The ecosystem

An ecosystem we didn't mean to build.

Traction Solutions is one contract HGV driver. Class 1, ADR. The day job is moving freight — steel, RDC, hazardous waste — across the UK. Everything else on this page started as something I wished existed from inside the cab. Then the parts started talking to each other.

Five sites are live. Four more are coming. None of it was a plan.

5
Live now
4
Coming next
1
Driver behind it
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Venture capital

A note before the map

Three layers, one driver, one brother.

This page splits cleanly into three. The serious work — Traction Solutions itself, and CheckPod, the compliance toolkit I wanted in my own cab. The public-good work — WasteWatch, which exists because moving ADR waste for a living teaches you exactly where the data gaps are. And the creatures — a growing family of free apps for naturalists of all ages, each one built around the same idea.

The creatures started as a conversation with my brother Sam. We kept circling back to the same belief: education should be free, not a commodity. Field guides cost money. Identification books cost money. Wildlife courses cost money. Curiosity shouldn't. So we started building — small, friendly apps with cartoon mascots and proper underlying science, free to use, working offline, no tracking. Every one carries a dedicated wiki, written in plain English, free for anyone.

Each one is born from a real conversation with a real person. Colin came from a conversation with my brother Sam: he had the idea — could you read the temperature off a cricket? — and wanted to build it on a Raspberry Pi. I said it was a great idea, and we could make it an app. (One day we'll do the Pi build too, just for fun.) Webster came from my friend Jade, who brought back an unwanted stowaway from holiday — the spider didn't survive identification, but the question did. The pattern keeps holding: someone asks something the world doesn't easily answer, and a creature gets built — or grows into a new role.

Colin's grown into more than one role. After the cricket app shipped, on a long daily group call I do most days while driving, my friends Clee and Dan spotted the bridge between Colin and CheckPod: bug → cricket → Colin. He moved in as the bug-report mascot. Soon he becomes the help button across the whole app. (Colin doesn't know it yet.) A toy turned into infrastructure. That keeps happening here.

The longer-term plan: as people log sightings through the apps, that data builds — anonymised, structured, in proper scientific formats. The intention is to make it freely available to researchers. Citizen-science the apps quietly enable, in the background, while a kid is just trying to find out what spider's in the bath.

So here it is, in the order it happened. Open to ideas.

— the driver, and Sam

Layer one

The serious work

The day job, and the app the day job needed. These two pay for everything else.

Traction Solutions

Live

tractionsolutions.co.uk

The mothership. One contract Class 1 driver, available across the UK. General haulage, RDC, steel work, ADR — including hazardous waste, which is where this whole story starts.

What it is

A working contract driver. Bookings, calendar, contact — the same way every contract driver site works. No tech magic here. This is the trade.

— Everything else on this page exists because this job exists. Seeing every aspect of the industry, learning as much as I can along the way.

Visit the site →

CheckPod

Launching soon

checkpod.co.uk

The compliance toolkit I wanted in my own cab. GOV.UK walkaround checks, GPS proof of delivery, insurance-grade accident reports, defect tracking, live DVLA + DVSA integration. Two products: CheckPod Driver and CheckPod Fleet.

The magic trick

Works fully offline, syncs on reconnect. Audit-ready signed PDFs. Built by someone who actually does the walkaround at 5am in the rain — not by a software team who interviewed drivers once.

— Has a Driver Wellbeing section with one-tap access to Samaritans, CALM, Shout, and Mates in Mind. Compliance matters. The person behind the wheel matters more.

— Colin lives in here too. Clee and Dan are the reason — on a long daily group call, talking CheckPod and the cricket app at once, they spotted the bridge: bug → cricket → Colin. Right now he's the bug-report mascot. Quietly, he's becoming the help button across the whole app. (Colin doesn't know it yet.)

Join the waitlist → resident cricket: Colin 🦗

Layer two

The public-good work

Free, independent, no logins, no tracking. What you build when you spend ADR shifts looking at where the waste actually goes.

WasteWatch

Late 2026

wastewatch.co.uk

A free, independent public window into UK waste. Where does it go? Who carries it? What's your council actually doing with it? From October 2026, DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking Service makes electronic reporting mandatory. The data will exist. Whether the public ever sees it is a separate question.

The magic trick

Type a postcode, a carrier name, an EWC waste code, or a council. Get a plain-English answer with sources cited inline. Same model as Companies House, MOT history, Land Registry — government opens the data, civic-tech makes it useful.

— Why this, why me? Because the people who know where the gaps are aren't the agencies — they're the drivers carrying the loads. ADR work taught me what nobody publishes. WasteWatch publishes it.

See the project →

Layer three

The creatures

Six creatures, six magic tricks. Two live, four on the way. Each one has a guide with a name, a wiki that grows with it, and a story behind why it exists. Meet them.

Cricket Thermometer

Live

thermalcricket.co.uk

Gryllus regulus Cricketpedia · planned

Your phone tells you the air temperature by listening to crickets. Uses Dolbear's Law (an 1897 formula by physicist Amos Dolbear). Live spectrum analyser, confidence rating, supports snowy tree, field, mole, bush-cricket and katydid.

The magic trick

14 seconds of listening. Fast Fourier Transform on the 3–5 kHz cricket band. Chirps per minute → degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. A real, working science experiment in your pocket.

— Where it all started. My brother Sam had the idea, wanted to build it on a Raspberry Pi. I said it was a great idea — and we could make it an app. (One day, the Pi build too.)

Try it (PWA) → guide: Colin 🦗

Spidentify

Live

spidentify.co.uk

Araneus webstericus Spidipedia · live

Photograph any UK spider, get the species. Built around Claude's vision AI, focused on British species with scope for the occasional foreign visitor that arrives on imported goods or in shipping containers. Sightings log with Darwin Core CSV export for upload to iNaturalist or the British Arachnological Society's Spider Recording Scheme.

The magic trick

Photo in. Species out. Honest about confidence — defer to a qualified arachnologist for medical or ecological concerns. Records and sightings work fully offline once installed; only the identification call itself needs network.

— Webster came from a phone call from my friend Jade. She'd just got back from holiday with an unwanted hitchhiker.

"I bought a spider back, Rob — it's not from round here, and I'm pretty sure this one can bite me. I don't know where it's from, but it dont look like its from here…"

— Jade

— You could hear the left-over fear still ruminating in her voice. I could only imagine the whole brown-trousers situation as if I was a fly on the wall (or maybe Beatrice). The stowaway didn't survive identification — but the question did, and Spidentify followed.

Meet Webster → guide: Webster 🕷️

Beepedia

Coming

beepedia.co.uk

Bombus beatrix Beepedia · planned

Photograph a bee, get the species. Same model as Webster, different beast. The UK has roughly 270 bee species but only ~25 you'll commonly see, and bumblebees are camera-friendly because they're slow and fuzzy.

The magic trick

Photo in. Species out — plus a flower-friendliness score by detecting the flower in the background. Bumblebee Conservation Trust data is excellent and we lean on it.

— Bees are the gateway insect for kids and gardeners. Easy win for the family, and the science is honest — small species list, clear answers.

In development guide: Beatrice 🐝

CroakID

Coming

croakid.co.uk

Rana frankii Croakopedia · planned

Hold up the microphone, get the frog or toad. Directly parallel to Colin — mic in, answer out. The UK has only seven native amphibians and maybe three call recognisably (common frog, natterjack toad, pool frog), so the classifier is genuinely tractable.

The magic trick

Audio classification on a small species list. Bonus: chorus density estimates pond health. So the app tells you both "what" and "how the pond is doing".

— Pond-dipping is a beloved childhood activity. The small species list lets us be honest about confidence — no inflated promises.

In development guide: Frankie 🐸

MothID

Coming

mothid.co.uk

Noctua mothildae Mothopedia · planned

Photograph a moth, get the species. The UK has about 2,500 moth species, which sounds intimidating, but the top 100 macromoths cover the vast majority of garden sightings. Plus a "moth night" mode that turns the phone into a soft white light to attract them to a sheet.

The magic trick

Photo identification narrowed by season and region. The phone-as-moth-lamp is its own quiet wizardry — hold up the screen, watch what arrives.

— Moths are spectacularly underrated. The autistic-naturalist community already loves them — there's a huge moth-trapping subculture this app is built to respect.

In development guide: Mothilda 🦋

BatEcho

Pending field tests

batecho.co.uk

Pipistrellus barnabii Batopedia · planned

The phone hears something you can't. Most UK pipistrelles echolocate at 45–55 kHz, above standard phone microphones. Common noctules call as low as 20 kHz — within reach. Some Android phones now sample at 96 kHz natively, which opens the door wider.

The magic trick (the honest version)

Works for noctules and serotines on most phones. Works for pipistrelles only on phones with high-rate mics. Time-expanded audio, played back as a slowed-down click track, then classified.

— The single most "wizard" moment of any app in the family. Won't ship until it's been tested on real bats — the science has to hold up or it tarnishes the whole family. (Yes, Barnaby's a pipistrelle. Yes, those are the hardest to hear. The irony is the joke.)

In field testing guide: Barnaby 🦇

A standing invitation

Open to ideas. Open with the data.

The creature family is built on a principle Sam and I keep coming back to: curiosity shouldn't cost money. The apps are free. The wikis are free. And the longer-term plan is for the sightings data — anonymised, in proper scientific formats — to be free for researchers too.

That last part is direction-of-travel, not done yet. Spidentify already exports Darwin Core CSV; the others will follow that model. If you're a researcher, ecologist, recording scheme, or someone with a creature you'd like an app for — get in touch. We'd genuinely like to hear from you.

How it happened

The ecosystem built itself.

Every part started as a different thing. Then the parts noticed each other. Here's the actual order.

  1. First

    The day job

    Traction Solutions: one contract HGV driver. Class 1, ADR. Steel, RDC, hazardous waste. Seeing every aspect of the industry, learning as much as I can along the way.

  2. Then

    CheckPod

    The app I wanted in my own cab. Built by an active driver, for drivers. Walkaround checks, defect tracking, GPS proof of delivery, the whole compliance stack. Offline-first, because lay-bys don't have wi-fi.

  3. Then

    A conversation with Sam — Colin appeared

    My brother Sam had the cricket-thermometer idea and wanted to build it on a Raspberry Pi. I said it was a great idea — and that we could make it an app. (We'll do the Pi build one day too, just for fun.) 1897 physics on a 2026 device. Colin had a name and a job.

  4. Then

    A group call with Clee and Dan — Colin moved in

    Clee, Dan and I do a long group call most days while I'm driving. One day we were talking about CheckPod and the cricket app in the same breath, and they spotted the bridge: bug → cricket → Colin. He went and got himself a second job inside CheckPod as the bug-report mascot. Soon he becomes the help button across the whole app — though Colin doesn't know it yet. A toy turned into infrastructure. That keeps happening.

  5. Then

    WasteWatch

    ADR shifts kept showing me where the waste data gaps were. DEFRA's Digital Waste Tracking Service goes live October 2026 — the data will exist. WasteWatch is what makes it public. CheckPod's compliance work seeded it.

  6. Then

    Webster — born from a stowaway

    My friend Jade came back from holiday with an unwanted hitchhiker in her luggage. The spider didn't survive long enough to be identified. That gap — the mystery never solved — was the brief. Spidentify followed: photo in, species out, with scope for the foreign visitors that arrive on imported goods. The naturalist family had its second member. The footers started waving at each other.

  7. Now

    Bees, frogs, moths, bats — and the data they'll carry

    Four more guides on the way. Beatrice, Frankie, Mothilda, Barnaby. Each one a small magic trick. Each with a dedicated free wiki. Each only ships when the science holds up. And underneath it all: the citizen-science data the apps will gather, made freely available to researchers. The ecosystem keeps growing because the patterns keep connecting.

"Webster sends his regards to Colin at thermalcricket.co.uk."

— from the footer of spidentify.co.uk

P.S.  Sam and I still owe ourselves the Raspberry Pi build. Project Pi — bringing all of this back into hardware with better-suited equipment, just for fun. Someday.

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