Hi, welcome to potentially genius where we tomorrow lab take what is probably a
potentially genius idea and turn it into more of a potentially genius thing.
It's more of a race against time to see how real we can make something in the shortest
amount of time possible. We have a four phase process to do this.
We start with discovery, then we go into ideation followed by prototyping and then a
final presentation to our potential genius. So let's get into it.
Hello, we know each other from Georgia tech, but could you let the rest of everyone know
your background and kind of who you are, what you do.
I was previously a founding member and director of product at little bits and Edtech
Educational Startup and a couple of
years ago I got really into sustainable energy and solar and founded my own company called
group hug solar where we design and manufacture solar panels that can hang in your window and a
lot of what we focused on is trying to make solar energy really fun and exciting in
unexpected ways. One of the craziest things we've made is like a
gigantic like four ft by four ft cat shaped solar panel that meows part of what we're
trying to do is like make it more relevant and exciting to someone's everyday life.
So my challenge to you guys would be, can you think of like an everyday household action or
something that happens in people's habits everyday, can we transform it to be solar,
but in a really like fun sort of sticky experience that doesn't feel like a tour and
makes it exciting that I am always fascinated by the japanese art of shindo coo like those
inventions that are like very likely to be against you when you're using it in daily life.
Um what if we charge, we use solar panel to charge the energy whenever there's
enough energy, Maybe it's put close to a socket where there's a gate,
it blocks your A. C outlet, you could put that over to like um
something that hangs and turns off your light switch.
Even like if it's sentence it's bright enough, it just sort of slowly moves down and turn your
lights off. Yo that's great.
There are obviously a ton of great ideas on the table.
Um we'll see where this goes and the next time we see you,
we'll be sharing our potentially genius idea.
I can't wait. Thank you guys for having me.
You're all now solar experts feel free to reach out with any questions
Julia
Dorian, it's your show this week. What do you guys want to make?
What if we like started with some blinds or something like a really simple structure?
Right? Like that's just a rotation.
And what if it was like an electronic blind system that you could control how open they
were with the energy that you harvest from them. Like you have venetian blinds behind you?
Right all the way from venice or I guess they're called mini blinds when they're small
like that, do they have the little twisty deal, can you turn the twisty deal?
Yes, so I mean if you had something where it was on the other side of the window
and when the sun is coming in it's slowly closes that maybe it had something that like
spring loads and just releases it and it goes right, right.
Um basically what we do is we create a thing that automatically closes your blinds for you
when you're out of the house and then if you're home you open them right?
But then when you leave it'll just like shut all your blinds and reduce the overall pc
consumption for uh for a house in the summer.
Yeah. And you know, it's kind of exciting thinking
about this as like an aftermarket product. It's sort of like those wifi button pushers.
I mean yes, I could throw away my coffee maker and get a wifi connected one.
Or I could get a small, you know, aftermarket thing and just,
you know, adapt what I already have. So um what's interesting about the vertical
blinds is they all have that same connection type where you have that plastic wand and that
little metal hasp at the top where it kind of connects.
Um you know, that might be like our common junction that um we kind of create something
that just hangs on and twists itself.
This is exciting. I think we have an idea here,
Dorian, you were doing some charging research. Yeah.
So I was just trying to think of like what are some electrical components that we could use
one service when we find those types of electrical components.
Well obviously we go to digital first. Yeah. The first thing obviously we want to do is
collect the solar energy and attitude. Has this really nice solar harvesting circuit.
A lot of status updates on this board that you see on the bottom of the board.
There's a lot of pins there that could help with the logic of knowing when is it actually
charging? When is the battery fully charged?
So there's a lot of great features there.
Um And then also we got an M. C. U. To control some of the basic logic and then we
got to feel like a boost because the solar harvesting circuit it's gonna output roughly
four volts. It won't be steady.
So we need to either boost that voltage to five volts or down to 3.3 volts so it's a little bit
easier to handle. And then the last thing is the motor that we
could use for moving parts around.
Um I was thinking either like a servo so we could have like more precise control or we can
also just use a gearbox and I was thinking about gearbox because that we can get like a
slow moving motor ah and that was to urge energy.
Um And then we go so it's like when it switches to like limit the range of
motion. Cool
go
stuff Julian Dori. What's new?
We got some pretty good progress. So here's the overall circuit layout that we
were thinking of. I'll start over the top left where the main
power comes from. That's the sewer power panel.
Um That's when we mounted the wall and then we're going to have the power cord from their
attached to our native fruit charging circuit which will be used to
just really provide power to our battery to charge it.
And then um that board will also provide like an indicator to RMC you to let us
know when the circuit is charging our battery which is also an indication of that
the sun is out and gives us an idea of when to close the blinds and as the lead screw goes up
and down the N. C. You will know where like what position the
blinds are in, whether it's open or closed during and I were kind of talking about how to
mount these limits which is these are going to be the PCBs which is how the limit switches are
mounted electronically and those will be on slots and I'm going to make a bunch of holes
down these two lines right here and so we can adjust where those PCBs are located
to make sure that we get a really precise 3.5 turns or open and close markets and then if
someone blinds you know that it takes four turns and five turns,
they could kind of set that um with those limit switches right.
I was having a hard time thinking about how to mount this in a way that would be universal for
all lines. And my idea for this was kind of cooking it
over the top of the blinds and then snapping it underneath.
Um and so that holds it into place because it's sandwiched around that top white portion of the
blinds and so is the plant right now? Do you think the electronic package will fit in
that void or do we figure that out later?
No, so a while ago I started making a mounting for um a solar panel and we were thinking that
the electronics would be mounted on the back of the solar panel or right next to it.
So that would be kind of suction cup to your window.
Um and all of that would be packaged there and then there would just be a few wires that would
run to the motor and this um blinds assembly that would actually do the work.
I'm gonna finish up this cat. Um and then I'm going to print everything.
Hey Crystal, we've been working for a couple of weeks and are really excited to share what we
came up with. I can't wait to see what you guys ended up
picking and making Julia Dorian, do you want to present the thing.
So this is the thing. The thing is basically something that you
attach to your blinds that will sense when the sun is out and close blinds in order to
conserve energy and keep the cool air indoors during you and explain a little bit more of the
electronics. The first pieces that the solar panel is used
for two things. One solar panel is charging the battery and the
second thing that we're using the solar panel floor is to detect when the sun is out when you
actually turn the blinds.
Okay, so I'm starting the blinds closed so that they just calibrate with the twisty and this
just texted cuts to the window and then this will snap on cool.
Yeah, this was 3D printed in different parts and then assembled together.
So now if we press the little push button
Nice, that was remarkably simple. This is totally something like my dad would see
online and by the end of the year you've seen this device,
you've seen the idea is this potentially genius. Yes, I do think it's actually genius.
There's a lot of like really interesting possibilities that you unlocked with like such
a simple crystal. Thanks again for being this potentially genius
guest. Thank you for having me.
Do we come up with any good names for this, The blind minder.
Oh there were solar games. Solar games.
Oh God, Oh my God America close your blinds.
Hey, thanks so much for watching. Thanks so much to our guest.
Thanks so much. Two digit key for sponsoring this.
Listen, if you guys have potentially genius ideas, not your big idea,
but just like a fun idea or something that you want to see us make,
put it in. The comments were going to be reading them.
We're gonna be looking for likes up votes or whatever you kids call it and the ones that get
the most traction we might actually bring onto the show will reach out to you.
You get to be a guest and we'll build the thing that's in your head.
That's our job. Also, if you have any thoughts about our
process, comments, criticisms, we don't care. Tell us down below.
Yeah. And if you want to see more of our work,
go over to tomorrow lab dot com or you can find us on instagram.
Thanks again. Bye.