SpinDry — Self-Drying, Typhoon-Proof Umbrella
A wind-resistant umbrella with a pull-powered spin motor that flings the rain off its canopy — so you step indoors dry, and it survives Hong Kong's harshest weather.
In Hong Kong, sudden storms and strong gusts destroy ordinary umbrellas — ribs snap and the canopy flips inside-out during typhoons. And even when an umbrella survives the rain, it keeps dripping the moment you walk inside, soaking floors, lifts, bags, and shoes. Everyday umbrellas are designed for light drizzle, not for this city's weather.
A tougher umbrella built around one core idea: dry itself before you go indoors, and never break in the wind. Three mechanisms make it work:
- Pull-powered spin motor — Charge it like a pull-back toy car: a quick pull winds a spring motor, and releasing it spins the canopy fast, flinging the water off so it stops dripping indoors.
- Flip-proof canopy — A vented, double-layer design lets strong gusts pass straight through instead of inverting the umbrella.
- Reinforced frame — Heavy-duty ribs and joints built to take typhoon-force winds without snapping.
SpinDry is still in the planning stage, so this is an original animation showing the core mechanism: a pull-back spring motor spins the canopy, and centrifugal force flings the water off. A demo of the actual prototype will replace it later.
Original animation by Nicholas Brandon Yang, self-hosted on this runtime. Mechanism based on the pull-back spring motor — see also "How does a Pull-Back Toy Car work?" by Jared Owen (YouTube) for a detailed explanation.
A one-page product brief (PDF) covering the problem, the three mechanisms, and next steps.
This product is connected to my own Stripe account in test mode via a Stripe Payment Link. Click below to open the secure Stripe-hosted checkout — it does not charge real money.
Test card: 4242 4242 4242 4242 · any future expiry · any 3-digit CVC · any ZIP. Test mode only — do not use a real bank card.
SpinDry also supports billing by Stripe invoice — a secure hosted invoice page you can pay online, with a downloadable PDF receipt. Invoices are issued from my own Stripe account (test mode).
A live example issued from my own Stripe account. Paying an invoice fires the same invoice.paid event my webhook records. Test mode — pay with 4242 4242 4242 4242, not a real card.
A Stripe webhook notifies my own server the moment a payment or invoice is paid — reliably, even if the customer closes their browser. This is now live: Stripe delivers each event to my own Cloudflare Worker, which verifies the signature and returns 200 — confirmed “Delivered” in the Stripe dashboard. It records the event and can forward it to another URL, so a payment automatically triggers action elsewhere.
Live endpoint: spindry-webhook.nbybrandon.workers.dev · Full write-up: Stripe Webhooks with Checkout & Invoices report.
Sketch and prototype the pull-motor spin mechanism, then connect this named URL with QR and NFC so a physical object — or the umbrella itself — can open this page directly.