I think there’s a small bit of illusion of transparency going on here. You mention “IMU” (“inertial measurement unit”?) twice but don’t explain the acronym, so I think some readers didn’t necessarily understand what you’d built, or what the value-add is.
Now, that also means I am not quite sure whether I’ve understood you correctly, but I think it’s supposed to be:
Picture a tracker or smartwatch, e.g. a Fitbit. Or even some smartphones. These all include various sensors, like accelerometers and gyroscopes. The combination of the latter two allows tracking time-series data of body movements. If you wear a tracker around your wrist, that includes arm movement, among other things.
People wear these trackers for various reasons, e.g. to change their behavior. The features offered by popular trackers like the Fitbit depend partly on the included sensors, and partly on the algorithm used to interpret the sensor data. For instance, if you were able to identify the signal in the noisy data, you could interpret certain accelerometer & gyroscope data as “you’re taking a bite of a snack”.
As I understand it, there is not in fact a commercial bite tracker, so Lsusr is saying his startup found a way to reliably identify when a tracked user takes a bite of a snack, and then to alert the user of this behavior, in a way companies like Fitbit have not managed to. And if you have something like that, you have a prototype of a valuable product, e.g. because it could help people become conscious of their unconscious bad habit of snacking, which in turn would make it easier to stop.
Lsusr, I understand that you’ve personally decided to stop this project, because your time and resources are limited and better spent elsewhere. That said, if you still think this is an unusually good idea but that you can’t execute on it, consider posting a more technical version of this story on the EA forum. Most likely nothing will come of it, but very occasionally there are people in search of projects. I haven’t done the EV-calculation myself, but this project is the kind of thing that, if it actually worked, sounds like it could actually have a somewhat competitive EV, given the abysmal efficiency of other obesity interventions?
If you have patents or would (for the right price) be available to consult others who gave this project a try, mention that, too.
Your description of the invention is precisely correct. Cross posting on the EA forum is a good idea.
I’d enthusiastically do part-time contract work to help make a machine like this happen again, for the right price (which might be surprisingly high or low, depending on one’s expectations). It’d be way faster and cheaper for a company to hire me than to do it themselves from scratch. It’d be less risky too. My mental model is that the bottleneck on a project like this is good founders/executives. It is a question of leadership and will.
So, you and your team spent six years of effort working full time for no pay (what did you even eat then?). You developed a product that worked just great, was in demand and could make a difference in fighting obesity by making a beep whenever the wearer eats. But even though the product was ready—“just put it on and good to go”—and you can easily reconstruct it, you and your whole team decided to abandon it and part ways. Because you simply aren’t that into diabetes prevention, and also your time is limited and you have more important things to do. But you would enthusiastically do part-time contract work on this project again.
I feel like this story doesn’t quite make sense. If the company was doing so well and you just didn’t want to run it anymore, why didn’t you sell it?
Thank you for sharing this story!
I think there’s a small bit of illusion of transparency going on here. You mention “IMU” (“inertial measurement unit”?) twice but don’t explain the acronym, so I think some readers didn’t necessarily understand what you’d built, or what the value-add is.
Now, that also means I am not quite sure whether I’ve understood you correctly, but I think it’s supposed to be:
Picture a tracker or smartwatch, e.g. a Fitbit. Or even some smartphones. These all include various sensors, like accelerometers and gyroscopes. The combination of the latter two allows tracking time-series data of body movements. If you wear a tracker around your wrist, that includes arm movement, among other things.
People wear these trackers for various reasons, e.g. to change their behavior. The features offered by popular trackers like the Fitbit depend partly on the included sensors, and partly on the algorithm used to interpret the sensor data. For instance, if you were able to identify the signal in the noisy data, you could interpret certain accelerometer & gyroscope data as “you’re taking a bite of a snack”.
As I understand it, there is not in fact a commercial bite tracker, so Lsusr is saying his startup found a way to reliably identify when a tracked user takes a bite of a snack, and then to alert the user of this behavior, in a way companies like Fitbit have not managed to. And if you have something like that, you have a prototype of a valuable product, e.g. because it could help people become conscious of their unconscious bad habit of snacking, which in turn would make it easier to stop.
Lsusr, I understand that you’ve personally decided to stop this project, because your time and resources are limited and better spent elsewhere. That said, if you still think this is an unusually good idea but that you can’t execute on it, consider posting a more technical version of this story on the EA forum. Most likely nothing will come of it, but very occasionally there are people in search of projects. I haven’t done the EV-calculation myself, but this project is the kind of thing that, if it actually worked, sounds like it could actually have a somewhat competitive EV, given the abysmal efficiency of other obesity interventions?
If you have patents or would (for the right price) be available to consult others who gave this project a try, mention that, too.
Your description of the invention is precisely correct. Cross posting on the EA forum is a good idea.
I’d enthusiastically do part-time contract work to help make a machine like this happen again, for the right price (which might be surprisingly high or low, depending on one’s expectations). It’d be way faster and cheaper for a company to hire me than to do it themselves from scratch. It’d be less risky too. My mental model is that the bottleneck on a project like this is good founders/executives. It is a question of leadership and will.
So, you and your team spent six years of effort working full time for no pay (what did you even eat then?). You developed a product that worked just great, was in demand and could make a difference in fighting obesity by making a beep whenever the wearer eats. But even though the product was ready—“just put it on and good to go”—and you can easily reconstruct it, you and your whole team decided to abandon it and part ways. Because you simply aren’t that into diabetes prevention, and also your time is limited and you have more important things to do. But you would enthusiastically do part-time contract work on this project again.
I feel like this story doesn’t quite make sense. If the company was doing so well and you just didn’t want to run it anymore, why didn’t you sell it?