We began distributing SpikerBoxes on April 8th, 2010, and we are proud to announce that on June 15th, 2011, we shipped our 500th SpikerBox! The proud owner is a high school teacher in Minnesota who ordered 12 “Bags of Parts” for students to build and experiment with this summer. You can see our complete user […]

It’s time for our second teacher workshop! In collaboration with the great folks at the SquareOne Education Network, we are hosting a teacher workshop on June 24th, 2011, whereby if you are a teacher within driving distance of the greater Detroit area, you can spend a day building your own SpikerBox amplifier and running experiments […]

Thanks to all who donated! The mission of FundScience is to get the public directly involved in funding scientific enterprise, so, of course, where did the $512.20 we raised actually go? Did it dump right into indirect costs? No way! Our organization develops low-cost neurotechnology, and the support of FundScience helped enable the building of […]

We have run workshops for students, but now it’s time for the teachers!In collaboration with the great folks at the SquareOne Education Network, we are hosting a teacher workshop on March 23rd, 2011 whereby, if you are a teacher within driving distance of the greater Detroit area, you can spend a day building your own […]

We’ve been busy in the trenches of our R&D department designing a working prototype of the “RoboRoach,” a remote control system to enable left and right turning in running cockroaches. This began as a University of Michigan Senior Engineering Project we sponsored in Winter 2010, and over the past year we’ve incrementally been working to […]

We have been slowly distributing ourSpikerBoxes to high schools (nine so far), in efforts to bring the sound of spikes to physics and biology labs around the country. Letizia Judd, biology teacher atSt. Mary’s Preparatory School in Orchard Lake, MI, recently purchased a fullDIY classroom kit, where even (off-menu) the stimulation and iPhone cables were […]

The SpikerBox has gone through 7 development cycles, but we know it can be better. Designing electronics and experiments is one of the most fun things we do here at Backyard Brains, and we now announce our Penaeidae Prize! Can you design a better SpikerBox? Deadline is May 15th, and the winner will have their […]

We are pleased to announce that ProfessorMichael Ferragamo of Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota is our 100th customer! He is the proud owner of SpikerBox #266 (some customers have bought more than one!). Michael plans to use his SpikerBox for local high school outreach. So where on this great planet have all these […]

The annual Society for Neuroscience meeting is a big event for us; we prepare all year working on new prototypes and experiments for annual review by our colleagues, friends, and academic foes. This year was a special treat, as we were recognized for our outreach efforts by the Society itself, represented by President Michael Goldburg. […]

For the past nine years, Tim has had a subscription to Wired Magazine, and he always read the articles on the internet revolution, learning about the drama, personalities, and technology involved with the rapidly changing world of computers. Longingly, he has despaired, wishing neuroscience and biology R&D could be similarly fast with low barriers to […]

Another common request we get from users is “Can you stimulate the leg as well?” to which we have always replied, “Yes, there are some stimulation circuits we can build, we have that idea in the queue.” Which means, of course, that the idea is relegated to the backlog of the many cool things we […]

Fellow engineers and scientists, you who see the term “modeling” and believe we are speaking of CAD drawings or Spice Simulations, we can assure you we are much less sophisticated and much more shallow. We are talking about hot people, and hot people holding our hot products. Last Friday as we were walking to our […]