Edmonton’s 28th DemoCamp took place last night at the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences (CCIS) on the University of Alberta campus. We had six demos, including two from Computer Engineering students at the U of A. You can read my recap of our last DemoCamp here.
In order of appearance, last night’s demos included:
Our first demo was from Trevan, Jeremy, and Jordan who showed us the game they built at MADJAM 2015. The theme was “What do we do now?” and they had just 48 hours to build their game. Called Super Time Warp Battle Force, the game is “a web-based multiplayer deathmatch-style game where you control your avatar through three different eras, each with their own unique mechanics.” The game won third place! They used socket.io for multiplayer and pixi.js for drawing things on screen. You can play the game here.
Michael and Craig from OMx were the second demo this evening (they were at Launch Party Edmonton 5 back in October). They showed us their beta kit, which includes a urine collection cup, two sterile test tubes, some wipes, and a plastic bag. You provide the urine sample, put the tubes in the bag, and ship it back to OMx and they analyze it and provide a report. They are hoping to be able to measure 120 different things, but are starting with a smaller subset intended to help you “optimize your diet, form healthier habits and learn about your body.” This field of science is called metabolomics – there are apparently more than 4000 indicators in urine. They recommend the easypost API if you need to ship something!
Our third demo was from Drivewyze. They’ve been around for a while, as they participated in Launch Party Edmonton 4 back in November 2013 and were founded in 2012. Sean showed us their system, which uses GPS and geofences to provide drivers with weigh station notifications and alerts via dedicated physical devices like the PeopleNet Blu2 or mobile phones. So that’s the first part – they save drivers time by allowing them to legally bypass weigh stations (in 34 states currently). The second part is that they’re collecting a lot of data behind the scenes, and it’s clear they are hoping to extract some value from that.
Up next was Tim who showed us LinkMetrics. The service allows you to create trackable links for your website that provide you with extensive information about what the user did after clicking, such as which pages they visited, how long they were there for, and more. The idea is to provide you with insight about whether or not it is worth following up with that individual. The service can also provide you data in real-time!
Our fifth demo was from James and Jesse who showed us what they call the Burgess Wireless System (which is their 4th year Capstone project). Focused on retail environments, the system allows a store manager to see a live map of the store that uses Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to determine where customers are, who hasn’t been helped in a while, and where the closest employee is. The service provides both real-time and historical data which can be useful for analysis over time. Because it was a learning project, they used dozens of different technologies to power the system.
The final demo of the evening was BarTinder from Jacob, Andrew, and Chris. Theirs was also a Capstone project and it was inspired by Darkhorse Analytics and their use of D3.js. The responsive website shows a visual representation of a cocktail and its ingredients, and also provides instructions on how to make the drink. You can also input what you’ve got in your bar and the website will tell you which drinks you can make. If you want BarTinder to suggest a random drink, simply click the “I’m Feelin’ Tipsy” button. It reminds me of an app I use on Windows called Cocktail Flow.
I really liked BarTinder because it was both entertaining and useful. Apparently Darkhorse Analytics owns the intellectual property, so it’ll be interesting to see if they do anything with it. I continue to be intrigued by OMx. I’m sure that the self-diagnostic space is going to heat up considerably so they’re probably positioned well to take advantage of that.
Some upcoming events to note:
- Game Discovery Exhibition (GDX) – April 25
- AccelerateAB – April 28 & 29 in Calgary
- Preflight Workshop: Customer Validation – April 14
Over 150 meetup events took place at Startup Edmonton last year! Keep an eye on the Startup Edmonton Meetup group for more upcoming events. They have also added a listing of all the meetups taking place at Startup to the website. You can also follow them on Twitter.
See you at DemoCamp Edmonton 29!
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