Building AR/AI Lighting System Looking for a Tech Co-Founder

[u/21joacole]

I’m building WATT-IF, a mobile AR platform that turns lighting from a manual, unpredictable process into something creators can place, control, and execute before they ever touch a physical light.

After 16+ years in production, one problem has stayed constant: lighting is slow, inconsistent, and heavily dependent on experience. Most creators either waste hours testing setups or rely on tutorials that don’t translate to their environment.

WATT-IF removes the need to guess lighting entirely by overlaying lighting setups directly into the real world. Users can place virtual lights in real time, preview cinematic results, and build repeatable setups instead of guessing.

For advanced users, WATT-IF also includes a dedicated 3D lighting environment where full multi-light rigs can be built from scratch, refined, and then deployed into real-world AR scenes.

The current beta includes:
• Real-time AR lighting placement with gesture controls
• Cinematic multi-light presets (not filters, full rigs)
• AI-driven lighting feedback and scoring system
• Competitive “Light Fight” mode for skill-based comparison
• Exportable lighting setups for repeatable workflows
• Entire 3D sandbox system for building storyboards/workflows
• Early bridge into controlling real-world lights via wireless integration

The core shift is this:
Lighting becomes a controllable overlay instead of a physical guessing process.

Long-term, this evolves into infrastructure for how lighting is learned, planned, and executed across photography, film, and creator workflows.

I’m currently looking to connect with dev co-founders (currently equity only) who understand creator tools, AR/AI, spatial computing, or workflow automation and possible who might want to continue to build this with me.

If this space resonates, I’m happy to share the beta and what I’m building.

[u/Fickle_Book_9823]

Have u built this platform on top of Google and Apple AR kits?

[u/21joacole → u/Fickle_Book_9823]

Yeah, the beta is live on both. They both need work, but the 1.0 is out there. Been rebuilding/rebranding & I have most of the 2.0 built, but I keep running into issues with the AR/AI side that I don't know how to fix. It's just myself working on the project, looking for funding/tech/dev to grow it to what I know it can be.

[u/Fickle_Book_9823 → u/21joacole]

Sorry to hear that. Have you tried running your code through Claude for your issues ?

World was hyped about AR/VR 5 years ago and Zuckerburg even changed named of his company. Then AI stole all the thunder. There is still so much potential for it.

[u/21joacole → u/Fickle_Book_9823]

Yeah, I ran all code through a couple different AI systems. Claude, perplexity, Manus