The Evolution of Tutti
University - 2015/2016 - Discovering I could invent
Nearing the end of my time at the Rochester Institute of Technology, which I attended from 2009 to 2016, I had all of a degree in Film and Animation, and most of a degree in Web and Application Mobile Development. Throughout my time at RIT I had also worked on the university Tech Crew (we ran all events on campus), which I credit with as much education as my degrees. Beyond audio engineering, lighting design, power systems, and event operations, Tech Crew taught me one very important and powerful skill: systematic troubleshooting. I apply that skill regularly in the startup world.
In my final years, something clicked in my head. I’m not entirely sure what but I started being able to apply my high level of pattern recognition that I’d had since my childhood, to the world. I kept on seeing technologies, and problems in the world, and interesting ways that I could merge existing technologies in ways other people didn’t seem to have thought of. I kept on inventing ideas - some slightly useful, some unnecessary but fun.
I didn’t actually turn any of these initial ideas into reality, mostly because I had the knowledge of what needed to combine to make them exist, but NOT the knowledge of HOW to combine them. I asked a few friends to help me on projects but anyone with the skills/knowledge had too much school work going on to focus on my projects. (Fair enough really.)
Party lights controlled by everyone
Fortunately that changed when I came up with an idea for parties at my house with a housemate, and now one of my closest friends. We had Hue smart lights in our living room that I had installed, to give the room a little pizzazz. We thought it would be cool for everyone at our parties to have the ability to control these lights, not just the housemates. So with the help of my housemate Jaime, on a Friday, we implemented a system where people could text me a keyphrase (#122 - the number of our house) and a common colour or any hex code (numerical reference for a colour). And the app “Tasker” on my Android phone would read every text. If it started with the keyphrase, Tasker would pass the rest of the text on to IFTTT (If This Then That - similar to Zapier). And IFTTT was able to control the colour of my lights.
It was very much an MVP built in a few hours. The first test was great except:
I was exhausted from building this and setting up the party on the same day, so I put the wrong number on a bunch of posters around the house that gave instructions on how to use the system. And the other number was valid. So some poor person in Rochester, NY got spammed by 100+ people texting them “#122 …” for a night. (Luckily half the guests already had my number)
Some connection between Tasker and IFTTT doesn’t work immediately. It would refresh every few minutes. So a bunch of requests would come in, and the Hue light would flick between its backlog of colours, then stick to one for a couple of mins. And repeat that cycle every few minutes. Can’t say it was the most calming effect…
BUT, despite those downsides, I caught the bug of building. Coming up with an idea, putting it out into the world, and having people exclaim excitement when it worked for them.
We used a very similar text —> Tasker —> IFTTT system to populate a spreadsheet next to a DJ with song requests from anyone in a party at a few parties. That was also cool.