When Ambition Outpaces Hardware: The Second LiftTrack Failure
They say failure is a lesson.
We say: we're about ready for graduation from the school of pain.
Our second attempt at LiftTrack was more polished.
The codebase was tighter. The vision was clear. The mobile app and backend server were almost complete.
But then we ran headfirst into our next boss fight: hardware limits.
The AI That Broke Us (Literally)
LiftTrack’s core depended on a 3D Convolutional Neural Network (3DCNN) — an intensive deep learning model designed to process motion over time in video frames. Think of it as spatial + temporal processing in one.
Problem is: that kind of model needs serious GPU power.
We didn’t have that.
Instead, we had our humble college machines — unoptimized, consumer-grade laptops. And we paid the price.
The Smoke Before the Crash
One of our teammates — brave soul — pushed the training one step further.
Then it happened:
The screen burned.
Some internal components failed.
We fried the machine.
The GPU load was too much. Our models were uncompressed, training attempts were unbatched, and we were feeding it hours of data. We were trying to do TensorFlow-grade work on budget laptops.
Time, the Silent Enemy
By the time we admitted the hardware bottleneck was fatal, we were out of options — and out of time.
We failed. Again.
We had to switch to a different domain entirely — but that required redefining our problem statement, rebuilding, and refactoring. The semester had no grace for reboots.
What We Learned
- You can write all the code you want — but it’s meaningless if your machine can’t run it.
- Academic ambition needs to align with practical compute.
- Having a backup plan is underrated.
- Time is not a variable you can scale.
“Code doesn’t crash. Hardware does.”
Moving On
This wasn’t the end of LiftTrack — but it was the end of it as our thesis.
We took the lessons, the scars, and the dead screen, and marched on to find something leaner.
LiftTrack was too big for the room. But one day — maybe on better GPUs, better deadlines, and better odds — we’ll bring it back.
Bonus: Burned Screen Evidence
Respect the thermal limits. Or they’ll teach you the hard way.