This project was prompted by the existence of some very analogue row boats shared by neighbours living on an island in Stockholm. On a first-come, first-serve basis, the boats make up one of several ways of getting across the water, often as a part of the daily commute. However, if you head down to the shore only to find all boats are on the other side, you may find yourself in a bit of a pickle.

Thus, the challenge was to build something that was tech-agnostic enough to be used by both new and older smartphones of different brands, something that would withstand the elements and be precise enough. After going through a few iterations, there is now a fairly stable service in place.

The interface is currently a web app that gives you just the information required – how many boats are available (it is online when the boats are in use; April-October).

It was built using bluetooth beacons and a LoRaWAN node + gateway, utilising the wonderful The Things Network as part of the backend.

Thanks to Greger for hardware hacking, Mikael Sjöbeck for initiating the boat pool in the first place, to Marcel for data wrangling and a few others for helpful input along the way.