Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Firstbuild and GE want you to hack your appliances”.
Hey this is mike with make – and i am here with uh taylor dawson product enthusiast from first build taylor just got off stage explaining uh the first build ge, uh partnership and uh, some of the great things that are coming up. Well, once you give everyone a run through of first build, what what it is and uh and what you guys are working on sure first build is actually a new business that was started by ge, we’re looking to innovate with a community of people. So what we want to do, we’ve got a website where you can come in and share your ideas and then we’ve actually got this thing. We call the micro factory where those ideas will be built and then sold. So basically this is uh.
It’S it’s! A community workshop you’ve got a makerspace of sorts, people are bringing in their ideas and you guys are helping get those ideas to market rapidly. How did this come about? Well, ge has been a business, that’s been focused on making appliances for a long time, but what we found is that there are a lot of ideas that just never make it to market and we wanted to find a way to get those ideas to market and Then we found that there was this maker community who are really focused on innovation, and we realized that the combining our passion about products with the ability to make things in a maker community would result in being able to get products to market faster. Being able to get more innovative ideas to market and generally get people involved in the user, experience of these products got it. So one of the things that is um that i think is really interesting is that you guys you’re looking for ideas from the community for for products, but you’re also inviting people to um to be hands on in the actual creation of the the build of these Items in your space, how is how do you guys see that as being an integral part of what you guys are working on? Well, the reason why we want people to get involved in building things is because we realize that the best ideas that exist around appliance innovation aren’t really ours.
They great ideas are everywhere and when, when people can get involved in something there’s a real passion that goes behind it and that passion really can be seen in the end product. And we think that that that passion really exists in a large ecosystem. Not just the internal ecosystem and tell them tell me about the um, the the hackathon that you guys worked on a few months back sure, there’s a local maker space in louisville called level one and um. So before we launched first build, we decided to figure out what the our relationship would be with the maker community, so we did what we called the level one hackathon appliance hackathon um at this hackathon we said we got about 50 people together about 25 engineers from Ge appliances and 25 makers, hackers from the hackerspace – and we said, let’s come up with the best new user experience for our appliance so about five teams: kind of formed out of that process and over the next 28 hours they came up with a working prototype of Their idea, so the winning idea from that hackathon was actually a barcode scanning oven where you would scan the barcode of your totino’s pizza.
It would then set to the right temperature and the right time, and it would tell you when it was done, which is amazing. I think that’s some, it’s almost a no-brainer that that hasn’t happened yet, but that’s a you know, sort of a testament to what um. What a good idea. The this this this first build.
Uh idea is where you know you finding these these concepts and helping get them made so um from there uh. I know that this this guy right here, i’m actually really excited about this – is the green bean. This is a a big product launch that you guys are kicking off. Um tell everyone about what green bean is.
So we say it’s a bridge to the brand of your ge appliances. That makes them do more. So if you’re, a software developer or a hardware hacker, there are ways to use the green beans so that you can develop new software applications or even add new sensors and new features to your appliance so that they can do more. So actually, the line cook the barcode scanning oven was made using the green bean. They took a barcode scanner from a grocery store. They took it apart. They connected that into a raspberry pi, and then they connected the raspberry pi through the green bean, so that the barcode scanner could be read directly by the oven. So you can do a lot of things with it.
You can use existing algorithms that have been made by ge appliances, engineers or you can create entirely new algorithms and control fans and motors and heating elements by yourself. Yeah – and i know you were explaining to me that um you know these algorithms, i guess there’s levels of depth that uh that that exist um, but they control things sort of like the the the startup uh structure of when you turn your oven on the heating Elements they they work in certain orders, um and uh. The the idea that a big company like ge is inviting people to hack their appliances uh. This is a really that’s a groundbreaking concept, um. So, what’s um, what’s what’s the next step with with the uh with the green bean? Well, so we actually have created a bunch of applications already to kind of seed this community, so you can go on firstbuild.com and see some of the ideas that have already been made. Someone made a self-refilling dog bowl, there’s a bin in your freezer that defrosts your meat. So you can see those ideas you can actually download those applications and use them for yourself. But the other thing that we realize is that not everyone has a ge appliance.
So we’re reaching out to maker spaces nationwide and saying, if you don’t have one, let’s see if we can come up with what we can team up and provide you with a refrigerator or a range, and you can share the things that you’re doing or download the Applications and try and use them, because we want to see what anyone anywhere can come up with. So if you do want to become part of that initiative, then you can actually email us at social, first build.com and we’ll respond to you and we’ll see. If you know you can apply, there are a limited number of partnerships available on that, but those who respond quickly might have an opportunity to get involved. So you guys are really sending refrigerators to maker spaces the plan – yes, that’s that’s great, all right social at firstbuild.com to get involved with this program, you get the green bean, you get a refrigerator or an oven or ge appliance um.
I’M really excited to see some of the things that you guys do from there. The um. One of the examples you showed on stage was the uh, the auto filling pitcher inside the refrigerator uh. I thought it was really interesting how you guys used uh sort of a rapid prototyping system to create the the the components that were involved with that.
But how do you see that tying into this this whole ecosystem um? So the autofilling pitcher didn’t use the green bean, but stuff like that, could work so we actually created um a platform for refrigeration, specifically because there’s it seemed like there were so many ideas on our website that were focused around refrigeration. That were really great ideas that we had no way of controlling it, and we had no way of powering it without having to tap into the board in the refrigerator. So we decided to create a platform, that’s a usb hub that allows you to power, to control and to communicate with your devices that you make for a refrigerator. So one of those ideas was a butter conditioner that would keep your butter at a right temperature.
Another idea is a wine chiller that would keep your wine at exactly right. Temperature. Someone had we’ve had heard ideas about products that will allow you to temper your chocolate so that when your chocolate cools down it cools down just at the right temperature. So, there’s almost anything that you could do with it. It kind of spans the whole gamut of what what anyone would want. Some of them might be little niche products, but they’re things that have value to people and with this uh with this ge appliance setup, are you guys um? Are you allowing access to any of the design files uh for cad files, where people can can work and design their own product or components that fit into these? So specifically with green bean projects? We there’s a projects page on our website. Firstbuild.Com you can log on and see the project and people are sharing their cad files so that, if there’s something that needs to be laser cut or 3d printed in order to make a physical device that you can plug into chill hub or anything else, you can Actually go on there and see those so the the software is available on github the software platform.
People will actually be able to upload their software onto github and download other people’s software and then they’ll be able to build things that other people have built great. Well. I think this is uh. I think it’s really exciting. Uh, the green bean social at uh firstbuild.com to get your uh your green bean to get uh involved with the the appliance giveaway for uh for maker spaces that want to play around with this platform, and i’m excited to see some of the stuff people come up With thanks taylor, this is really exciting yeah.
Thank you. .