We wanted to hedge our bets in terms of having some Grey Matter Stimulating things to do on the road. And, whilst underway in the world's oceans and rivers. The world of Sailing is Great, there is tonnes to learn - but it's not really an academic field of study or learning. We don't need advanced Math or Science knowledge - to sail around the world. We didn't want our poor decaying neurons to revert back to mushy peas too quickly, having left the Silicon Valley Tech Crazyness. Although this extra idea may turn out to be a bit of a brain stress overload; we thought we'd give it a try. We wanted to involve a purely brain teasing type of activity, in addition to traveling around & learning the ropes of sailing.
We both came from High Tech back grounds so we thought we'd try to write some, hopefully useful, software Apps while on the road. One of the compelling reasons for choosing Software Development is that we didn't need any infrastructure what-so-ever. A simple lap top is all we needed, along with our phones and perhaps a couple of small cables. We needed also occasional cloud access by an internet connection; and, having unreliable internet is also ok, given the way the cloud works. It sync's 'when it can'...
We compiled a long list of ideas for apps in the area of Green Tech. Listing Apps that didn't exist today. We had both worked for years in 'Green Tech', trying to minimize power used by electronics systems, improve on new says to generate power, maximize battery system's life or improve communications experiences for users. We enjoyed fields of renewable energy, EV Cars and low power systems. So these were the area that we are more familiar. We also were inquisitive about Apps for sailing people. Perhaps we could test them as we explored the world. So we decided to create apps for: electric car drivers , sailors, wanderers and explorers... ideas are always easy. Anyone, you meet has some kind of great idea for a new App, ....but it's the software development and implementation time and effort that is the hard thing with Apps.
Peter Dug in but Dawn dug in harder and took the lead. Hours of dedicated learning and problem solving led her to a point where she became a solid App Developer. Peter had spent several years in the development of large software systems architecture and so enjoyed helping Dawn in a supporting role.
EVHotels is one the results. Dawn's best result to date. It's an App for touring EV Drivers, like we are. Designed to find hotels that offer EV Chargers while also highlighting hotels of our preferred brands; and even hotels that have a charger within a reasonable walking distance. This we found was an invaluable back up plan. "Sorry Sir, we don't have a charger at our hotel, but there is one in the Parking lot across the street that the public can use...."
The point being that it is so much easier to charge overnight, while we sleep, compared to waiting at some shopping center's charger.
Dawn released her EVHotels app at in February 2018. And we made a little support web site for it:
We made it FREE to download & use.
New software languages like Swift and Objective-C the have been developed over the past few years. They are sooo much simpler to use that the languages of our school days: C, Fortran and Pascale. (yes, I guess we're a bit old and crusty). It was refreshing to learn Swift, Apples new bread-n-butter language for Apps. We owned iPhones and pads and Macs.. so we made a simple choice to develop Apps on Apple's platform. Punting the notion of porting the App over to other platforms...
Our planned first year of traveling is to tour the USA in an Electric Car: it made great sense for us to develop a new App for such Touring Electric Car Drivers .
We found that our main difficultly, when touring electric was to find places to charge the car, where-by you don't have to sit and wait for an hour or more to charge, while twiddling your thumbs in a coffee shop. The new network of ~120 Kwatt Super Chargers are a great advancement - but still, sitting next to a casino in the boonies, while waiting for the batteries to replenish themselves is not much fun - if you don't enjoy gambling. Similarly, we both find sitting at Chargers at Outlet Malls very boring places to haul up. Charging in places that you don't want or need to be - is a waste of time.
Instead, we would actively seek out hotels that offer their guests, over night electric car charging. We had to make a LOT of calls. So it became a waste of time too.
but when we found one, life was great: We'd arrive, plug-in, sleep, unplug and go. If this model was prevalent, EV drivers would spend less time fueling than in the case of driving Oil Burning cars. It truly is the ideal model for EV Tourers - offering a Symbiotic Dwell Time and therefore no time overhead to talk about. No wasted time at all.
The big 'BUT' however, is that it's tricky to find these hotels. They don't advertise these kind of facilities very well.
So we decided to develop and write an iPhone / iPad app that would show EV Drivers where they can stay and charge; while touring. The App is called EVHotels and now works and it's Great!!! We use it All the time as our Go To EV Touring App.
One of the essential features we designed in was the ability to Select from a list of hotel chains. So for example, if you like to Stay at Marriot Courtyard Hotels along with Best Western Plus's and IHG's Holiday Inn Express's, for example: EVHotels will show you which of these hotels, in your area has an over night charger. And it works via the cloud, all over the world.
We're making this app available for Free to help encourage people to drive electric. We hope it's useful. And we hope it contributes in the worldwide fight against Anthropologic Climate Change.
We certainly think that, if you're touring in an Electric Car, staying in Hotels: it's a Must Have.
Please check it out and tell us if your an EV Driver. And, if you'd like new features added... we'd be happy to oblige. Weather and Seas permitting....
