LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Some of the area's brightest minds came together Wednesday to solve a high-tech problem for Louisville's Russell neighborhood: how to keep mobile devices from running out of power.
Engineers, students and interns packed GE's FirstBuild Center at 333 East Brandeis Avenue. Surrounded by whiteboards and armed with dry-erase markers, they brainstormed ideas.
This "hackathon" involved six teams made up of 40 minds, all working to solve a problem that has plagued humanity since The Dawn of Time — or at least the invention of the cellphone.
At one time, 80% of homes in the Russell neighborhood had no internet access until Metro Louisville started installing Wi-Fi hotspots around the neighborhood. But Larry Portaro, executive director of FirstBuild, said that uncovered another challenge.
"The community came back and said, 'We need places to be able to charge our devices,'" he said.Â
Laura Johnson, a resident of the Russell neighborhood, said she's experienced it first hand.Â
"Some restaurants give you a limited amount of time to use their Wi-Fi," Johnson said. "They don't want you just to be in there just charging your phone."
So Portaro gathered the minds behind FirstBuild to tackle the problem, from the design phase all the way to actual solution itself. And the ideas are numerous.Â
"We've got lines of electricity going by the light pole," student Even Krimpenfort said as he pointed out the components sketched out on a white board. "There's a transformer up here, and we want to be able to take a line from the transformer to go to our pole, which has the charging station."
Student Cara Melargno has a more green approach.
"This will be along a picnic table, installed in the picnic table," she said, explaining her team's drawing. "We also kinda have a roof thing going on. We're engineers, so we really didn't' draw it correctly. We just think like crazy."
One team of two — Adam Pusateri and his partner, Zoey Zhang — broke away from the pack, envisioning a system like Redbox.
"We sort of wanted to build a battery bank kiosk thing," Pusateri said. "Mobility is important so you can get across to the whole park and create more of an experience as opposed to everyone hunched around."
"Actually, this is a very, very popular system in China," Zhang said.
Their idea involves kiosks in parks throughout the city allowing users to take and return on the run.
Leaders hope to have a design in place by the end of the year. Portaro said the choice of final design will depend on several factors.
"It's how good the solution is, how cost-effective it is and does the community value that service," he said.
Johnson said she's delighted by what she sees.Â
"I love it!" she said.Â
This was a one-day competition. The final design has not been selected.
FirstBuild is explained as a space where community members can work on projects, bounce ideas off one another or just take a break and hang out with other creative minds.
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