Update on Pickup—putting the final touches on development and preparing for production. blog.supermechanical.com/2025/09/30/m...

Got a brood of new Pickup alpha testers.

Learning about making 3D printed production parts, and how designing for multi jet fusion is different than injection molding. blog.supermechanical.com/2025/06/27/g...

What better way to test new database code than using Pickup to check whether popsicles will stay frozen in my cooler for the afterschool party? Trying to prove that dry ice won't be needed.

Gifts in the mail! We're adjusting from injection molding to MJF printed parts. These can't do the same level of detail so these prints are helping me tune things, but they look great! Additive manufacturing has come far. blog.supermechanical.com/2025/05/12/a...

Measuring fruit offgassing with Pickup's VOC/particulate cartridge.

Pickup getting some air. Testing lenses for the spectral cart in outdoor light.

In which we play with a bunch of sensor boards. blog.supermechanical.com/2025/03/07/s...

Testing Pickup distance sensor carts — bouncing lasers off that far wall.

Assembled spectral sensor, plugged into a preproduction Pickup! Got color sensing working, though it's still uncalibrated.

Bringing up Pickup sensor cartridges... blog.supermechanical.com/2025/01/27/s...

Pickup update in which we try to untangle tariffs, which are currently in a quantum state. Also, sensor cartridge boards. www.kickstarter.com/projects/sup...

First samples of our sensor cartridge boards are done! Cases are being printed as I type.

It's neat that contract manufacturing lets you make products without a lot of experience. But making innovative products requires that first-hand experience. Here's how hard it is. blog.supermechanical.com/2024/12/23/y...

It's hard to make hardware in America when you're small. How we're making the supply chain for our environmental monitor: blog.supermechanical.com/2024/12/23/t...

When you're making a hardware product, you're really making two products. Been wanting to write about the experience of building a supply chain for a while. blog.supermechanical.com/2024/12/23/t...

Pickup update #11 is a little dull unless you're into the nitty gritty of hardware production. Always fun ("fun"?) to get your first batch of boards to start analyzing the failures! (3 out of 50, but easy fixes.) blog.supermechanical.com/2024/11/14/b...

Production circuitboards have arrived just in time for pumpkin spice season. Read this for a snapshot of the many balls you have to keep in the air (and the one I dropped) when developing a consumer electronics product. blog.supermechanical.com/2024/10/08/t...

Special delivery! Got samples of an unreleased sensor. 1% the size of comparable sensors, which makes it easy to fit into a cartridge for our pocket-sized environmental monitor.

That feeling when you finally hold the first physical instance of the thing you've been working on for a year. This is why hardware development is hard to quit! blog.supermechanical.com/2024/07/30/s...

Making injection-molded parts is not as hard as you think, as long as you can swallow laying down a lot of money. I wrote about the grind as I finish up the molds for Pickup: blog.supermechanical.com/2024/07/01/a...

A lot of money was spent. New Pickup project update: www.kickstarter.com/projects/sup...

We got production candidate circuitboards for Pickup! Nearly there. blog.supermechanical.com/2024/05/14/m...

Big pads, little component. That's why you prototype the process. (From the Pickup environmental data logger we're manufacturing.)

Tuning Pickup ambient light sensors. From outdoor to indoor is quite a dynamic range. Nerd details in our latest development update: blog.supermechanical.com/2024/04/09/f...

Boards spitting out data to MQTT. This goes to your friendly Pickup dashboard, but you can also tap into the stream directly or route it to your own broker—no locked down ecosystem here. Read the latest development update for our modular data logger: blog.supermechanical.com/.../09/the-s...

These are about a third of the Pickup case iterations. Latest Kickstarter update provides an inside view on making hardware. www.kickstarter.com/projects/sup...

Got some Pickup component samples. It's not just Amazon that likes to pack tiny things in large boxes.

Time to make the donuts. (Or, a batch of Pickup prototypes.) Latest update: www.kickstarter.com/projects/sup...

"However, the only one of the big four Matter platforms that supports buttons right now is Apple Home." www.theverge.com/24043060/sma...

Bathing in radiation #Pickup #Kickstarter

Pickup v4 proto boards, populated. Any real board is beautiful in my eyes, but the production boards will be prettier. (This is actually a month old; catching up on posting, because I love to Post.) www.kickstarter.com/projects/sup... #buildaboard #hardware #kickstarter #hacking #iot

Been printing and testing fit on Pickup's injection molded parts. Always a scary thing to commit designs to steel, the single biggest expense we have. But getting close to final tooling!