I'm back from Shambhala and feeling recovered enough to write a quick write up on the Crowd Compass performance and my experience at such an amazing festival. First of all, I love Shambhala. It's my favorite festival of all time. I made Crowd Compass specifically for Shambhala, so it was extra special to be able to bring the new and improved version back to the place that sparked the idea for a rave compass with LEDs. It is crazy to think about how far Crowd Compass has come from a shoebox of wires and gizmos over 3 years ago to a full fledged product that will be shipping this month!
Performance
The performance of the Crowd Compass at Shambhala this year was actually better than expected - it worked so well. It worked so well in fact that I eventually stopped interfacing it from the lens of "what can I improve" and just enjoyed it for what it was: a fun and useful tool that makes the rave experience better and safer. (I still took a lot of notes on things to improve though).
Range
Range was great. While we didn't explicitly try and get a max range record, I did take a few notes of Crowd Compass distances throughout the festival when I thought to look. The max Compass-Compass range I noticed was 2,100 feet. This doesn't mean that the range maxed out at this distance, just that this was the farthest two Crowd Compasses ever were from one another while I was looking. I had increased the power of the Compasses to the max allowable by the FCC, and I'm sure they could go much, much farther. Burning Man will be a great environment to test this in, and I will report our max range test there. Connection was obstructed by terrain, but this is expected, mitigated by the mesh network, and not a surprise. The only connectivity issue experienced was when only two Crowd Compasses were online (no mesh) and one Compass was at the water level of the river with the river banks obstructing line of sight to the other Crowd Compass. When there were more than two online, we were able to relay off the additional Compasses and make contact with the Compass at the river. That was only with a handful of Compasses, so when all of you wonderful people get yours and bring it to the festival, the performance will be so much better. This was the only blip in connectivity and wasn't really a concern once we turned the others on. We had zero issues at the festival grounds and stages themselves with regards to range and connectivity.
GPS Connectivity and Accuracy
Overall GPS connectivity and accuracy was really good. 95% of the time the Crowd Compass got you to within 10-15 feet of where the other person was. We used "Party Mode" to find each other for the last 15 feet if the crowd was especially packed. We did this by holding up the compass in the mode where it flashes your color so the other person could find you. This wasn't really a problem and was actually part of the fun of finding your friend. I had LOTS of people ask me what I was doing as I was standing in the crowd consulting my Crowd Compass looking for a nearby friend. LOL. Forests and trees had a noticeable effect on accuracy when the Compass couldn't get a clear view of the sky (think full canopy of trees with all shade, no sun, etc). We were camped in "The Enchanted Forest" and the sky was pretty much covered by a canopy of tree branches, leaves, and pine needles. On one side there was a large mountain that covered half of the horizon, so part of the sky was eliminated due to terrain, and the remaining sky was covered by trees. In this environment, the GPS was the least accurate. GPS accuracy was probably down to 40 feet in this case when you first turned the device on. After it had time to acquire more satellites, it would improve to about 30 feet. This is still really pretty good for a situation that is not really similar to most festival/dancefloor environments. At the stages and festival grounds, the Compass was even more accurate to 10-15 ft.
Messaging
Name changing: everybody changed their names in the app and this propagated out to the network and worked quite well. This meant that we could all see who sent what message and know which compass was which. We had names like: "Rave Dave", "Light Suit Guy", "Fox", etc. Messaging was a ton of fun and worked great! We were able to get almost everyone using a compass (9 in total) to download the beta versions of the iOS and Android app so everyone had "full" messaging capabilities. I noticed a few people changing their preset messages (via the app) to be all the different stages, which I thought was pretty crafty idea (e.g "Meet Pagoda", "Meet Fractal Forest", etc). One of my friends was eating Perogies at the food court, and I saw him but he didn't see me. I hid behind a tree and I typed out the message, "MMM perogies" on the app and sent his Compass a DM. He was definitely surprised and a bit shocked because he didn't know that you could do that with the Crowd Compass at that point in time LOL.
I had a lot of fun messaging the entire group as the "spirit of Shambhala". I would send messages like, "Compliment someone" or, "Embrace the now" or, "you are looking down at the stars, not up". This was a new dynamic and it let me feel connected to my group even when I wasn't dancing with them. So much fun! No technical concerns to report regarding messages - they worked great. We did have a bug in the app at the very beginning of the festival where if you sent a DM via the Compass network, it would go to the entire group, but I fixed it the same day and everything works great now. Thankfully, nobody sent any embarrassing messages that the entire group saw.
I also had a lot of fun pre-programming messages into my Crowd Compass. One of our camp mates was dressed as Donkey Kong and he kept saying, "I've got a hankering for an ape-ing" before he would go and ape around. It became a camp inside joke, so I set one of my preprogrammed messages to: "HANKERING FOR AN APE-ING". It was probably my most used message LOL. The programmed messages were great because I actually ended up losing my phone THREE TIMES (and I recovered it three times. Shambhala miracle!). However, I did spend a good chunk of time without my phone. It did give me a new idea though: find your phone with your Compass if you lose it! I will definitely be adding that to the roadmap! The need for a buzzer is definitely apparent as some people don't wear the Compass within eye sight but instead leave it in a fanny pack etc. One day we will add a buzzer. In the meantime, the app will trigger a notification and a buzz on your phone.
Friend Finding
Worked great! Knowing the actual distance your friends are is so important for finding your friends - especially at a large festival like Shambhala. I was able to zoom out until I found someone, then knowing how far they were and what direction, I knew what stage they were at. So I could quickly look at the Crowd Compass, zoom in and out a couple of times, and know where everyone was at. I had to calibrate once each night as the batteries drained. I noticed I needed to calibrate because the north star (white LED that points north) wouldn't rotate proportionally as I rotated the Compass. Calibration only takes 30 seconds and is really easy to do (even if its clipped on your bag) so this wasn't a big deal at all. This is probably going to be the normal for Crowd Compass operation (at least for this first version of the device). It's actually kind of fun to stop and spin it around in your hands like some sort of rave wizard before you go off on a quest to find your friends 😀.
There is a known quirk with the Compass that everyone should know about: the Crowd Compass is optimized to find someone who is standing still. The Compass holder's position is relatively real time (10 seconds freshness) while the LEDs on the Compass (i.e. your friends) can be 20 seconds to 1 minute stale depending on how fast they are moving and a few other factors. So if you are walking next to your friend, you would see their LED is "behind you" even though you are walking right next to them. That's because their position is a bit stale and you are seeing where they were 20 seconds to 1 minute ago (i.e behind you). If you stop and wait for a bit, it will show they are right next to you. Just FYI regarding this - your Compass isn't broken, I promise!
The App
Overall, the app (both iOS and Android) did its job. We were able to successfully change our names, change our colors, update the firmware of Compass, check battery level, send DMs/group messages that would show up in our friends' apps and across their Compasses. The map functionality, showing us where our friends were, also worked. The apps (especially Android app) need the most engineering attention though as they are a bit quirky and buggy. They still WORK and you can still do everything you need to, but there are some usability issues that need to be addressed (and will be addressed) over the next few weeks. For example, Compasses that have been offline for a long time (over a day) are still shown on the map and it just creates noise/clutter. Another example is if you have lots of Compasses in one area (~10) the pins are a bit unwieldy and it's hard to click on the one you want. The map itself is also quite rudimentary (i.e. base google map), and it needs to be enhanced with festival waypoints and fun festival art to make the points on the map meaningful. The top priority has been making the Crowd Compass awesome, so the apps have been neglected a bit, but I want to make sure everyone has an AMAZING experience with the Compass. My wife and I are the only engineers working on all of this, so we have to prioritize what we work on. Now that I am quite happy with the performance of the Compass, I can turn my attention to the app and make improvements there. I promise I am committed to improving the Crowd Compass and the apps through frequent updates - we will make them amazing together!
The People
My favorite part of Shambhala is always the people and the connections I make. I met so many amazing people! My highlight of the festival was on the last night two people I had camped next to last Shambhala, Sebastian and Loran, saw my rave helmet and stopped me. They got to see my original prototypes last year and hear my story about my non-traditional background and entry into tech (no formal tech education, etc). They said they had been looking for me the entire festival and wanted to tell me that I had inspired them to learn about tech, and they showed me one of the coolest totems I had ever seen... and they made it! It was super funky, covered in LEDs, and had a 3D printed tesseract cube on top of it. I was floored and so proud of them! I wanted to share that story with you, since in my mind, that's exactly what Crowd Compass is all about. It's more than an awesome device. We are building a community, bringing people together with technology, and using it for 'good'. Sometimes I forget that, and it was incredible to be reminded of that in the best way possible. Thank you Loran and Sebastian for being awesome!
I also had many other epic interactions with people who had already purchased Compasses and those who were very ready to join the community! I randomly bumped into someone on the dance floor who had bought 12 Crowd Compasses! I just bumped into him! I was able to give him a quick demo, thank him for believing in the product, and hug it out. So many people stopped me as I walking in the crowd looking for my friends to ask me what I was holding in my hand. Some even asked, "Is that a Crowd Compass?" I had a group of people follow me all the way through a stage and to the bathroom just to ask me if I was finding my friends using this "puck." I had so much fun giving demos of the device and telling people all about it. There were even some people who were skeptical about whether a device like this would actually work. I was able to give them demos, tell them a bit about the Crowd Compass origin story, and many told me they were buying Crowd Compasses as soon as they got home (and they did!).
My Promise
I want to tell each you the same thing I told each person that told me they were going to buy one: I won't let you down. There are some quirks with the Crowd Compass and in the two apps. I know of some that exist today, and I am sure there are some the community will find upon release. While we strive for perfection, it's hard to achieve. This is brand new industry and I'm just a guy with a dream trying to quit my day job and make amazing products full time. I am committed to this product and this community. I will continue to add features and fix bugs for the apps and the Compass. The Crowd Compass device can be updated via the mobile app, and the hardware is verified as working great. This means the product will only get better, and I promise I will continue to support these products and that I won't let you down.
With all of that being said, I'll end my stream of consciousness here. Overall, the Crowd Compasses worked great, and I am so excited for all of you to try them out!
Thanks, and stay awesome,
Light Suit Guy (Chris)