About this project
SAM: The Ultimate Internet Connected Electronics Kit
£125,546
817
Our Kickstarter campaign has ended, but you can still order your very own SAMs at www.samlabs.me
THANK YOU to our 815+ heroes, supporters, and ambassadors!
We’re so excited to make you proud and have everything in the pipeline to ship your kits to your doorstep. We've got some really cool stuff coming up, so stay tuned!
Much Love,
SAM Labs
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SAM is the most awesome kit for any inventor, creator, thinker, and innovator, beginner or expert, young or old.
SAM is the first electronics development kit that seamlessly integrates Hardware, Software and the Internet. It’s the easiest way to learn about engineering, electronics, the Internet of Things, and coding by doing.
What can I do with SAM?
Build
Your imagination is the only limit
- Games with remote control cars, phone connected doorbells, intruder alarms
- Music using pressure, proximity, or light sensors prototypes of smart fridges, responsive shoes, or Internet connected toys
- Architectural models, homes with reactive lights, sliding doors, and rotating windows
- Code that generates automatically in front of your eyes just by dragging and dropping icons
- Pretty much anything, once you’re up and running, we haven’t found the limit of things you can do with SAMs and the SAM App
Get skills
- Electronics Engineering: Sensor and actuator networks, data storage and handling, wireless networks
- Coding by doing. The SAM App shows you the code generated by drag&drop. What you see happen on screen is what you get off-screen, and vice versa!
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What the Internet of Things is and how to make use of it
Here are a few of the projects people made with SAM...
SAM is for anyone who wants to create games, products, apps, and get a head start in the Internet of Things. From the beginner to the advanced inventor!
The SAM Kits
SAM Explore (3 SAMs + SAM App): Start Explore the Internet of Things, electronics and coding.
SAM Learn (4 SAMs + SAM App): Learn how to code with SAM and create interactive objects in minutes.
SAM Make (8 SAMs + SAM App): Build complex systems make your ideas into reality.
SAM Pro (11 SAMs + SAM CLOUD + SAM App): The most advanced kit for innovators and tinkerers.
SAM Pro+ [18 SAMs (SAM Pro + 6 Exclusive SAMs)]: Make everything you could with SAM Pro, but with the added functionality of a proximity sensor, pressure sensor, fan, vibration motor, buzzer, and rotational pot. With this kit you can make a fridge that tweets when you open it, make a soap bubble gun with a fan, and much more!
The SAMs
Every SAM Module has a specific function and can be categorised into one of two groups - sensors and actors. Sensors detect and measure the world around them while actors move and shape it. The SAM family is always growing!
All of the modules communicate using Bluetooth Low Energy, and are recharged with a micro USB cable.
The SAM App
The SAM App is based on physical computing + drag and drop flow-based-programming. It's perfect for deploying custom bluetooth networks, including customised relations between the modules. The app is so intuitive even a child can use it.
SAM networks will shortly be deployable from smartphone and iPad Apps too. We are currently working on mobile apps will be available to download on all major stores and will work seamlessly with all the modules that are delivered.
Stretch Goals
£500K - create and deploy SAM networks from your phone by February (Android, Windows, iOS)
£1M - Beautiful Casing designs for the SAMs
£1.5M - Accelerometer, LCD screen, and camera modules will start being in the works immediately
Does SAM Work?
Yes! We have successfully run workshops with students from Imperial College London, the London Royal College of Art, young entrepreneurs at O2 Think Big and Microsoft Ventures, children, and teenagers. We have invested in running manufacture at production levels to create 200 kits - these are the ones that you see live in action in our videos.
Before testing out the first 200 kits we made many software and hardware iterations, this is how they looked like:
Here’s what people are saying about SAM: Andy Brand, teaching fellow of engineering design at Imperial College, who ran an intense weeklong “wearable tech” workshop with SAM in July:
We're glad people said:
“SAM is the first Internet of Things development kit that is truly intuitive and works out of the box” - Alexander Asseily, CEO - State, Founder & Chair - Jawbone
“SAM is amazing for children and all creative types to understand and create their wonderful ideas” - Mark Champkins, London Science Museum - Designer in Residence
“SAM is awesome, my kids love it, my students love it, I love it. Innovation is open to everyone” - Prof. Miles Pennington, Innovation Design Engineering & Global Innovation Design, Imperial College London & Royal College of Art
“SAM is a crazy new technology that will fundamentally change the way you go from idea to finished product” - Andy McCartney and Diane Perlman, CEO in Residence - Microsoft Ventures UK
Why SAM?
I'm a mechanical engineer, and was always scared of the dark magic of electrical engineering. Stuff never works, there's always a bug, and you can't duct tape it into correctness. I wanted to find a way to make it fun for people to learn circuitry and coding. A human centered model that would be easy to use and which taught you while you worked with it. This gave birth to SAM, the idea of giving designers and creative people the powers of engineers. We hope to be a the start of a democratic revolution for the Internet of Things so that children can learn and that impactful, highly technologically innovative projects can be undertaken by designers who do not necessarily have the luxury of having been technically trained as engineers.
1. SAM makes creating easy. Until now, electronics projects have required hardware skills (wiring, soldering), software wizardry (coding, hacking, debugging) and a lot of patience! With SAM, you can forget all of these. SAM ensures a seamless communication between hardware and software. No more head bashing - it just works. With no frustration, it’s fun to use!
2. SAM opens the Internet of Everything market to designers and creators. Gone are the days when society depends on engineers and technical experts to shape the world around us. Thanks to SAM, anyone with an idea turns it into reality.
3. SAM helps you learn about code. While coding is not necessary with SAM, code is generated for all your drag and drop creations. As you become comfortable with this code, start adding your own to unleash the power of SAM and create awesome stuff!
Open Source and the SAM community
We believe in the Open Hardware movement and we will upload the kits hardware schematics and board designs, the components we’re using are available from any major distributor. ...also, they look quite good!
Production Plan
As soon as the campaign ends, we will place an order for all the components needed for mass manufacture. These components have a lead time of up to three months, and we have booked the manufacturing plant for the middle of February just in case any delays in component sourcing arise. Fresh out of the factory, the kits will be dispatched straight to your houses.
Who is SAM Labs?
We are a multi-disciplinary team of designers from the Royal College of Art and engineers from Imperial College London.
The idea for SAM came to us while eating fat soba in Tokyo in August 2013, and the team started assembling in early 2014.
We have been working remotely on SAM with regular hackathon meets, but have now settled at Central Working’s collaborative working space in Whitechapel, London.
Thank you
Thanks for reading all the way down, we hope you’ve enjoyed learning about SAM and are ready to join us on the journey. We hope you’re excited about Opening the Internet of EveryThing to Everyone.
Special thanks to a number of people that have been an enormous help: our families and friends, and especially Gareth, LimeWharf London, Tomer, Dan, Michael, Philippe, Joelle, Simon, Veronique, Thierry, Matt, Marco, Marc, Jonathan, Ingrid, Arturo, Margherita, Chiara, Emelie, Lieve , Benny, Adam, Emma, Tessa, Ultimaker 3D printers, Imperial College London, Royal College of Art, Breed&Craft, and many more.
Video Directed by Arturo Bandinelli, DOP: Miroslav Otava, Sound: Maciej Miskiewicz. Product photography by Lele Buonerba, graphics by Amelia Hunter.
Lots of Love, The Sam Labs team, Joachim, Stelios, Wookie, Tomasz, Costas, Edward, Giulio, Kevin, Leslie, Alon, and Yosuke.
Risks and challenges
As with all Kickstarter projects, there are risks and there will be challenges. The biggest challenge for SAM will be mass production and logistics.
We’ve have built up an excellent relationship with our awesome collaborators in Bulgaria. They’ve produced over 200 kits with us and we’ve developed the hardware designs, assembly procedures, and testing methods hand in hand to get the process to perfection. Just to make sure, we’ll be running a second pre-production run in November to ensure that all the creases are ironed out of the process. They are logistics beasts and have always delivered to our door ahead of time. Благодаря ви!
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Funding period
- (30 days)