ZIPO BIKE — bike parking solution in the IoT enabled world
All bikers know that leaving a bike alone outside is like giving thieves unspoken consent to practice their dark arts. Of course, you could take your bike into your apartment every day, pack it into the lift and then cram it into a closet or corner. You see many people do it, but it is such a pain. Especially when you have no lift in your apartment and must use the stairs. Searching for a free parking space might also be a nightmare — you can never be sure whether your will find some place on the bike rack or not.
These are just a few of issues that discourage people from choosing a bike as a means of transportation. Hopefully, a company from Poland, Zipo Bike, has recently said firm NO and decided to change that. They are developing parking stations for bicycle owners that can be accessed with a mobile app or a registered magnetic card which includes remote information about their location and availability.
We have asked Jan Dąbrowski and Dawid Wróblewski (the founders) a few questions to learn more about them, their solution and how the new NB-IoT technology influenced their business.
hub:raum IoT Academy: How did you come up with the idea of smart bike parking?
Zipo Bike: We concluded that u-locks or chains used to park bikes are a nuisance (heavy, inconvenient, expensive). Our experiences painfully remind us that storing a bike indoor can also be challenging (e.g. carrying it on my back to my 4th floor apartment). So, we went for upgrading bike parking racks — making them easily accessible (mobile app or a magnetic card), equipping them with sensors and providing IoT connectivity.
The concept was then also shaped during WARP Empower Spaces — an acceleration program launched together by hub:raum (the Deutsche Telekom startup incubator) and innogy Poland.
Who creates Zipo Bike? Please, tell us more about your team.
We are a team of 4 with various backgrounds, but grouped in a way that we complement one another’s competences:
- Jan — Product Developer — concept developer, designer of the Zipo Bike parking racks (architecture student)
- Karol — UX Designer — shapes user interaction with the Zipo Bike app (functionality, interface) and parking station (ergonomics); (architecture student)
- Darek — IT and Tech Developer — access control, electronics and the mobile app (graduate from Warsaw University of Technology)
- Dawid — Business Developer — strategy, partnerships, pricing policy, sales, cost analysis and financing (graduate from Warsaw School of Economics)
What was the biggest challenge in developing your solution?
There were a few of them. The first challenge was to find the right team members. Then, it was putting all the tech building blocks together to create a working prototype. The current challenge is to find a partner willing to test the solution with us in a real-life pilot project.
Last month you joined the NB-IoT Hackathon in Bonn. What was your experience there?
The endeavor to enable connectivity with billions of objects created space for new types of networks. Deutsche Telekom stepped forward and introduced a new NarrowBand-IoT (NB-IoT) standard and sent an open invitation to hop in, develop new uses cases and spread them. NB-IoT is a mobile network designed especially for the Internet of Things (3GPP standard) with low data rates, great coverage, long battery life and cost efficiency (cheaper than GSM modules). It is practically a plug and play solution. And that is how we joined the 24 h Hackathon — Smart Public Life — challenge in DT headquarters in Bonn (19–20 September 2017).
We joined the show with Zipo Bike concept — Jan (designer) and Dawid (business developer).The hackathon format allowed us to gather an ad-hoc team of IT programmers. We had 24 hours to create from zero a prototype — to create a technology and implement all the ideas and functions. At 10 AM the clock started ticking. We divided the work. Jan and Dawid were responsible for defining use cases and the user interface. Deep started to learn Calliope Mini technology. Zoltan was responsible for anti-theft function and Eustacio for establishing communication using NB-IoT. Johannes was creating a web application receiving information from the server. Through this international collaboration (team members were from Poland, Germany, India, Romania and Hungary), tough all-night work, we were able to present our idea and a working prototype!
How the new NB-IoT technology can help your business grow?
The NB-IoT technology will help us develop the concept of Zipo Bike. These electronic modules will have a crucial meaning in saving energy, communicating with cloud and functionality of the station.
Where are you and where do you plan to go?
We joined hackathon as designers, with a shaped concept. Thanks to recommendations and networking connections built during the hackathon (from participating, Polish T-Mobile developers’ team), we now have a new team member — Darek who is a proper IT developer. Now, having full set of competences, we’re finishing the product (parking station + mobile app) and are preparing for market launch in spring 2018.
We are now looking for pioneers among corporations, estate developers or local municipalities who would like to see ZIPO BIKE parking stations in front of their offices, apartment buildings or in city centres. Let’s bring bike parking to the IoT era!
Email us at dawid@zipobike.com
