Part 6 of 8 · SEPTEMBER

The bowl problem

Written by Detox Dock ·

Everything worked. So naturally, it was time to find a big problem.

A few centimeters

Remember the fancy bowl? Phones get tossed in at every angle, and they pile on top of each other. But my NFC reader can only see a sticker that’s about 3 to 5 centimeters away. That’s about the width of two fingers. No software can fix that. It’s physics.

So the “tap in, tap out” system only worked because people held their phone right up to me. That’s fine for a prototype. But what about a phone that’s just sitting there?

And what about cheaters?

Another question came up: how do I know a phone is really put down? A sticker could be peeled off and left behind. A cable could be plugged into a phone that’s still in someone’s hand.

New idea: two checks at once.

  • A little switch that clicks down when a phone is actually sitting in the slot.
  • A charge sensor that can tell when the phone is really charging through a connector built into the slot.

The phone has to be in the slot and charging. Much harder to fake.

A sketch of the idea: each slot gets a switch and a charge sensor.
A sketch of the idea: each slot gets a switch and a charge sensor.
A close-up of one slot, with the phone resting on a fixed charging connector.
A close-up of one slot, with the phone resting on a fixed charging connector.

This idea changed everything about me. And it led to the biggest surgery of my life.