My father has been a crane operator most of his years. He's worked jobs all around the country. He's seen some pretty amazing things and some pretty stupid things. One thing that consistently frustrates him is relying on unskilled flagmen for crane signaling -- visual and audible signaling alike.

He originally approached me with this problem about a year ago. Of course I immediately designed a solution in my head, but with my own geographical relocation underway it was difficult to make much progress. Things have settled down for me now personally, so I've fired this project up again!

My father has done the leg work within his crane company and with several crane manufacturing and service professionals to determine that this solution will solve a real world problem in the business of operating cranes.

He has the cranes and jobs ready to test the solution when a hardened version is ready. This contest is just the extra motivation I needed to make that version a reality!

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I've been in software for a long time, but I've always tinkered on the firmware side. I've created several other projects that I seriously considered submitting to TheHackadayPrize, but I decided to focus on just one. Based on my experience I don't anticipate many technological hurdles in completing this project.

I'd like to keep the price tag low on the final product so that crane owners and/or operators can't say no to using this solution. I feel so strongly about the safety aspects of this project that I want there to be no reason why every crane isn't equipped with this package!