Soon
The viaCycle team continues to make strides towards Beta testing the first of our bicycles on the campus of Georgia Tech. We’re excited to have people take our bikes out for a spin.
All the team members of viaCycle, Inc. have sharpened their teeth at some of the most rigorous engineering colleges in the country (the world?), and we’re no strangers to late nights in the library staring distantly into our textbooks. Despite all that schooling, the volume of things that must be learned to bring something like viaCycle to the market has been tremendous.
We’ve all wired our own circuits in Electrical Engineering 101, but they never tea you how to deal with international suppliers, how the surface treatment of circuit boards can reduce shelf life, or just how unbelievably small some of these components have gotten. We have to solder how many of those onto the board?
It gives you a humbling realization of just how sophisticated the devices we take for granted are. Most of us now carry smart phones packed with technology that researchers spent decades perfecting and engineers spent years designing, shrinking, and developing ways to mass produce with a minimum of defects. Almost everything we purchase has been through numerous similar iterations. It’s worthwhile to take a moment and consider the incredible effort it took to provide us with our modern daily conveniences.
So where does that put us? Well, we’re getting ready to release our viaCycle@GT Beta soon. We are performing final assembly on bicycles, getting circuit boards printed, and putting finishing touches on our online user interface. All the while we’re finding ways to improve our design. We could, theoretically, keep improving with an infinite number of design iterations, but at some point you have just got to put something in the real world to see how it will really preform. We’re excited and perhaps a little nervous.
Regardless, the information our Beta will provide us will ensure future iterations will be all the better. Keep tuned in for more updates as we release viaCycle@GT Beta onto the wild streets of Georgia Tech!