The Idea
It was an idea, an inspiration. Quick to capture the attention of many, TempaJoe
proved to be a stroke of genius. And it was clear to see why.
Today, the number one cause of burnt tongues is coffee. Hot coffee. Coffee that an
imbiber must taste-test to determine whether or not it is at a drinkable temperature.
This is an unacceptable practice, and should be remedied. The team at TempaJoe
provide that remedy with our flagship product, the TempaJoe Sense XL.
Our idea was to create a system that notifies the TempaJoe user when there
coffee is at a safe and enjoyable temperature. Although there are various coffee mugs
with temperature sensors embedded into the design, none of them send a notification to
your phone, which allows the user to be within bluetooth range of the mug to know when
the coffee is ready. This revolutionary new feature could change the coffee market. With
Bluetooth sensor and smartphone in hand, we were ready to turn the TempaJoe into a
reality!
The Design
When approaching the design phase of TempaJoe, one thing remained at the front
of our minds; we wanted to put our product in the hands of coffee drinkers who want, no
… need their coffee to be at a perfect enjoyable temperature. Equipped with this
assumption, TempaJoe required both a hardware and software component so that a
person who is actively walking or trying to get to work can be notified via their smart
phone.
The idea of a coffee cup that has a temperature sensor isn’t new, so to compete
with the rest of these products, the cup had to be designed and produced with the user’s
experience as a first priority, encapsulated by a fluid artistic design not unlike the
standards that companies like Apple or Google maintain. We came up with a few designs
for the Graphical User Interface below:
The left design was aimed for the coffee-shop-goers who love the “earthiness” of coffee
and enjoy color tones such as light brown, green, and red. The right design was
influenced by modern espresso machines, where most seem to be made of brushed
metal but still retain analog gauges for PSI and temperature, the latter of which would
be used in the app. The user would be able to select between these two themes to use
whichever they enjoy.
The Market
Now that the team had a concept, we spent time thinking about who our market
would be. The team agreed that our biggest market would be the upper middle class the kind of people who frequent Brookstone and the SkyMall Magazine. These people
comprise the main demographic of coffee drinkers and would be very interested in a
product like ours.
Even with such a unique product, TempaJoe still has a lot of competition. On the
market currently there are simple coffee mugs that change their outside color with the
temperature of the liquid inside. These mugs can be very aesthetically pleasing due to
the creativity of the makers. The price point will also be hard to compete with.
TempaJoe is more unique and also allows you to take your coffee on the go, but the
competition can be bought for $5-$10. We plan on overcoming this by offering a quality
product with unique characteristics that justify the price difference, such as color
changing LED lights.
There is also a similar product being built overseas that has a temperature
changing light at the bottom of the mug and a digit output of the current temperature.
This product would be our main competition if it existed within The United States. The
only way a customer could get one of these mugs would be to pay a very high shipping
rate, which makes our mug much more affordable.
The Difficulty
We faced many difficulties along the way. This project, although it seemed like a
simple concept, this was a Venti™ order. The team had to figure out how to best
measure the temperature of the coffee and then be able to send that data to a phone, so
we researched various kinds of Bluetooth chips that had temperature sensors. The
Texas Instruments SensorTag, a relatively new Bluetooth 4.0 development platform,
seemed to be the perfect combination of hardware that was needed to test the
communication between a bluetooth sensor and receiver.
The next problem we faced was deciding which mobile development environment
to use. As we were hoping to make as modern of an app as possible, we initially planned
to develop an TempaJoe for the iPhone, but we found that the Apple Developer Program
cost was out of our budget, and that the XCode Development Tools were too difficult to
learn in a few weeks. Realizing that there was only one other prominent mobile device
operating system, we decided to turn our efforts to the Android world. This proved to be
much easier, and we were able to make an application in a few days.
The final problem we ran into, and perhaps the most difficult, was Bluetooth
connectivity. Once we dove into the TI Bluetooth SensorTag API, we found that there
did not seem to be much documentation or online communal support for the Bluetooth
Low Energy SensorTag Android API. It took hours and hours of sifting through the
SensorTag Java code to understand how the data of the temperature sensor could be
pulled from the Bluetooth device. Once the library was found that controls the
temperature number display, we were able to change Celsius output to Fahrenheit and
even display an “F” after the number. Because we were only editing the
TemperatureSensor.java file, this affected the display, but we still couldn’t figure out
how to extract the temperature data to be used in a completely separate Android
Activity. If we would have had more experience with Android and more time learning
about the Bluetooth 4.0 API we may have been able to get the communication between
both devices working. If we were to try to develop a professional TempaJoe application,
we would probably hire someone who is familiar with Bluetooth 4.0 development on the
Android Operating System.
The Finale
Overall, this project was a good learning experience. We learned how to market
an idea, how to take it and shape it, test it, and come up with a plan to actually
accomplish something significant. We found that our idea was good, and that with more
resources and time, could result in commercial success. With our mock-app and our 3D
coffee cup model on the next page, and some more time spent marketing, we could take
this to the market and possibly sell some units!