Fast Approaching Filament Prototype Launch!

For the past year and change we have been working on a new idea that could redefine STEM education and we are extremely excited to announce a soft-launch of prototypes starting next January! The Filament Kit will give teachers and parents a hands-on tool to inspire children as young as second grade to explore the fields of data science, telemetry, and remote sensing through core Internet of Things (IoT) concepts.

In the 1960s, when much of our K12 science curriculum was developed, we were in the midst of a space race. Now, it has become clear we are at the start of a new race...the AI race. Data science and analysis is the principal discipline driving this AI race and the states and nations that excel in data driven fields will be the ones that succeed in the future knowledge economies of the late 21st century. If we don't start to inspire children to pursue interest in data related fields now, it may be too late!

So what, exactly, is the "hands-on tool" I mentioned before? Please allow me to introduce our Filament Kit! In its basic form, it is a kit that contains a "hub" and multiple individual sensors. It requires NO CODING to use and students can easily "wire" sensors to the hub simply by matching color coded banana plugs! The picture below shows an early prototype with two sensors connected ... one that measures temperature and humidity (the blue sensor) and one that measures the presence of a magnetic field (the black sensor in the bottom right). The banana plugs are "stackable" so students can reuse power (red) and ground (black) plugs for multiple sensors! In this image, the yellow plugs are the signal plugs and the Filament supports up to four simultaneous connections (white, green, yellow and blue).

The banana plugs both simplify the "wiring" and make it more durable for little hands. Another simplification in the Filament Kits is that the kit will handle translations between analog and digital signals for you! In the above photo, there are two rows of the same colored plugs. The Filament supports both analog and digital input/output without the need to do anything other than plug into the correct signal type! The rows are labelled with "A"s or "D"s directly under each port to show the input types along with a basic board number (for example, A0 or D3). Finally, for more advanced users, the Filament does expose all possible input/output pins (40 total) and those can be easily accessed by using the header plugs (black row toward right of photo), just like you would on an Arduino or Raspberry Pi (The Pi Zero powers the Filament prototypes).

Naturally, all of this would be completely useless if students could not collect and analyze the data measured by the sensors they connect! For that, the Filament comes with free cloud access and a web app! The prototypes will be pre-connected (when the arrive they are already registered in the cloud) and users can setup the kit to connect through your Wi-Fi with a very simple interface. Users can also login to the cloud with a Google email address. The cloud also contains some prototype lesson plans and projects to help inspire some initial use of the Filament in constructive ways! Lessons are linked to Next Generation Science Standards and have step by step instructions. Projects are less formal and are more geared toward demonstrating real world uses of the sensors included in the Filament kit! Below are a few screenshots from the the web app!

All in all, we are very excited to bring the Filament prototypes to STEM classrooms, after school programs and homes starting next January! If you are interested in keeping up with the progress these next couple of months, please register your email for periodic updates and let us know if you're interested in beta testing one of the kits. The time to inspire our children to pursue interests in data science, telemetry, remote sensing and IoT is now!