Everyone who's spent any time with winter has seen it. You've noticed the car drive by with a fragment of extension cord dangling from the grill. You've witnessed the mangle of wires in the parking lot where part of a block heater line is semi-attached to a home cord now lying dead in the slush. You may have heard, yourself, the sickening snagging sound outside the vehicle of electricity lines parting company when you roll past the end of the cold weather cord.
Motorists have tried all kinds of antidotes to the inadvertent drive-off at wicked sub-zero temperatures when the car is still attached to the house until that moment the line snaps. Does it wrench the block heater plug out of the vehicle? Does it yank the house outlet off the wall? Does it cleave the 20-foot extension cord you just invested in?
Sterling Roberts knew all the tricks people try: the cord-wrap on the mirror, the reminder item under the wiper or in the door handle, the string on the steering wheel. Yet the Canadian winter still claimed its electrical victims.
Like every Canuck who's ever donned long-johns, Roberts knew there had to be a better way.
Unlike any other Canuck, he had a lifetime of tinkering to set his mind on finding the solution himself. He was not about to mind his Ps and Qs. He was going to plug into this problem and spark a solution.
The first mental light bulb went off for him in about 2004. He did some preliminary testing of the theory with quarter-inch stereo jacks. He envisioned a breakaway connection that would pop free under pressure without doing damage to the expensive infrastructure of car, cord and domicile.
He worked on prototypes until 2009 when he reached a point where the next-level design needed next-level money.
"I'm not risk-averse but I try not to be stupid," said Roberts, explaining his invention circuitry.
Another grounding force was the critical illness suffered by Roberts' wife who eventually passed away from cancer. He sidelined his technical noodling to focus on her needs, in that time. However, sitting in hospital rooms and treatment centres put Roberts in close contact with a lot of different electrical interfaces. He took note, on occasion, of how certain connections were made on that cutting edge equipment.
The passing of his wife gave him some empty time he filled with his invention dreams. She also left him a nest-egg of money and the lingering support she always had in turning his idea into a product Canadians could use to solve a problem. In his disconnection, he re-connected.
He also got a jolt out of the blue. He had consulted with the Innovation Central Society (ICS), the city's foremost public agency for stimulating tech-based business. He gained knowledge and direction from their programs, but his invention was still just home-based fabrication of preliminary prototypes and he was about at the end of his expertise.
That's when the phone rang. It was Ernest Daddey calling. Daddey was the executive director of ICS when Roberts first came through the door. Daddey had moved on to work in the tech sector of the Lower Mainland, and he called Roberts one random day just to say hello and catch up. When Roberts told him of the hurdle he couldn't jump, Daddey knew exactly whom he should call. He knew that a program based at BCIT was there especially for inventors who needed to build a functional prototype of products with strong market potential.
With the additional help of Elissa Meiklem and Geoff Clarke at the Prince George branch of the National Research Council, Roberts' idea for the breakaway plug to protect electrical connections was accepted into the up-scaling program. It cost a lot of money, but much less than contracting the fabrication out on the open market, and the money was provided through grants he was able to apply for due to the proof of concept he had already achieved.
He took a moment to point out how lucky he was to have the support of such wise players in the tech development world, but he also knew how much stress he had to go through to reach this stage, how uncertain it was that he'd get into the fabrication program, and how many others he had known of didn't get half as far as he had gotten.
"You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can't execute, it is essentially useless," Roberts said. "We have a bureaucracy in Canada built up around the tech sector and domestic innovation, and it's great that that bureaucracy safeguards fairness. It's very democratic. It's very safe. It looks after taxpayers' money almost militantly. But it puts up so many walls, too many walls, and it chokes off the innovation and kills the technological advancements it's supposed to be there to support."
Roberts considers himself lucky to now hold in his hand an expertly crafted model of what he calls the Q-Plug (Q for quick, he said). It is a two-part device that has the correct input and output plugs for a standard three-prong cord. You plug your car into one end, your extension cord into the other end, and where they meet in the middle is a circular plug that can twist around in endless circles and pull apart with a gentle tug. It also lights up so you can see the plugs if they happen to fall in the snow or you're plugging in at night.
"I got a lot of help from the fabrication program at BCIT, and I got a lot of feedback along the way," Roberts said. "I would hate to ever be blinded by my own idea. You have to try to listen to people's suggestions and try to react to problems people identify."
To reduce his idea self-bias, he stood at the front of Canadian Tire for two days, with the store's permission, and handed out surveys that allowed the general public to have input on the Q-Plug. The responses were helpful.
The next hurdle for the Q-Plug is figuring out a manufacturing location. In order for the Q-Plug to be approved by the Canadian Safety Board and get their imperative CSA stamp of approval, he needs to manufacture it in a factory that is itself CSA approved. That is the next hurdle he must overcome.
He must also fund the first batch himself, unless an angel investor comes forward to cover the initial cost.
"I do not feel like I've wasted my time, and that's a nice feeling. For the most part, I've seen it through," said Roberts. And he did it without a degree in engineering or a red seal in any trade.
"I don't even have a workshop at home," he said. "I just tinker; I always have. I have a notebook and I have an app called Evernote that synchs my notes between devices. That's how I've designed this and mapped out how to move it along."
He has other inventions in mind, but the Q-Plug still isn't quite across the finish line until it is in the manufacturing process. He has the patent already in-hand. He just needs a factory to power up for the product. Maybe they might have their own uses for the Q-Plug.
Oh, and, it indeed has many more applications than just saving the pop of a block heater cable or house outlet. It can be just as helpful for power tools that need to turn off if operated over water or a high place, or to spare the costly prong-bending of vacuums that get jerked out of the wall at the high speed of cleaning. There are applications from A to Z but Sterling Roberts is focused on the Q.
