Collegiate Times

A Virginia Tech student entrepreneur is designing a new touch screen bar technology.

Aaron Bitler, a senior communication major and director of Interactive Systems at Crunchy Logistics, has shown that hard work and dedication can really pay off.

The touch screen bar will interact with patrons by drawing designs around their glasses and allowing them to place orders, play games and eventually access the Internet.

“This bar is going to have eight projectors in it, so you can imagine the size of it,” Bitler said. “We’re going have one really awesome computer running all the projectors and all of the software.”

Touch screens that Bitler helped to design are already in use in a Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa, and a finished prototype will be on display at a trade show in March.

“This is the first prototype I designed for Hard Rock,” Bitler said, pointing to wooden box with a touch screen set in it and wires sticking out, “and I had a comment that it looked like a science fair project.”

Bitler said it wasn’t what he wanted, but it was a starting point. And from there, he went to work improving it.

“After I got that comment I went back to the drawing board, and designed something much thinner, much classier, and with a built-in computer,” Bitler said. “It’s kinda nice to go from something I made in my shop to something that’s on the wall in the Hard Rock Cafe.”

“I went from the drawings on paper, staying up until 4 in the morning, sitting on my porch thinking of how cool it would be to make these touch screens,” Bitler said. “And finally I got the courage to take apart my own TV, because I couldn’t afford a projector, I couldn’t afford hardly anything, so I did it really cheap. Once I built that very first prototype and it worked, I knew this technology, the fundamentals, will work.”

Bitler said most people assume he is a business, computer science or engineering major, and are often surprised to find out he studies communications.

“I think it’s a little bit of an advantage, because I’m taking something I’m not very good at, which is communicating, and I’m majoring in that, and it’s helping me develop my skills better,” Bitler said. “Computer stuff I’m already good at, I already like, so to be able to blend the two together I think is going to work out pretty good.”

“I basically started my own little business, it wasn’t really working out, then Crunchy Logistics hired me for the Hard Rock job,” Bitler said. “Crunchy Logistics is a small company, but they do a lot and I guess found me valuable and offered me a job when I graduate.”

Bitler manages the business aspect of the project as well. He is active in Tech’s Entrepreneur Club and offers advice to budding entrepreneurs.

“The one thing I always tell people when they start their own business is it’s never going to work out the way you think it is,” Bitler said. “Whatever you think is going to happen, something different is most likely going to happen, I can guarantee it.”

A version of this article appeared in the Feb 9 issue of the Collegiate Times.