A Big Thank You + What’s Next

As our Kickstarter campaign comes to a successful close, the first thing we want to do is thank all the backers, friends, supporters, and explorers that have helped us make our campaign successful beyond our imagination! We have surpassed $100,000, and reached a level of funding – more than 5x our goal!

A big part of the success was getting the word out. Thank you to everyone who shared, linked to, tweeted and told your friends!  We could not have done it without you.  We were humbled by the depth and breadth of the press coverage we received.  The NY Times, Popular Science, Fictiv, TechCrunch, Texas Instruments, and GeekWire all wrote wonderful articles about The PocketLab and brought a diverse crowd of backers to our site from all corners of the internet.  We even landed on a BuzzFeed List!

The Kickstarter site is no longer taking backers, but, don’t worry – if you want to pre-order The PocketLab, we can take your order on our eCommerce site: www.thepocketlab.com.  Just click on the “pre-order” tab, or scroll to the bottom of the site.

We are still on track for an end of June delivery and for a limited time (until we are shipping production units) we will be honoring the Kickstarter price of $98.  Large order discounts and accessories are available on the site as well.  If you missed the Kickstarter, go to our site and pre-order yours now!

Of course we are always just an email, tweet, or phone call away.  To receive PocketLab updates, join our mailing list.

Sneak Peak at The PocketLab: Photos and Story from our recent Tech In Motion DEMO Night

We recently just finished an early preview of The PocketLab for the Tech In Motion Product Design Demo at the Art Institute of California in Sunnyvale. Thanks to everyone who turned out and especially to the Tech In Motion team who made the event both enjoyable and extremely successful for us.

Almost 300 attendees crowded into the conference center in the Art Institute, and it was busy all night. Clif and Dorothy Lou held down the booth and were surrounded by interested techies from start to close.

Tech in Motion is a nation wide series of technology events that boasts 35,000 members who attend the weekly events across the US and internationally. We were honored to be part of this invitation-only event, and it was a great chance for us to meet with hundreds of tech enthusiasts who are part of the Tech In Motion community.

This was our first booth show, and helped prepare us for our first major teachers conference, the National Science Teachers Association conference which will be in Chicago on Thursday March 12-15.  (Come find us at Booth #378!)

New Year, New Post! Happy 2015 from the PocketLab

2015 is going to be a big year for the PocketLab. Our Kickstarter campaign goes live in just a couple of weeks, we’re starting our first manufacturing run, and transitioning the whole team into sales and marketing mode. Looking back, our entire 2014 was spent preparing for the next few months.  We built the team, prototyped early versions of the product, tested more than 100 units with early users, formed a corporation, filed our patents, and even took a few fitness breaks.  We’ve recruited a cadre of smart, helpful, and involved advisors to the team and we’re (almost) ready to launch.

Our hopes and dreams for 2015 are to give our customers a unique and valuable tool for exploration of the physical properties that are everywhere around us. We designed PocketLab to be very simple to use.  Push one button, and PocketLab will reward you with sophisticated data on acceleration, pressure, temperature, and magnetic field strength.  Until now, hobbyists seeking this kind of information needed several different tools, and had to put the data together themselves.  Not anymore.

We couldn’t have reached this pivotal moment without our beta testers and their invaluable feedback.   And now, the PocketLab is able to return the favor.   Chuck Williams, one of our first testers, recently told us, “We used data we gathered with an early PocketLab prototype to optimize the inertia of the throwing arm on our robotic entry into the annual FIRST robotics competition.”  Williams is an AP Physics teacher and the faculty advisor of the Cupertino, CA High School Robotics team.  FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an organization founded by celebrated innovator Dean Kamen, that wishes to offer youth an appreciation for the wonders of science and technology. The Cupertino High School’s Robotics Club has been competing since 2007, and will compete again this year in the state-wide CalGames 2015 sponsored by the Western Region Robotics Forum.

Feeling inspired?  You can join the PocketLab revolution by supporting our Kickstarter, telling your friends, and giving the techies in your life a PocketLab for President’s Day.  Pocket Lab makes a great gift for anyone who loves to tinker and is curious about the world around them.  Come explore with us!