Comment by apprenticemason | Hacker News Reader

Comment by apprenticemason | Hacker News Reader

apprenticemason

I created a similar product almost 10 years ago, I had a provisional patent filed and showed it off to some very nice and smart people at Thermo Fisher. I wanted to license the patent to people that actually know how to build laboratory equipment (I don’t hold a higher degree in anything). I should’ve continued trying to license but they convinced me that was the wrong move.

I formed a company and got $50k in grant money from the state of Wisconsin along with incubator space and advisors. I did all the initial software and hardware development, the first one I built took components from a battery powered toothbrush to inductively charge so I didn’t need a charging port exposed to solutions.

I loved working on this project, I had the idea after having frustrating experiences working with 30 year old lab equipment that took up more bench space in the lab than my backpack did. At the end of the day that’s all it was. I had no idea wtf I was doing and the company eventually folded as real life became too much to juggle with my project. I figured I could use the same form factor to build tons of different sensors based on the many different ion selective electrodes already on the market. Eventually I needed to try and manufacture these sensors myself in a form factor that would fit inside flasks in the lab.

Letting this project fall by the wayside is probably the single greatest regret of my life. I often think back about how different things could’ve turned out if only I had made the correct decisions and executed properly and actually found someone to license my patent… so it goes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RrBhliK1ryY&pp=ygUbUGhpbmRpbmc...

Don't sweat it too much.

Ben, West & I worked on this project in 2014. We filed a provisional patent as well, reached out to potential licensees, and had a handful that wanted to pull the trigger to turn it into a functioning product. E.g. here was the sell sheet [1].

Unfortunately, our "day jobs" at Google[x] got in the way -- they weren't particularly keen to have researchers pursuing side gigs, even if Google had no interest in pursuing it themselves & the IP was cleanly produced externally. They refused to sign off on a clean IP waiver, so the licensing discussions fell apart.

At the end of the day: It was a good, viable idea that we wanted to exist. Never anticipated that it would be all that lucrative -- the volume & profit margins were likely low.

[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mRiIHnrATd2dEzC2xSpM8_Mx1kG...

> They refused to sign off on a clean IP waiver, so the licensing discussions fell apart.

yet another confirmation google has become massive corporation where innovation goes to die

Ha! That’s awesome and super close to the same time I was working on this! My phone is dating my first “working” test as Dec 22 2013. Managed to swirl the water around a little bit and successfully transmit the pH back to my computer before the whole thing flooded and shorted itself out XD.

You guys were smart and went RFID (I went Bluetooth) which means you skip the whole battery and battery charging steps and also avoiding another flaw of my design which was it’s narrow working temperature range. Turns out sticking a lipo battery in a flask of boiling water isn’t exactly a good idea lol. It also gives you another product to offer as an “RFID enabled hot plate” as opposed to just working in existing hot plates. Temperature of solution is an important variable to determining an accurate pH reading so temp was more of an incidental feature for me.

My vision was having a whole tray of these stir bars: one for pH, one for nitriles, one for nitrates, etc. anything that already had an ion selective electrode that was capable of measuring concentration would, in theory, just plug right in to that form factor. Ion selective electrodes are essentially just tiny batteries whose output voltage varies proportionately to the concentration of the ion on the outside of the glass. They’re super cool pieces of hardware just by themselves.

I was a student at a local community college at the time working on my liberal arts degree and guaranteed transfer to a state school. It makes me wonder how many others in the world might have a working prototype stuffed in their closet too :)

It sucks Google killed it for you, I thought my little community college might try and come after me for similar claims if I used any of their facilities of faculty to help with the development so I avoided the place like the plague while working on it to minimize my perceived risk. I can’t imagine my level of paranoia if it woulda been Google.

If you ever want to reach out and commiserate about working on this project I’d love to hear from you :) I’ve got all sorts of funny stories associated with mine. After a couple of bad project demos we started stuffing our stir bar in condoms and tying them off to avoid leaks into the prototype. I got plenty of sideways looks when I pulled out a box of Trojans and crack one open while trying to show off what the thing does to people around the hacker space XD throwing my email in my profile right after I submit this.

That's rough. Thanks for sharing your experience. On the other side, I hope your life came together in other ways.

Hi, my email is in my profile if you care to connect. I started an apprenticeship as an electrician at the age of 27. I received my Journeyman's card at 31 - Funny thing is that here in FL, there is next to no benefit in having a journeyman card unless you are using it as a stepping stone to a Master's license. There was a severe building slump when I got my card, so i figured it was a good time to go back to school full time. ( I had been going part time while working as an electrician.) Now quite a few years later .... Hell, not gonna bore everyone. Anyhow, give me a yell if you feel like it.

If it’s any consolation, nobody is getting rich off a temperature-sensing stirbar

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