Reduce Trailer Capital Costs
Wedgworth manufactures and distributes fertilizer products.
Situation
Wedgworth needed to know when their fertilizer trailers were empty so they could refill them.
Task
Build a device capable of detecting the angle of the bin and communicating this back to HQ.
Action
Geocene worked with Blues and Wedgworth to rapidly prototype and deploy a solution across the fleet.
Result
By finding out the moment trailers are empty, rather than waiting on unmotivated customers, Wedgworth drastically reduced their necessary fleet size.
Reflection
A well thought out custom widget can save millions in capital.
Track reusable shipping packages
LimeLoop builds sustainable shipping logistics for e-commerce brands.
Situation
LimeLoop needed to be able to track critical data about reusable shipping containers.
Task
Build a small, durable, low cost, and long battery life connected sensor device.
Action
Geocene worked closely with LimeLoop to define the specifications and develop the device.
Result
A unique shipping tracking device that impressed and exctied LimeLoop's clients.
Reflection
This sort of device represents the promise of connected devices: low power, mobile connected devices that increase consumer value while reducing carbon footprint.
Build a multichannel high-speed signalling system
Vena Vitals makes a small sticker that monitors blood pressure continuously.
Iterate on a mature product
Spire is a B2B medical device and data company passionate about providing remote monitoring solutions for the proactive care of chronic disease patients.
Situation
Spire's product is successful and on the market, so they no longer need full time hardware staff, but they do want access to great engineers to continue development.
Task
Perform ad-hoc engineering tasks on in-development revisions of their product.
Action
Geocene engaged with the team's existing engineers to make meaningful improvements to each new iteration of Spire's product.
Result
Cost reduction and performance improvements at significantly reduced costs.
Reflection
Great engineers can perform quite a bit of work in just a few hours when the task is clear.
Embed with a startup to accelerate development
Arable Labs builds affordable tools that help people collect and synthesize site-specific agricultural data.
Situation
Arable needed a little extra help to develop the features most commonly requested by their clients.
Task
Build a suite of new features and functionality while providing engineering management and strategic guidance.
Action
Geocene got right to work and deployed multiple engineers on a full time basis, relieving pressure on a skilled existing team.
Result
A successful B fund raise during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Reflection
We love a challenge, whether it is building something from scratch or integrating directly with an existing team.
Ensure that villages in Africa have access to fresh water
IBM invents things that matter to the world.
Situation
Aid agencies spend significant capital deploying water wells and other improvements in the developing world. Half of the installed equipment breaks down within 18 months, and can take up to 7 months to repair or replace.
Task
Provide rural infrastructure with a satellite connection so repair can be efficiently coordinated.
Action
Geocene worked with IBM and SweetSense to build a rugged solar-powered and satellite-connected feedback system.
Result
A system that monitors and protects the drinking water of over 2 million people.
Reflection
Satellite data is highly reliable but very expensive. Satellite competition is on the horizon.
The Geocene Engine in an RMS current logger
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of poorer countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects.
Situation
Time of use data requires eyes-on monitoring of power meters, a time consuming activity.
Task
Automate collection of power data in areas without reliable connectivity.
Action
Geocene repurposed the Geocene Engine used in the temperature data logger to collect Root Mean Square (RMS) data.
Result
Multiple funded research projects.
Reflection
The Geocene Engine is a powerful tool, useful for logging any number of envorinmental variables.
Easy-to-install whole building load monitoring
Persistent Efficiency produces and commercializes sustainable energy-monitoring solutions.
Situation
Power monitoring is essential for building managers, but installation is costly and requires downtime.
Task
Develop a stick-on power patch capable of analyzing a building's energy consumption
Action
Geocene worked with Persistent Efficieny's engineering team to develop the power patch.
Result
Installed functioning patches in dozens of commercial buildings throughout the Bay Area.
Reflection
Building energy monitoring is critical for an energy efficient future.
Detailed power consumption data logging
Sustainabilist enables higher profit and lower risk in cleantech with scientific process improvement, custom software, data science, and machine learning.
Situation
Data science and machine learning tools function best with detailed input data.
Task
Create a cost-effective data logger that produces detailed power consumption information.
Action
Geocene repurposed the Geocene Engine used in the temperature data logger to collect detailed power consumption data.
Result
Enabled our client to achieve a 16% reduction in costs.
Reflection
The Geocene Engine is a powerful tool, useful for logging any number of envorinmental variables.
An easy-to-use ML platform for detecting fire
The National Institute of Health is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives.
Situation
The National Institute of Health wanted to know which people were making cooking fires and what stoves they were using. They had a lot of temperature data, but but it wasn't organized to make it useful.
Task
Build a tool that allows non-technical clients to use machine learning on their own data.
Action
Geocene built a cloud ML platform that automatically analyzes client data for cooking events and allows for sorting and filtering on user tags.
Result
Over 1 million cooking events identified.
Reflection
Analyzing data isn't useful only at the end of the project. Live analysis can catch problems early and give users a chance to fix them before they become catastrophic.
A new approach to remote data collection
The Clean Cooking Alliance works with a global network of partners to build an inclusive industry that makes clean cooking accessible to the three billion people who live each day without it.
Situation
Cookstove usage in very remote areas was inconsistent and data about usage was expensive to collect.
Task
Computerize distributed data from remote locations that have little or no internet connectivity.
Action
Geocene designed and built a modern sensor and data logger that connects to a custom mobile app – users can use their phones to carry the data from villages to the city to upload.
Result
10,000 sensors deployed and over 1 billion data points collected.
Reflection
It isn't just the developing world with poor access to the Internet. Similar solutions might be useful in buildings under construction, sub-basements, and undeveloped land.
Capture environmental data with Google Cars
The EDF addresses today's most urgent environmental challenges.
Situation
Google Street View Cars drive everywhere and collect lots of data, but it is disorganized and hard to use.
Task
Create a data pipeline for the massive quantity of air quality data collected by Google Street View cars
Action
Geocene built an ingress, cleaning, parsing, and data warehousing solution using Google Cloud Platform to empower Environmental Defense Fund’s data science team to analyze these data.
Result
Our client moved from a tangle of spreadsheets, CSVs, databases, and flat files to being able to run simple queries using BigQuery to access the data that mattered most to them.
Reflection
Organizing data empowered a data science team to perform their best thanks to Geocene's engineering.
3D greenhouse data collection
Reliable Addressable Devices identifies and eliminate the microclimates in greenhouses.
Situation
Most indoor and greenhouse cultivation facilities use just a couple of sensors to cover hundreds of thousands of square feet. This leads to delays, substandard crops, pests, and wasted energy.
Task
Create strands of inexpensive sensors connected via TCP/IP standard network that could be hung in greenhouses.
Action
Geocene created sensor "nodes" that not only capture data, but relay information to users using LEDs and Augmented Reality.
Result
Client is pursuing funding with a functional prototype.
Reflection
Presenting 3D data in 3D space provides powerful access to data without needing to sit in front of a computer.
Asset tracking for remote areas
UCLA's primary purpose is the creation, dissemination, preservation and application of knowledge for the betterment of our global society..
Situation
Laterns and other development assets distributed in the developing world are frequently stolen, sold, or otherwise misappropriated.
Task
Create a non-obtrusive way to identify if assets are where they are supposed to be without using
Action
Geocene created Bluetooth beacons, a smartphone app, and a backend capable of using Bluetooth signals to log and plot device locations
Result
Beacons and app have been distributed, asset project awaiting deployment.
Reflection
Relatively simple solutions to significant development problems can go a long way, with a little effort into applications.
Make it easy to train sets of data for machine learning
The National Institute of Health is the nation’s medical research agency — making important discoveries that improve health and save lives.
Situation
Machine learning is powerful, but requires training the machine. Manually labelling training data is cumbersome.
Task
Make it easy for people without training to label training data.
Action
Geocene created an open-source graphical tool that allows users to quickly select the key parts of their data for machine learning.
Result
A widely used web platform.
Reflection
Open-source and machine learning tools are vastly more powerful when they are accessible.
Turn a consumer product dream into a reality
Some clients have asked us to stay quiet about our relationship. In keeping with their request for anonymity, we only list here the tools we used to build their products.
Situation
A private client had an idea for a product to win early funding.
Task
Work with the private client to turn an idea into a consumer product.
Action
Spec'd, designed, and built dozens of iterative functional prototypes.
Result
Client successfully raised more than $10 million in their next funding round.
Reflection
A great product look and feel helps build investor confidence.
An easy-to-use ML platform for detecting broken equipment
The University of Colorado Boulder is all about realizing the positive impacts of new knowledge.
Situation
CU Boulder has collected a significant amount of data about equipment functionality in distant parts of the world.
Task
Empower users to analyze their own equipment functionality data.
Action
Geocene built a cloud ML platform that automatically analyzes client data for equipment breakdowns and issues alerts to users.
Result
Tens of thousands of equipment failures identified.
Reflection
Machine learning can help efficiently deploy maintenance staff.
