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By K.MacKenzie on
In February 2014, Vandrico released the world’s most comprehensive and detailed database of wearable devices. The database has helped both friends and clients find new opportunities and devices that suit their needs. This public resource is free to use, but only represents a fraction of the team’s knowledge-base on the sector.
The intense focus on wearables has allowed Vandrico to publish detailed insights and compelling analysis of the wearables market in unparalleled accuracy. The information from these reports has served as valuable strategic knowledge for investors and device manufacturers operating in the sector.
Why Drupal was chosen:
Drupal was chosen for it's unique ability to get a complex CMS up and running within days. The original launch of the database was done over a weekend sprint.
Describe the project (goals, requirements and outcome):
Vandrico set out to publish its primary industry research in a beautiful and easy to use format. The goal was to offer a highly interconnected user interface that made jumping from device to device both natural and educating.
The project was considered a success after TechCrunch blogged about it shortly after it's launch. This sparked a flurry of other bloggers picking it up, and the reviews were always positive, with many pointing out the ease of use in particular.
The fact that we were able to set up the database in less than a week and have it be such a success is a testament to the immense power of Drupal.
Technical specifications
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen:
Bootstrap provided an excellent framework for responsiveness.
Custom Search, Taxonomy and Views were used in combination with three custom modules to create the backbone of the database's navigability.
Drupal's taxonomy system was used to classify devices, with taxonomy terms assigned special values for weight and compared to the rest of the database to generate a "uniqueness" score. Some custom Algorithms are then applied to generate some meta attributes from the taxonomy and node field values. Everything is then plotted on a radar graph to give a quick visual idea of how the device compares to the rest of the database.
All of the calculations to determine similar devices and score device attributes relatively are performed periodically by using hook_cron() (hooking into Drupal's chronological task handler). They are then cached in custom fields within the device nodes.
The clean interface for jumping between lists of devices tagged to a term and the device pages was achieved using views and custom templating with the Boostrap theme.
Community contributions:
We have promoted Drupal on many occasions to local companies within the Zen Launchpad network. We are proud to share that it was built with Drupal every chance we get.
Virtually all custom functionality developed we believe was very specific to our needs and wasn't appropriate for publishing, however the developer who lead the project has contributed to other projects in the past.
Given that the database itself is a free and open information resource, the primary contribution was the site itself - for anyone who is interested in wearable technology.
Team members:
Project team:
Vandrico Inc (vandrico.com)
Team consisted of:
Kenny MacKenzie
Bayan Bennett
Benson Yim
Brian Ho
Josephine Clarisse
Gonzalo Tudela
Jason Madar
Sectors:
Technology
Comments
Wearable Devices
Like mentioned in the above post there are various types of wearable devices found which makes our life easy. But for proper undrstanding about these devices it is very important to get a proper exposure about these devices , for which you can attend workshops to get all information or have a look at Wearable Tech Social Media New York .
Wearable technology database
Hi i tried to access the Wearable technology database but received an error. Can you help me with access. Cheers jay
Wearable technology database
Hi i tried to access the Wearable technology database but received an error. Can you help me with access. Cheers jay