Bowerbird: noun,
1 – a strong-billed Australasian bird, noted for the male’s habit of constructing a bower adorned with feathers, shells, and other objects to attract the female.
2 – a pilot tracking system.
Designed, co-created, and managed deployment of a system for tracking paraglider pilots participating in competition, making the logistics of running major competitions easier and more manageable. Originally created for the Owens Valley Cross Country Classic in 2014, it has also been used in Rat Race 2015, Rat Race 2016, Chelan Open 2016, Rat Race 2017, Applegate Open 2018, and Chelan Open 2018. Plans are already in place for it to be used at Applegate Open 2019.
After participating in a dozen paragliding competitions it was clear that technology could be applied to make the events safer, less stressful, and more efficient for everyone involved. Bowerbird is a pilot tracking system with three primary goals:
- Keep track of pilot status, so the organizers quickly know if a pilot might need assistance
- Identify when and where a pilot has landed so that a retrieve vehicle can be dispatched
- Gather, store, and parse poorly formatted SMS messages from a wide variety of satellite tracking and mobile devices, to reduce the burden on organizers, volunteers, and competitors.
Having not worked with Julie before, I noted as the week progressed how well she maintained her composure, despite the often urgent and difficult nature of our work together. Indeed, Julie had a habit of thinking outside the box when it came to addressing difficult or ambiguous situations – a quality I found extremely useful and refreshing. – Graham Saunders-Griffith, Organizer, 2018 US Open of Paragliding
As a competitor and volunteer I had a unique perspective of the issues of tracking pilots during competition, as well as the complexities of retrieving them after landing. In preparation for the Owens Valley Cross Country Classic I designed a system that my partner would implement in Python utilizing the Twilio SMS Webhook POST capability. With each competition we have expanded the capability, with plans for additional features still to come. The project is open source, on GitHub, with the live site on a Google Cloud instance (development was initially done in Meteor, then rebuilt on Cloud 9 before the current deployment on Google Cloud).
Company: Self
Position: Inventor
Technologies: Python, Twilio (SMS bridge)
References:
https://github.com/gever/bowerbird
http://bbtrack.me