There are three things that make us huge fans of Austin, Texas here at Bug Labs: the growing tech scene, the endless BBQs, and South by Southwest (or SXSW, as the kids call it). And thanks to everyone in the BUGcommunity, you helped us go to our very first SXSW last year, where we presented a session on hardware mashups and the now-legendary “Pizza Tail.”

So we thought we’d have a go at it again. For this year’s SXSW 2010 Interactive Festival, we submitted the proposal “You Developed the Content. Now Build the Hardware,” where we plan to present actual cases of entrepreneurs and enterprises using open source hardware to create the next batch of game-changing devices. With Amazon’s Kindle, TechCrunch’s upcoming Crunchpad, and a growing list of software and content developers jumping into the world of consumer electronics, we plan to show you (yes, you) how to build and sell your own hardware devices cheaper, quicker and better than the big companies.

But we need your vote to make this session happen. So:

1. Register on SXSW’s PanelPicker
2. Vote for our session and help spread the word
3. Party with the BUG team in Austin next March
4. ????
5. Profit

It’s a win-win situation all around, and you can help make it happen. Voting ends September 4, but it’ll take you less than a minute to get your vote and spread the word. Looking forward to seeing you in Austin!

Lots of activity buzzing over here at BUG HQ over the next few weeks, as we continue our summer of workshops in the Test Kitchen. We’ll continue throughout August, with several classes aimed at beginner and intermediate-type folks interested in learning about open source, Linux, DIY, hackerism, and much much more. Each event takes place at Bug Labs’ SoHo office (598 Broadway @ Houston – near the 6, B, D, F, V, R and W), so you can also scope all the cool BUG stuff we’re working on behind the scenes.

Below’s a glimpse of what’s going on for the next two weeks. Check out each event page for more details:

Soft Circuits Class – July 22nd (tomorrow)
Learn soft circuits with conductive thread! We’ll be stitching up electrical designs in fabric. This class will be a beginner course, the core concepts of a circuit will be covered. No previous experience required.

Urban Farming Workshop – July 26th (Sunday)
Lee Mandell from Boswyck Farms will be teaching an inexpensive method for growing fruits and vegetables hydroponicallly indoors. This class will include a quick history of hydroponics along with an overview of some of the many hydroponic methods, and it’s appropriateness for different crops. Then Lee will lead the class in constructing their own water reservoirs and associated parts to maintain their own gardens at home.

Linux InstallFest – August 1st (Saturday)
Put Linux on your laptop! We will have a few distros of Linux to choose from. Be prepared by bringing your backed-up laptop. We will also have Ubuntu on a USB stick specially for your netbook. There will also be a demonstration of Poky Linux on a BUG from Bug Labs.

Hope to see you here!

Thanks to the support of the BUGCommunity, our BUG4Good project proposal has been selected as a top 10 finalist in the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center Mobile Challenge! The initiative, spearheaded by the UC Berkeley HRC and facilitated by NetSquared, is aimed at encouraging individuals and organizations to imagine uses of mobile technologies, such as cell phones, GPS devices and cameras (or a BUGbase and BUGmodules), to assist human rights supporters in collecting, analyzing and disseminating data in the field.

In short, BUG4Good is a BUG application targeted at journalists and researchers in need of a secure mobile device to gather, store and encrypt information such as audio, photos, video, sensor data and more. The challenges faced by many practitioners in the field is not so much the acquisition of this data, but ensuring that it “survives” the various challenges in areas of conflict, such as repressive authorities and the limitations of carrying several devices at once.

Bug Labs will present BUG4Good alongside nine other finalists in “The Soul of the New Machine: Human Rights, Technology, and New Media,” at UC Berkeley on May 4 and 5. There, a panel of judges will select three winners to implement their ideas. Over the next month, we look forward to working with the BUGcommunity to further flesh out this idea, and hopefully we’ll get to see BUG4Good come to fruition on May 5!

Today, we’re excited to announce a new project we’re kicking off with IDEO, a well known international design and innovation firm.  Taking cues from everything we’ve seen in the community, our own experiences with new and emerging interface technologies and your direct input, we hope to gather several new ideas on how we can re-envision user interaction with the BUGbase.  Essentially, we are going to build on the great work done to-date by our original design partner ECCO Design and explore an area of our product that we think has a ton of potential – the BUGbase user interface.

So, we want *your* feedback!  IDEO has agreed to do this project in the open, which is a new approach for them, and we’re hoping it leads to superior results for Bug Labs and the BUGcommunity.  We don’t have a fancy name (yet) for this process, and we’re still working on the specifics for collecting your input.  But since everything we do is based on community participation, we are big fans of the idea, and naturally open to all your suggestions.

Over the next two weeks both companies will be posting their ideas and reporting on progress, via this blog and BUGcommunity.com.  At every point in this cycle we would love to get your thoughts on the work-to-date, and at the end we will publish our findings, which again we welcome your thoughts on.

The whole point of this exercise is to continue to push the boundaries of how we innovate, not just on the BUGbase UI, but on all things related to BUG.  We take pride in thinking our designs are good, but we also know they are exponentially better when the community gets involved.

Thanks in advance for your participation in this fun new project, and stay tuned for updates!

Bug Labs was at the Austin Maker Faire this weekend, where we won a Editor’s Choice award from Make! We were really honored to be part of Maker Faire and excited to show everyone our product!

Just before Maker Faire, at our Open House, we got our breakout board module (The Von Hippel) talking to an Arduino mini! It was a collaborative effort with help from NYC Resistor, who brought us a much needed R232 to TTY chip at a moment’s notice.

The folks at Maker Faire enjoyed clipping together modules together and coming up with new module ideas we should consider for the future, such as the Jelly Bean module and a Robot Wheels module (pictured below).

Hope everyone enjoyed seeing demos of the Bug! If we took your picture with the DrawPad app, check for it on Bugnet!  View more pictures of Bug Labs at Maker Faire here!

While most of you have been going about your daily business paying no attention to the following web site, there are 31 people who have been checking every day…. anxiously biting their nails… pacing to and fro in front of their computers… even twittering… Why?

At the end of August, Jeremy presented at Gnomedex and asked the audience to suggest some BUG gadgets they’d like to build, with the promise that 4 of them would win BUGbundles.

After a month of deliberation, and more than a few calls to Lady Cleo, we’ve made our decision (yes, we are late, we know, we’re sorry!). The following BUG fans will each be receiving a BUGbundle for their ideas (and their strong desire to actually build these items…)

i-Doorbell from Mike Koss
The i-Doorbell consists of a wall-mounted BugLabs base with the LCD, Camera, Motion Detector, Microphone and Speaker (TBD) modules. When a visitor arrives at the front door, the i-Doorbell welcomes them, and takes a photo. They are invited to announce themselves and leave a brief audio message. If someone is home, the interior doorbell is activated. If not, an SMS message is sent to the owner, as well as an email with an embeded image of the visitor. For homes with an electric strike lock, the i-Doorbell can be used to scan a 2-D barcode (e.g. a QR Code) from the camera. When a valid code is presented, the door can be unlocked (codes can be activated to limited periods to allow visitors or vendors to have limited entry).
Why You Want It: One device can be used to replace conventional door camera, intercom, AND card reader. Yet allows much more flexible guest access and security to a home or business.

TimeLapsr from Jess Martin (we think Jess works in Web2.0)
A device for creating time-lapse videos composed of still images from either the built-in camera or your own DSLR. You can set up the TimeLapsr anywhere and generate a timelapse video on the fly. Device can be set to be activated by motion detector, so you only catch the good stuff. You can use the built-in 2MP camera or utilize the USB interface to take pics directly from a high-end DSLR. Once the images are taken, the BUGbase’s MPEG4 encoder can create the video immediately. This gives you a one-touch solution for creating time-lapse videos but is also highly customizable using a high-end camera if desired. And why not tag the video with GPS info for fun. Can playback recorded timelapses using MPEG4 decoder.
Why You Want It: More uses than you can list- home/shop security camera, artsy timelapse video creator, observe consumer behavior in public settings, timelapse a sunset/sunrise, in-vehicle road trip timelapses, etc.

BikeBuddy from Cassie WallenderDescription: Today’s urban biker is more often then not, eventually going to end up in some sort of accident with a car. Anyone who’s bicycled around Seattle can tell you. Unfortunately, when it comes to proving who’s at fault, it’s often one person’s word against another. The more unbiased data you can have in situations like these, the better. BikeBuddy will automatically turn itself on when in motion, and the built in camera and GPS will track where your bike is, how fast it’s going, and the conditions around you. As long as it’s in motion, it will take a photo every 4 seconds pairing it with GPS coordinates. It can do this by emptying it’s earlier taken photos constantly as well. If you get into an accident, you would tell it to stop, and have all the most recent photos and location information at your disposal.
Why you want it: To protect yourself while you’re trying to protect the environment. Imagine having a picture to prove that the light you went through was green, while the car that hit you was going through a red. Case closed. BikeBuddy FTW.

Travel Security Alarm Clock from James ThomasDescription: travel alarm clock that automatically adjusts time based on GPS coordinates. Touchscreen allows variety of sleep and wake settings. Can set wake alarm type (beep, music wav file, sounds of nature wav file) and wake alarm type (immediate on, or slow volume increase – 15 second ramp to 15 minute ramp). Also can set music to go to sleep by (with decreasing volume). Final part is security function: Set up touchscreen side of Bug to face sleeping person, and motion activator and camera to face out to room. If motion is detected, sound alarm and start video recording
Why you want it: Great to slowly wake to the sound of gradually increasing music. Even possibility of 2nd back up alarm. Market place right now does not provide for ‘gradual wake’ feature of longer than 15 seconds – this would be the first alarm clock to allow gradual wake over 15 minutes, and could provide back up alarm. When traveling, time is automatically adjusted eliminating the hassle of reseting time. Finally provides security when you sleep, or when you are away from your room.

Thanks to everyone who participated and to Chris & Ponzi Pirillo for hosting another great conference.

We did it! We moved to our bigger space in SoHo and are getting settled in. We love the neighborhood – it’s super active, colorful and lots of good eats – Kelly and Ping and Cafe Habana are all right around the corner (not sure if it’s a pro or a con, but Riba saw Lindsay Lohan eating at Habana).

In the office, work is under way for our Test Kitchen – an in-house lab for getting dirty with electronics and trying out apps. More importantly, at least for the purposes of this post, we have added desks and want to fill them.

We are actively interviewing for folks that can write linux device drivers, help with marketing and outreach (like our .edu program), or help write technical documentation. You can see more details for each of these jobs at www.buglabs.net/jobs.

We are also keeping our eyes open for a controller, biz dev, and ops person with loads of experience with start-ups, CE, light manufacturing, the works.

If this is you, or someone you know, let me know at matthew[at]buglabs.net

We are swinging our doors open wider than normal for another Open House on Tuesday, the 20th, from 6:00-8:00 pm.   Come by and chat, check out BUG and tell us what you think.  We’ll have a couple fun BUG applications on display to see in action and to play with, and a brief demo/app building Q&A/collaboration session.  We’ll also have a big board listing popular applications for you to rate, and we’ll solicit your ideas for modules and new applications – in fact, the best idea come 8:00 will get a BUG Tee.   If you create an app on BUGnet and walk us all through it at the Open House, you’ll get a T-Shirt, job interview, and six pack from the fridge . 

Hope you can make it!  We’re still at 915 Broadway (between 20th and 21st) on the 11th floor, at the end of the hall in Suite 1109.

So Peter and crew will be in Austin next week for SXSW 2008, and even though it’s our first year at the festival, we know it’s going to be hectic. But we thought we’d pop the question – if we threw a BUG+Austin, would you attend? We’d love to get to know the Austin community, and share battle scars with SXSW first-timers and veterans alike.

Let us know by leaving a comment below, sending a self addressed stamped envelope, or pinging us on Twitter or Jaiku. If we get enough responses by this Thursday morning, we’ll pick a place and time and let you know by later this week.

Regardless, if you see us among the rabble, feel free to stop us and say hey.

We went to Las Vegas last week with high hopes and modest expectations.  We had some good momentum coming from the CBNC coverage (The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch – thanks guys!) that had aired the prior week, and were in the NY Times as well.  While we had scheduled numerous blogger/press briefings, our basic goal was to have some great conversations and generate a little more buzz and exposure.   What actually happened was something else entirely.

In a nutshell, we hit a nerve at the show, fired up the imaginations of a good number of people and ended up winning CNET’s Best of CES award for Emerging Technologies. Just re-reading that sentence gives me the shivers.  “We won what??”It’s a little surreal.  I had always pictured that as something reserved for huge companies.  On top of that, we had a lot of coverage, from individual bloggers to large outlets, well exceeding our expectations. For a glimpse of the coverage we received click here.

When I started Bug Labs it was based on a vision where everyone had the opportunity and ability to easily build whatever gadget they could imagine.  I felt that if Home Depot could turn us all into home improvement gurus we could do the same for technology.   I expected that message to resonate with a core group of technologists and early adopters.  What I wasn’t expecting was the more mainstream response we received at CES.  I was (and still am) a bit flabbergasted.  The possibility that my original vision might not be quite as geeky as I thought is disorienting – but awesome!

So why did this all happen?  I don’t have a precise answer, but our superb marketing team (Jeremy Toeman and Mehrshad Mansouri) laid the foundation by making sure we were well prepared and busy talking to influential bloggers, press and others.   Our product itself was ready to go with some great applications and demos thanks to our crack hardware/software development and QA folks.  But those two things weren’t what tipped the scales in our favor.   To be honest I don’t know what did.  The best word I can think of to describe the result is combustion. I think people were just ready to hear what we had to say and were excited to spread the word.  We came out of that event more excited than ever and a bit surer of our mission.  At the end of the day, people like stories (and products) that put them in the driver’s seat and that’s what BUG is all about.

I want to sincerely thank everyone who came by our booth and took the time to speak with us.  We value your thoughts and feedback, took a ton of notes and will hopefully count you among our customers in a few weeks when we start shipping.  I very much look forward to keeping you all informed as we head towards that moment.  Please do not refrain from jumping into the conversation.  We want to hear what you have to say!