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KRTKL
Snickerdoodle FPGA mounted to a purple Scorbitron baseboard.
Web site: krtkl.comKey Individuals: Ryan Cousins (co-founder, CEO), Jamil Weatherbee (co-founder, CTO), and Russell Bush (co-founder, CDO)Variety of employees: 5Founded: 2014Location: San FranciscoKey Merchandise: snickerdoodle FPGA boards, piSmasher and breakyBreaky provider playing cards
Russel Bush
Jamil Weatherbee
Ryan Cousins
Their story:
Krtkl CEO Ryan Cousins grew up exploring, adventuring, and constructing digital kits together with his dad. He went on to review mechanical engineering at UCLA, the place he took an interest within the entrepreneurialism that drove the profitable folks behind the businesses he studied.
After graduating, Cousins labored within the medical units subject, after which in engineering consulting, the place he and fellow coworkersJamil Weatherbee and Russell Bush determined to launch an organization targeted by itself product. The crew spit-balled concepts from drones to academic robots earlier than having the conclusion that each time they constructed a product for a consulting consumer, they have been basically rebuilding the identical customized controller parts. Why not flip that into their product?
The trio determined the ensuing controller board ought to be versatile, however reasonably priced. They needed it to suit alongside Arduino and Raspberry Pi, and be engaging to professional-level hobbyists and engineers, hoping “they could simply decide this up as a result of it’s cool,” says Cousins.
Their first product, crowdfunded in 2015, was the snickerdoodle board, utilizing the Zynq FPGA SoC platform (“an ideal match”). Since then they’ve up to date their lineup to incorporate snickerdoodle one and snickerdoodle black FPGA boards, together with piSmasher and breakyBreaky growth boards. Dozens of merchandise now run on snickerdoodle boards, together with Scorbitron (scorbit.io), a pinball-networking machine that lets distributed gamers compete in opposition to one another, monitor excessive scores and extra, on machines of any age.
Transferring ahead, Cousins finds robotics and edge AI attention-grabbing alternatives for krtkl, however plans to maintain issues within the bodily world. “I don’t ever see the corporate turning right into a cloud firm. As painful as {hardware} is, we wouldn’t do that if there weren’t {hardware}. We construct stuff, that’s what’s in our DNA.”
HACKBOARD
The Hackboard 2 single board pc
Web site: hackboard.comKey Individuals: Mike Callow (co-founder, CEO), Jon Show (co-founder, COO), and Dean Kline (VP, advertising and communications)Variety of employees: 6Founded: February 2020Location: Austin, TexasKey Merchandise: Hackboard 2
Dean Kline
Jon Show
Mike Callow
Their story:
Hackboard is a brand new board maker, launching with an Intel Celeron-based, Home windows 10 Professional single board pc (SBC) referred to as the Hackboard 2. The manager crew, consisting of Mike Callow, Jon Show, and Dean Kline, had beforehand labored collectively on completely different Raspberry Pi-based endeavors, together with Kano and pi-top, and individually at know-how firms like IBM, Ingredient 14, and Dell.
Hackboard began when, as a result of rising Covid pandemic, Callow discovered himself caught in China with out a pc. Realizing he had entry to parts and items, he assembled a purposeful substitute to maintain himself productive with work. Later relaying this expertise to pal and former colleague Show, the 2 realized there was a chance to create low-cost, totally succesful pc choices for college kids and communities that don’t have entry to pricier shopper units.
Callow and Show introduced Kline aboard and put collectively a take a look at run of Hackboard 1 SBCs to get market suggestions. A part of what they realized was that some backers, whereas appreciating the Home windows 10 Professional entry, nonetheless needed the tinkerability of Linux, in order that they added that as a crowdfunding choice. The board additionally carries an M.2 laborious drive for as much as 512GB of storage, and 4GB–8GB of reminiscence, together with the GPIO pinout for additional customization.
The crew says that a part of making Hackboard 2 accessible is retaining the costs down; the bottom choice with Linux prices $179, whereas a maxed-out model with Home windows 10 Professional is $299. “Our mission is to get computing into the fingers of as many individuals as attainable, with the ability that they want,” Kline says. “And we all know that to do this, there’s in all probability some profitability sacrifice that has to occur. We actually need to make a distinction on the earth at this stage within the recreation.”
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