SparkFun Services at One Month
A quick look at emerging trends after one month of offering our services
We launched a whole new services division of SparkFun almost a month ago! If you want to go back and check out the announcement you can find the blog post here. We are now offering a number of services that are aimed at helping you get things done quickly and efficiently.
Over the past month we have seen a number of requests and inquiries come through and we have been overwhelmed (in a good way) with the interest from the full spectrum of customers. From individuals looking for help designing a board for an upcoming product design, to larger companies looking to build cheaper breakout boards for their components for the mass market – we have seen it all!
One area that has seen a huge boom has been our custom kitting service. With remote and at-home learning being the reality for both university as well as K-12 education, we have been busy helping educators ideate kits to get technology in the hands of students easily, and in a cost-effective way. We have also worked with a number of universities that know exactly what they want, but need logistical help packaging and shipping kits to their students all over the country so they can still participate in their lab work from home.
Another interesting early trend in our services has been in the non-profit sector. Many non-profit organizations, and even outreach and corporate foundations, are looking to help get technology into the hands of kids at home for this next school year.
In fact one of our partners, Red Hat, is working with us to develop a number of kits to enable the exploration of technology at home, as well as tools and materials for Red Hat employees (Red Hatters) to facilitate learning remotely.
As time goes on we are excited to share more and more stories coming out of our services division of SparkFun, and learn how we can better help everyone simplify things, whether it's putting parts in boxes for you, sourcing hard to find components, or designing and manufacturing development boards. We're here for you!
I'm hoping that we customers will also see exciting new things out of this! I'm looking forward to going all the way through the "Getting Started with the Red Hat Co.Lab Robot" as time permits. I sort of doubt that a PR2 would be within my "toy" budget, but it seems to me that ROS will really help -- in the hospital a couple of years ago, I had this idea for having a "nursing assistant" robot assigned to each bed, that would quietly (and unobtrusively) monitor the patient, and be capable of providing things like assistance in getting to the restroom, refilling icepacks, retrieving TV remote controls accidentally dropped on the floor, and even assisting ambulatory patients with getting up and walking for exercise (a bipedal robot that could "squat" and allow the patient to sit on its lap to rest).