Samat Jain

The Aerospace Corp interview presentation
Sr. Full-stack Embedded Software Engineer

26 Jun 2017

e-mail: samat@samat.org
web: https://samat.io/

Quick bio

New Mexico State University (2001–2006): Biochemistry, Computer Science, Math (BS). G. intraradices sequencing project (bioinformatics)

Columbia University (2006–2008): Biomedical Informatics (MA). An analysis of clinical queries in an electronic health record search utility(paper)

Pi-Fi, LLC (2014–2015).

Innobright Technologies, Inc (2015–present). Denoising algorithm for physically-based, Monte Carlo 3D renderings.

Biz Details

1st cohort, ABQid accelerator program

Pre-seed funding of $20k

Apr 2014–Dec 2015

Parents easily can manage when, and for how long, their kids use the Internet across all their kids' devices, wherever they are.

Kids must earn their time online by doing what their parents want. Activities range from academic, creative, to value-based.

Pi-Fi is a cloud-based, education-focused, parental control platform.

In today's world, children spend more time online than ever before. The average parent thinks their child looks at a screen for 2 hours a day; the average actual time a child looks at a screen is 6. As a parent, you have enough to worry about. Pi-Fi makes your job easier by managing when, and for how long, your child is online.

Pi-Fi makes it easy to help parents manage when and for how long their child is online. Parents can set absolute limits, like no more than an hour per day, or no access after 9 pm.

Children aren't left helpless, they can complete activities to earn more screen time. Activites like solving math, science, and vocabulary problems help engages children to learn life skills like time management, self-regulation, and self-fulfilment. Activities need not only be academic; value-based activities like Bible study help instill the values you want in your children. Activities can be tied to things in the real world, like chores completed, or how much physical activity they had that day.

Children can complete activities to earn time more online.

Through the Pi-Fi cloud-service, parents can easily set and monitor Internet time, and examine performance on their children's activities.

For the about the cost of a Netflix subscription, you get the whole power of the Pi-Fi Cloud. The cloud delivers you updated content including new question sets that keep children interested, simple and clear analytics to give parents feedback, and a mobile app that allows parents to manage their child's access on the go.

Basic biz model: sell parents a subscription to educational content through a system that makes children consume it. My company provides the mechanisms for policy enforcement, "app store" if you will for content, with subscription-based model for updates.

For our initial product development, focus on the HOME.
Novel approach: use hardware to exert absolute control over whatever device a child uses

Approaches:
hardware vs. software

Hardware: build a specialized wireless router

Software: some kind of app running on device, coupled with VPN for enforcing network policy

Hardware approach

Why hardware?

Hardware approach -1: Software Defined Networking (SDN)

Hardware approach 1: Single board computers

ARM wireless drivers on Linux are a terrible!

Hardware approach 2: OpenWrt

Originally approach 0, but bricked two devices

Qualcomm Atheros 71xx-based devices.

Web services

Captive portals

Parent view

Child view

Demo!

Connect to Wi-Fi SSID "Free Wi-Fi from Pi-Fi" using your phone

User story: 8-year old child, Clara