My First Hardware Startup: Rimo (1)
[ This series of articles is about my startup company, Rimo, from the conception of the idea, recruiting a team, producing prototypes, to fundraising. ]
As a teaching assistant (TA), there’s an often overlooked benefit: the opportunity to learn from students and revisit what we learned in college. The idea for my startup actually came to me while I was working as a TA. In 2014 and 2015, I was an electronics lab TA. During finals, students would form teams and apply the knowledge from the classes to create their own final projects. I had the privilege of conversing with many students, sparking creativity, and helping them brainstorm various topics.
Since our lab covered light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodiodes, many student projects revolved around these two components. For instance, one team built a miniature garage model with a paper door connected to a motor. When a toy car approached the garage door, an infrared photodiode detected the obstruction, triggering the motor to open the door. Another team placed an LED under their fingertip and attached a photodiode to their nail. As their heartbeat caused subtle changes in blood flow, the photodiode detected variations in light transmission through the finger. By analyzing these small patterns, they indirectly calculated heart rate. While the results of these projects weren’t always highly accurate or working, they were still impressive. Using lab equipment and materials, students managed to create practical and eye-catching solutions.
Each semester, I am responsible for three classes, with each class having 20 students. That adds up to a total of 60 students, equivalent to 20 to 30 lab projects. After going through so many projects and teaching numerous classes, I have become very familiar with optical components and their applications. I now have a good sense of what makes a solid project, what challenges may arise, and what ideas have higher chance of success. I believe that angel investors and venture capitals probably share a similar feeling.
One evening, during a video call with my parents, I walked them through my lab using my phone. As we explored the lab environment, a sudden idea struck me. Leveraging the principles from our lab experiments related to light sensing, I realized that I could allow my parents to remotely control my phone. They could view any part of the lab without needing to give me specific instructions or ask me to put my phone in certain ways.
The principle is as follows: First, I need to design a phone stand capable of rotating 360 degrees. Once a video call is connected, I place the phone on the stand. Then, my parents from a distance can remotely control the phone stand, allowing it to rotate and position the phone’s camera to the desired view. This achieves a 360-degree video coverage without blind spots.
Additionally, I’ll need to create a software that runs on my parents’ computer. When they press the keyboard’s left or right keys, the software will mix left and right control signals into the video stream. These combined signals will be transmitted from their remote computer to the phone. On the phone stand, there’s a light sensor that detects the left or right signals within the video stream, driving the motor to rotate the stand accordingly.
To explain the concept to my future collaborators, I created a simple diagram shown below. In the diagram, the blue signal represents the video stream, while the red signal represents the control input. These two signals combine within the software and, upon reaching the receiving end, the phone stand filters out the control signal from the video stream. I named this phone stand ‘Rimo’ because it can be “remotely” controlled. Originally, I considered ‘Remo,’ but for some reason, ‘Rimo’ feels cuter—perhaps because the dot on the ‘i’ allows for more creative logo design, and the ‘i’ can easily associates with electronic products.
Working principal of Rimo. The blue signal represents the video stream, while the red signal represents the control input
If a student told me that their final project was Rimo, I would definitely tell them it’s too difficult. We don’t teach software design, and we don’t have the equipment to male mobile phone holder. But at that time, I was about to graduate with my PhD. I had time, and was very confident in my own abilities. So, I invested all my time and money into it. Looking back now, this decision might have been a bit hasty.