The Invention and Innovation course at CU Boulder tasks students to start their own company. From ideation all the way to manufacturing, I worked with a team of engineers to design a new product. Yet, this course was about much more than engineering. Our team conducted extensive research on our market, customer development, IP landscape, and company financial model. We set out with the goal of making the sport of cycling safer with a better bike light. For this reason, we called our company Detego Technologies (to reveal). We planned to differentiate ourselves by providing a more convenient solution with the use of a magnet attachment. We believed this would make it easier for casual bicyclists to use our product. Yet, through surveys and interviews we found that the bicycle light market was overly saturated. In a later interview, we discovered that many outdoor enthusiasts purchased lights for different sports. We found this to be unnecessary; there should be a singular solution to combine these different products. This therefore became our new problem to solve. We entitled our product the Firefly: an athletic lighting system you can use almost anywhere for nearly anything.
The Firefly is designed to be compatible with multiple mounts. A bar mount can be used on a bicycle, motorcycle, or ski pole. A wrist mount can be used while running, hiking, or climbing. Lastly, an adhesive mount can be attached to a helmet, snowboard, backboard, and many more.
This allows for full user customization. But we did not stop there. We supplemented the standard ultra-bright LEDs with addressable RGB LEDs for another level of communication. The following GIF demonstrates one of the many variable lighting configurations possible with the use of an additional distance sensor. In this case, the color projected from the Firefly is a function of the distance to oncoming vehicles. This introduces an unexpected pattern to drivers, allowing for runners and cyclists to be more visible while on the sidewalk or road shoulder.
To learn more about Detego Technologies and the work done during the Invention and Innovation course, please reference the company website.
