The Making Of
Each device is made in our Vancouver workshop.
The electronics are designed designed by computer assisted drawing and soldered together in our Vancouver workshop. The housing is made out of wood carved by a robot, or bio-plastic and 3D printing. Our custom software is coded by passionate scientists and engineers.
Machining
The robot we use to carve out a hardwood housing is called a Computer Numerically Controlled Router. A cutting bit spins at 18 000 RPM and follows a pattern made from a computer drawing. Usually we make this part out of Canadian Rock Maple. That's the same tree we make maple syrup from!
3D printing
For waterproof housings we use a corn plastic called "polylactic acid". This plastic gets soft with heat and we extrude it using a robot to deposit the plastic in just the right shape. Doing this lets us make very complex shapes and save plastic.
Electronics
First we design our electronic circuits using circuit design software. We get a printing company to make printed circuit boards for us. Once they ship that to our workshop we attach parts to it using "surface mount soldering". Then we attach all the wires from the sensors!
Software
We write code for two different kinds of computers. The first is "firmware". It is written in a language called C++ and is the software that sits right in the physical device. The second kind of computer program is mostly written in Javascript. It controls all the computers that sit "in the cloud" and work together to deliver data to your phone.
