cavin dougherty - reflection
AvAlert is a project that has opened up a niche in the backcountry skiing industry and will
hopefully continue to develop this niche for years to come. Right off the bat, creating the
concept was a huge success. After a couple of months of research and trial and error with
various ideas, the first AvAlert came to life on a sheet of cardboard. Many weeks of code
correction and problem-solving later, we finally had the first working prototype. Once we had the
case design nailed down, after a few printing trials, we took the device out to test and obtained
the real-time data we had been aiming for. Of course, the device wasn't perfect; it needed some
calibration, and we had a few fidgety electronic pieces, but the concept itself was validated, and
that's what mattered. However, during the process, we did encounter quite a few setbacks. Our
biggest problem was figuring out how we were going to find SWE (snow water equivalent), a
crucial measurement in determining avalanche risk. SWE reading devices require either a
10-foot-tall remote monitoring station or a time-consuming and energy-intensive manual
process. We needed a way to achieve a baseline SWE measurement, so we fed our trained AI
years and years of snow data and taught it how to use the real-time climate measurements to
predict SWE, which gave us a solution to the biggest problem we had. Other small issues
included basic wiring problems and simply finding the components we needed. AvAlert
scratches a very important itch in the avalanche safety world, and we hope to continue this
endeavour into the future. If AvAlert could be brought to the market as an approachable product,
it could change the world of backcountry activity. The product needs improvements; production
will need to be made more economical and efficient, a better waterproofing setup will need to be
found, and the case design will need to be consolidated. Overall, AvAlert has come a long way,
and with more time to refine, it will be an incredibly marketable product.