In February 2020, when we met Halely and Mickey Shaposhnik the entrepreneurs who created - Hamezave - a smart vending machine, they had just moved from Tel Aviv to the less central and considerably less bustling city of Rosh HaAyin. They had grown accustomed to the round-the-clock convenience stores (such as AM-PM) at their doorstep and were having a hard time giving up their regular midnight snacks. Mickey - already with a number of entrepreneurial ventures under his belt - saw a problem he could fix.
His idea was to develop a smart refrigerator that would be placed in the common spaces of residential buildings, which would give the folks of Rosh HaAyin equal snacking opportunities . Thus began the project - Hamezave - which offers building dwellers access to treats and essentials at all hours without even having to venture outside.
Using a smart algorithm, the refrigerated vending machine identifies the product chosen by the customer and credits them for it automatically. Designed with inclusivity in mind, the cashless purchasing process is easy for everyone; the hurried host who needs just one thing before guests arrive, a kid who’s got to run errands without a wallet, or seniors who are not so used to working with tech.
Here at XYZeron, we specialize in developing products that combine hardware, software and telemetry transmission. Hamezave already had software, and hardware, but controlling dozens of weight values was an entirely different challenge - exactly the kind we love to solve.
Hamezave asked XYZeron to produce its hardware which included 2 electronic boards (brain and drivers), dozens of weights and stacks of cable in a record time. As is customary in XYZeron, when we develop - we like to do it fast. In a short time we put together a prototype that includes high voltage circuits, USB communication, MDB, Ethernet and I2C circuit breakers as well as temperature sensing points and sensors. We developed the firmware in C ++ and ran it on the ARM processor we chose, which easily connected to the existing Hamezave Android app with the help of the USB Driver we wrote. After a quick bug fix and some hardware upgrades, mass production began and a few weeks later the products were rolled out.
Unfortunately we did too good a job and Halely and Mickey asked us to take over the app too. We say unfortunate because UI isn’t usually in our scope, however, we were convinced pretty quickly both because Halely and Mickey asked really nicely but also because behind the UI lies the biggest challenge of the project. We love a good challenge.
How do we manage numerous weights in real-time and with 100% accuracy when every second we receive thousands of samples?
How do we overcome all the human antics challenging the digital pantry? (For example, they take chocolate milk and decide they actually want regular milk too, or they take 4 milk cartons and return them in 15 mins...you get the jist.)
We developed a sophisticated algorithm and raised dozens of versions on a weekly basis until we finally calibrated the algorithm and stabilized the firmware.
The founders also came through tremendously. Halely was on her game and managed, under the auspices of the pandemic, to distribute dozens of Hamezave pantries in residential areas (a pandemic-era favorite pastime in Rosh HaAyin during the closures was to go and see if the chocolate in the pantry had run out.) Mickey, on the other hand, was busy setting up a logistics chain to fill the refrigerators, a refrigerator factory in Ram Industrial Park and the mass production of hundreds of other refrigerators on the way to Israel.
Paz Delek recognized the potential at the beginning of the project and decided to turn it into a real product destined for every home in Israel. The pantry fits into Yellow's Customer Club vision - to provide a holistic service from refuelling the vehicle through to the purchase of urgent products in Yellow convenience stores. Now the club will also be able to enjoy indulgences in their own home using the same club app. By the time this article is published, Hamezave may even be in your home with it's new name Mini Yellow.
The XYZeron team is made up of the most dedicated and creative software and electronics engineers that Israel has to offer. When you choose the best in the field, you can transition from idea to ‘exit’ quickly.
XYZeron is an IOT and product development company that takes ideas from concept to product, processing data while offering guidance all the way through post-production. No dream is too far fetched.
Our expertise includes rapid prototyping services, robots, RF solutions, electronic architecture, embedded programming, and image processing.
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