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 266 […]

Our engineering department is working hard on the next generation of the SpikerBox. The chief user request we’ve received is to make the SpikerBox louder; in fact, loud enough for large classrooms. Below is the audio component of our circuit, using the infamous LM386. Making this audio component both loud AND stable has been a […]

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. Copyright […]

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 […]

We’ve often been told “I’d love to make a SpikerBox kit, but I can’t solder!” Well, if you live near the Backyard Brains World Headquarters (a living room in Ann Arbor, MI) you are in luck. We are putting on a “Make and Take” workshop on Sunday, December 5th. This workshop will teach you everything […]

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 […]

Here at Backyard Brains, we often get the question “Is that leg really still alive?” to which we respond “Why yes… that’s why you hear the Spikes”. The follow up question “How does it stay alive?” was often replied with similar authority: “They have tiny holes called spiracles that allow them to ‘breathe’ through their […]

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 […]

Does the SpikerBox work on anything other than a cockroach leg? Yes, you can record from any invertebrate central nervous system but you often need a manipulator to accurately position your electrode. One of our users, Professor Walton Jones at the KAIST University in South Korea, recently experimented on the cricket cercel system. To those […]