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Comment by IanCal | Hacker News Reader

I've just used this to start a bouldering app, so far has been extremely simple, great work.

I'm not sure about how things grow from here in terms of larger aggregates and more complex queries though so am slightly worried I'm painting myself into a corner. Do you have any guides or pointers here? Or key areas people shouldn't use your db?

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Glad to hear the experience so far has been good!

> larger aggregates and more complex queries

Currently Instant supports nested queries, pagination, IN, AND, and OR. We have an internal implementation for COUNT [1], but need to update permissions for aggregates.

We're always hacking away on blocker features. If we can't get to it in time and it blocks your app, you can reach to the admin SDK for an escape hatch [2]

[1] The 'admin-only' count starts here: https://github.com/jsventures/instant/blob/main/server/src/i...

[2] https://www.instantdb.com/docs/backend

That sounds excellent. Count is the one I'm mostly after (x total attempts, y successes, z people have done this, etc). Right now it's at worst just inefficient and my scale is very low so that's just not a problem right now. Knowing there's both an escape hatch and that these things are on the plan means I don't feel like I'm setting myself up for issues later.

Btw I guess you created a new repo for the public release, so https://github.com/instantdb/instant/blob/main/server/src/in... is the link for others.

Great to see the open source release, congrats! : )

I'm curious what a bouldering app is? As in climbing, like a route checklist type thing?

Yep. Which climbs have you attempted, at what grades.

My gym uses griptonite, but it's so slow I feel like it'd be quicker overall to create my own app for logging things. I decided to use instantdb as a backend database and it's working nicely so far.

My gym uses TopLogger. It's not super bad, but it could use a nicer design. Are you making an app for indoor gyms or outdoor boulders? Or both? Sounds good with another alternative in the market.

That one looks nice. We'll see where this goes, it's starting as just scratching an itch so is likely to be really pared down compared to other apps. I'm also not a designer, so far the UI is all AI generated and it's very "bootstrappy".

My gym uses griptonite which is fine except there's an ad for their premium thing every time I open it and it's extremely slow. Also either due to the gym or griptonite not all the climbs get added, and not right away. It's frustrating hitting a new grade and then not being able to record it, as then I've got a log saying I have maxed out somewhere I haven't.

The main realisation I had was that griptonite tags are IDs, I don't actually need any griptonite data or to get the gym to sign up for anything to start tracking my own climbs. I can just scan the tags as they are. I'm also making it require a photo of the climb as I'm tired of trying to talk with my wife about which ones we were working on "the pink, next to the green that's orange? With the weird hold? Oh the round one?" and would like just a picture to point at.

I'm planning to do a few things like add live customisable leaderboards, which should be easy with instantdb, mostly for fun. Maybe I'll throw on a few affiliate things on top, otherwise I expect this should be lightweight enough it won't really cost me anything to run.

Also my background is AI stuff and I'd like to try things like using SAM to pull out the specific climb from a messy image, classify holds to say whether climbs look "crimpy" or "juggy", find similar climbs by image (recommend next ones to try) etc.

Climber Dreamer here: Former RFID Sensor stuff.

I'd love to see a smart Hold that integrates with an app where the gym cann associate holds/grips in a DB inventory - and pull them out and assign them to a boulder/wall & route. The smart holds have simple pressure sensors for knowing when they are gripped, and for how long. Advanced ones measure force/weight.

Just walk in scan the boulder's code to slurp in all the holds to the local table and then you have them all ping back to the app with every touch. and map your route and exactly telemetry applied using route. So it shows you the wall and the grips you hit as you went up and how much energy and time spend on each node.

Report climbing timings and accomplishemnets on the Gym leaderboard... have challenges - subscribe to a wall/route/buolder and set a threashold to show you when anyone beats your time etc etc

Strava for the actual climb. (The gym could then have a db of all the positions fastener locations in the facility, and then simply assign a hold to a given slot - each hold has a json of its Spec-Sheet for hold type, rating, syle/whatever metrics climbing geeks geek out on, I mean get a grip folks)

Anyway - it would allow for the local climbing app to them maintain a db history of every route and grip and difficulty you've actually touched. Rate the hold-types, routes, wall, boulder - and have that realtime update across al clients subscribed to a wall or gym. A gym can post new routes and have your app subscribers just get the new table for that route and what grips and their profiles each have.)

Then (the not eco friendly version) is epoxy a BLE tag to a routes holds in the wild and you can have the app point at the climb and ping all the BLEs and learn the route - and have ClimbGps - and it can run it locally with a dynamic table of the BLEs it can sense as checkpoints as you pass them (obviously only timing data could be saved unless you do RSSI/something to get vertical and horizontal pathing by triangulating ...

(built these features in previous varying capacities for different things - but climbing would be fun to do it with as well.

I am sure there are already smart grips out there... but this rappelled into my thoughts like Tom Cruise as soon as I read your post.

I am not a climber, but that sounds like a really fun project!

That would be really cool, but also really expensive - gyms have thousands (tens of thousands for some) of holds and they're usually cleaned by power washing and otherwise constantly abused. Maybe a middle ground would be computer vision? Not nearly as accurate or comprehensive of course, but a lot less hardware. (Most gyms in my experience have comprehensive camera coverage already for insurance purposes so I don't think there would be any additional privacy concerns).

Make a Spline Web App with the routes drawn on the spline doo-dad:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Spline3D/

Can see a simple route design widget in spline that can be a nifty ux for a climbing thing that uses the app ID.

Can you clone an Instant AppID?

I know I am just thinking out loud - but its pretty easy to envision how to use these neato tools and services that have been cropping up recently... Its inspiring.

This would be very cool, my first thought is that this is something that could be added to something like a kilter board. There you already have a high cost setup where holds are normalised across a huge number of installations, integrated apps, etc. Some more premium option for force sensors per hold, I'm sure climbers would go pretty nuts for all the force data given how much people like the same kind of thing just on fingerboards.

I built a =few things in the past that would apply - but now with sensor availability - its far easier than when we built the Barimba Smart Rail for Bars in ~2007

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pTy1TB-2z8

And we did spatial RFID for warehouse (cannabis) tracking with Z-Slot level:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXkNY0vTATA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7qvfm6vhF0

But the thing I was focusing on WRT Instant would be the ability to "Clone an AppIS" -- where when you fork an AppID, it dupes the tables into your personal account...

I havent fleshed out the thoughts on this too much because I am not sure if you can easily do that with Instant, as its a hosted thing....

(YC Rejected these) :-)

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