on our stumbling block a barely visible inscription appeared. Program! A program that you can just download and install on your phone. And here it is - ready tracker! No need to pay extra money for a new device - phones, that is, for everyone! The user will be able to track the location of the phone using our system. In addition, users can share their location by sharing it with their friends. Great idea, but ... Our system did not support anything, except for non-existent trackers.
We again went to the glorious city of Peter to the developers. How much was eaten and drunk during our protracted business meetings - nice to remember! But the results of the trip were not very comforting. The system required major modernization: the core of the system needs to be redone completely, the design of the web interface also required changes due to the appearance of a new type of device in the system - a telephone. Now the requirements specification for the system has been supplemented with requirements for the development of an API for connecting phones.
In addition, we decided to completely abandon the display of any technical information to the user (GPS / GPRS status). In the previous design, the user saw icons indicating the quality of GPS and the availability of GPRS connection. Therefore, we removed the extra information (in our opinion) for the user, leaving only the address and point on the map. This was the first and, as will be seen later, not the last simplification of the project’s functionality.
As a result, the final version of the web interface has become
Since the approval of the new TZ, several endless months have passed. We regularly performed brainstorming sessions on Skype and went to the city on the Neva until finally we became happy owners of a wonderful GPS monitoring system designed to work with both trackers and phones. Oh, how she worked! Just a sight for sore eyes! But we still didn’t have any trackers or phone apps.
Not wanting to give up, we were still wrapping circles around our stumbling block. But it was not possible to clear the way to the bright goal. Probably, thus, the Universe categorically recommended us to look for other directions.
In the spring of 2011, after two years of continuous soldering and testing, having spent a lot of money and nerve cells on it, we realized that we would not be able to make our own tracker, and even better than the Chinese.
Amen.
To be continued ... In the next part we will talk about the development of a mobile application for our system.
Bins:
Application for Android (in development, not yet published)
IPhone application
Second part here
This is a story about how we created “the coolest and most convenient personal gps monitoring system” and what finally happened.
I must say that we are far enough from programming, engineering, design, gps technology and everything else necessary to create such a system. But with the help of the universe, fucking mother and a huge number of talented people with whom we were lucky to meet in the four years of work on the project, we got what we got.
')
Those who may be interested in our ordeals, as well as those who cherish the idea of creating their own startup, but are afraid that he does not have enough knowledge, we invite under the cat.
Part 1
That idea comes from life, not from the head
Any business starts with a
The idea of the project or, if you will, a startup, came, as it happens with everyone, I apologize for the pun, by chance. I wanted to have a device for tracking the car. At that time, anti-theft systems with GPS tracking functions were on the market, but their price, and even the monthly fee, was completely frustrating. And not only wanted to follow the car, because you can worry not only about the four-wheel, but also about the four-legged and two-wheeled friends, about the children, after all.
We focused on finding a GPS device that would allow us to always stay abreast of the location of vehicles and loved ones. An Internet search showed that almost all the gps trackers that existed at that time worked, to put it mildly, not user friendly. Without technical education (or better than two), a tambourine and a box of beer, it is better not to approach their setting. A simple system that would work “out of the box” and would be as elementary as a “grandmother” would not exist at that moment. The trackers themselves were either of inadequate size, or as scary as an atomic bomb, or they worked on a single charge for a few hours. We also wanted to have a miniature tracker that could be put in a briefcase for a child. And so that on one recharge it worked for days (or better than a week). And so that they can be controlled via the Internet.
And suddenly she clicked: here she is - an idea! Simple and, most likely, necessary not only for us, but also for other people.
It was June 2009.
About how an idea turns into a technical assignment for specialists who still need to be found
Work began on the detailed drawing of the idea. Through deep meditations, intellectual operations and collective brainstorming, we created a more or less concrete image of our future creation. Simply put, we determined that we would need: (a) to develop our own tracker, (b) connect it to our own server and create a super-convenient web-interface for managing this economy. Candy, not an idea! And all you need is to develop a tracker, embody it in hardware, build a server and create the best interface.
The idea is, of course, good. But its implementation requires a hand sharpened for this business, growing from the right places and connected to the right brain. We, at first glance, meet these requirements. However, there is a nuance: both of us are humanists. And such humanities that neither in electronics nor in programming, we are "not alo". One word - lawyers. From this followed the only conclusion - you need to look for people for all the work. It did not scare us. It seemed to us that we, as customers and real potential consumers of this service, can more than anyone else explain to developers what we want and how it should look from the end user.
Literally within a couple of weeks after our determination, the first successes appeared with a view. These were two very intelligent and creative programmers from St. Petersburg who worked as a team. (It should be especially emphasized that they are still with us for which many thanks to them!) By that time, they even had experience in developing a car GPS tracking system. In general, we were clearly on the way. We rushed to St. Petersburg, met with the guys, met and discussed the details. The jointly developed TZ for the system (server part and web interface) included the following features:
- connection of new trackers to the account “with one button”;
- remote control of the polling period of the tracker;
- determination of coordinates by GPS / Cell-ID;
- the ability to create polygonal geo-zones;
- control of created geo-zones with notification of entry / exit by email and SMS;
- tracker battery charge control with the ability to notify by email and SMS;
- control signal SOS from the tracker with the possibility of notification by email and SMS;
- constructing tracks for any period of time with an indication of the time of any part of the track;
- the ability to create your own avatars for devices;
- displaying a circle of error around the mark on the map
In this case, the universe, as they say, "helped people." But I immediately came to my senses and showed that “you are not here”. So as not to relax.
The search for a specialist in the development of the tracker was a long and energy-consuming. We tried to find an intelligent engineer for several months. Wool spetsialforumy, got friends to the seventh knee and white heat.
According to the theory of six handshakes, you can make contact with any person you need through a chain of people you know. Even if you need the Queen of Great Britain. The devil knows, maybe, maybe ... But not in the case with the right specialist! Then how lucky. This is not a queen, which everyone knows where it lives and what it looks like!
In the end, contact was made with four masters of a soldering iron and an oscilloscope. From them the price was requested for the development and creation of a prototype tracker with the characteristics we need. Specialists immediately showed a significant gap in their price ambitions. Moreover, these ambitions, apparently, were poorly connected with experience, quality of work or seriousness of intentions. Everything is simpler and more prosaic: the prices depended on the residence of the engineers. So:
- Engineer number 1 (Moscow) - "from 300 thousand rubles, but we'll see" (did not see the TK, called the price after a minute explanation of the essence by phone). And this is a week of work (his own estimate of terms)!
- Engineer number 2 (Moscow region) - from 200 thousand rubles. (disappeared after the third letter).
- Engineer number 3 (Perm region) - 20 thousand rubles.
- Engineer number 4 (Ukraine) - 5 thousand rubles.
And the Oscar goes to ... ... immediately to two engineers - №3 and №4. Let them work in parallel, not knowing about each other.
How exactly conceived materializes
Every project as it is incarnated is “overgrown with meat”. Gets the name, "face" and form. Work on the hardware and software was in full swing, but we still haven't come up with the names for it. In addition, it was time to think about the logo, the appearance of the tracker itself, and other details of the materialization of the idea.
Title.
Of course, we first tried to “give birth” to ourselves. For several weeks we have been actively generating ideas, after which we honestly recognized our own incoherence and decided to turn to a specialist. It was found quickly enough through a well-known Internet resource selling various creative services. Iterations rushed: GiPis, LookOn, SpyBox, Nohide, Patrolife, Patrolbox, Showmeit ...In the third version of the short list, we stopped at Patrolife and Patrolbox. The first was the name of the project, and the second was intended for the tracker.
Logo.
The mission of creating the logo was also assigned to the valiant freelance designers. It was not so easy to formulate an intelligible TK from our vague expectations. But we tried and the final TZ looked something like this: “to develop such a logo so that it would be like a satellite, but as if alive, friendly, and so that the solar batteries were like wings”. To which we received several masterpieces in the spirit of the Great Combinator (and most importantly, all TK!):But for some reason they did not suit us. And suddenly they send us this:
Yes, this is not at all like a satellite. And the wings are not exactly solar batteries, but we somehow even fell in love with it.
The site did not even exist in the project, but under the impression of the logo, we had the idea of “populating” it with small creatures based on our bee.
Here are these:
Web interface.
Meanwhile, in Kiev, another group, which was also selected according to the results of a tough tender, pored over the development of the web interface design. Here we were lucky: from the first sketch hit the mark. Here to remove, add there - and you can impose.View the first draft of the web interface.
Tracker
The tracker itself is not yet (and for a long time will not be), but we have already thought about the material shell - the body. Desirable commercial appearance. After all, if the exterior is “not an iPhone,” this greatly reduces its chances of success. The form must comply with the content! And we are going to Peter, to meet with the new designer.We discussed a bit of possible options.
And a few days later we got such a pretty sketch.
First testing
In the meantime 2010 has come. The guys finished working on the server core, screwed a web interface to the server and ... What is all this testing for? Trackers do not yet exist in nature, but you need to drive the server and evaluate its performance. Fortunately, our developer somewhere borrowed autotracker, programmed it according to the protocol of our system and “ta-daam !!”
For the first time we saw the tracker marker crawling on the map. Hooray! Pulse is!
This is how it looked.
How stumbling blocks become indicative
The development of the tracker has become a real stumbling block in our project. What we conceived, did not want to be realized in any! Both engineers who worked on the tracker, with a creak finished work after three months instead of the stated seven days. We received the finished devices by mail and tested them.
Both prototypes seemed to work, but this “like work” did not suit us at all. They barely saw the satellites and lost them at every opportunity. Even when they were covered by a wing flying crow.
We came to the conclusion (do not forget that we are humanists) that the whole thing is in the patch antenna: it is too small. It was decided to put the Geo-Helix antenna (pin), and at the same time make the board a four-layer, in order to minimize the background from the GSM path on the GPS.
It took another two or three months. We got prototypes with a new antenna. Past
We lost time, money and faith in success. There were first doubts about the correctness of the chosen path. But the idea to write off about a year of work seemed blasphemous. Having tuned in to the positive, we stubbornly in our intentions. A third freelance engineer was hired. And the fourth, at the same time.
A few more months passed. The summer of 2010 has come, the famous WWDC has ceased, where Steve Jobs presented iOS4 with multitasking. And here on our stumbling block a barely visible inscription appeared. Program! A program that you can just download and install on your phone. And here it is - ready tracker! No need to pay extra money for a new device - phones, that is, for everyone! The user will be able to track the location of the phone using our system. In addition, users can share their location by sharing it with their friends. Great idea, but ... Our system did not support anything, except for non-existent trackers.
We again went to the glorious city of Peter to the developers. How much was eaten and drunk during our protracted business meetings - nice to remember! But the results of the trip were not very comforting. The system required major modernization: the core of the system needs to be redone completely, the design of the web interface also required changes due to the appearance of a new type of device in the system - a telephone. Now the requirements specification for the system has been supplemented with requirements for the development of an API for connecting phones.
In addition, we decided to completely abandon the display of any technical information to the user (GPS / GPRS status). In the previous design, the user saw icons indicating the quality of GPS and the availability of GPRS connection. Therefore, we removed the extra information (in our opinion) for the user, leaving only the address and point on the map. This was the first and, as will be seen later, not the last simplification of the project’s functionality.
As a result, the final version of the web interface has become
so
Since the approval of the new TZ, several endless months have passed. We regularly performed brainstorming sessions on Skype and went to the city on the Neva until finally we became happy owners of a wonderful GPS monitoring system designed to work with both trackers and phones. Oh, how she worked! Just a sight for sore eyes! But we still didn’t have any trackers or phone apps.
Not wanting to give up, we were still wrapping circles around our stumbling block. But it was not possible to clear the way to the bright goal. Probably, thus, the Universe categorically recommended us to look for other directions.
In the spring of 2011, after two years of continuous soldering and testing, having spent a lot of money and nerve cells on it, we realized that we would not be able to make our own tracker, and even better than the Chinese.
Amen.
To be continued ... In the next part we will talk about the development of a mobile application for our system.
Bins:
Application for Android (in development, not yet published)
IPhone application
Second part here
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/202258/
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