© trakkies.

The age of smart buildings

When it comes to buildings, we’re a long way past the days of caves and log cabins - modern buildings are incredibly sophisticated. In fact, the newest structures have technological capabilities that few could even dream about until recently. We’re in the age of smart buildings.

Every new generation of buildings adds new technology, doors, central heating, and elevators were all at one time technological revolutions. But now that we’re deep into the digital age, the technological advancements are in many ways more profound, but in others, quite subtle. the biggest innovation is in the connectedness.

It is much easier now to capture and share data and when this data can influence other processes in the places we live and work, this has incredible results. Smart buildings can create responsive lighting, temperature control that is both reactive and efficient, plus air quality, sanitation, and many more aspects. All come at lower cost and greater sustainability, when viewed throughout the buildings life cycle.

And this technology is becoming more prevalent, and being used more often. To make these advancements possible, more powerful technology and greater use of available information is required. And that’s what smart buildings are all about. Smart buildings take advantage of information technology to connect various systems that are used to operating independently. Instead of having a security guard at the door, we use keycards. Instead of turing of the lights at night when we leave a building, we program them to turn off.

This sharing of information allows the building to work as a cohesive unit, rather than a series of independent features. Smart buildings also look beyond their physical limitations - they are connected and responsive to the power grid, and they interact with occupants and operators to give them greater autonomy.

Being part of a start-up is for all of us one of the best choices made in life. Some of the perks of start-up life: we can ping-pong 24/7, enjoy freedom when it comes to doing our jobs and we get invited to talk at cool events about the thing we love: trakkies. In short, it’s an always-on exciting series of experiences, interactions and product evolution.

In order to have fun (and survive) working at a start-up, you need to be ultra flexible and able to improvise on the spot. One day you’re working on plan B for client X and the next day you find out that your work needs to be redone because the general business strategy changed overnight. This can be a bit frustrating at times, but also reassures that no two days are ever the same, which is fun.

But fun isn’t getting you to the top. The most crucial part is that you need to have a positive and optimistic soul at all times. It is easy to be positive when you work at a company that grows, but you also have to deal with possible no’s from investors, business partners and problems in the development process. What I think is very special about the trakkies team, is that after every success we celebrate it and after every setback we pick ourselves up and work towards making trakkies the success it deserves to be. Ain’t no mountain high, ain’t no valley low, ain’t no river wide enough to keep us from getting to the top!

Cheers,

Nora

By attaching small microcomputer, (called trakkies) to your phone, bag, keys, suitcase, jacket etc. they turn into smart objects. trakkies are connected via a mesh network with Bluetooth and NFC connectivity. Within this network a trakkies item communicates and recognizes rhythms and patterns. In short, they learn what you bring with you and when. What this means in daily life? Your wallet inside the pocket of your jeans “knows” that your phone and keys are always together in a bag and therefore can warm you if you leave the house without any of these items. The amazing thing is that you don’t need a mobile app for it to work, this is optional.

A trakkies.View on Location

Location, location, location; it’s the real-estators mantra. Location is what matters most for something like a house, but what does location actually imply? It’s not the coordinates that matter, or the address (unless you live on Awesome Street).

No. What matters is what is near you. Close to a supermarket, a train station, a school or your job. Or, depending on your preferences, as far removed from those things as possible.

The true worth of location is not the absolute location, but the relative location to other things. In effect, the value of location is the value of network, of all things combined, of the ecosystem with which you surround yourself. Coordinates and addresses are, in fact, meaningless.

People don’t really relate to to coordinates or addresses anyway. When I tell a fellow Rotterdammer that I live on *insert address*, all I get is a blank stare, but when I proceed to say it’s at the foot of the Erasmus bridge, between the theater and the KPN building, they know exactly where I live. Again, my location is defined by its surroundings.

Location isn’t any different for your things. What do you want to know when you’re looking for something? Coordinates are pretty useless (yes i’m looking at you ‘find my iPhone’), and even a relative “they’re 15m to your left” can be pretty confusing. What you want to hear is what your mother/roommate/significant other would tell you: “Your keys are on the kitchen table, dumbass!”