Introduction
As 2024 comes to an end, and we look ahead to 2025, we always like to reflect back on some of the amazing projects we completed this year, new team members added and other exciting tidbits! Companies of all sizes and industries approach Tomorrow Lab to solve a broad array of design and engineering challenges. And while we are unable to share in detail the projects Tomorrow Lab took on this year, for evident (NDAs!) reasons, we do have the privilege of sharing some light details from this past year. It was a year of change, adventure and success!
Highlights
2024 was quite the year for TL’ers! Lots of new spaces, new faces and new projects! As we have shared, 2024 was our first year in our new space at the Greenpoint Manufacturing & Design Center, and we have been taking full advantage of everything the neighborhood and building has to offer. Tomorrow Lab hosted two GMDC studio crawls, as a way to get to know our new neighbors, learn what they do and to share resources. We plan on hosting another in the spring, but check out our blog posts with info about each of the studios we visited. Tomorrow Lab also hosted an e-waste swap event as a way to understand what our options are for disposing various e-waste and connect with the NYC hardware community in a new way.
Now that we have finally settled into the new space, we are so thrilled to have brought on a new full time role for Tomorrow Lab – a shop tech! It was a process finding just the right candidate and Ginger is already hitting the ground running making and planning for improvements not only to our shop space, but also overall processes and filling in gaps to make Tomorrow Lab run even smoother. Ginger graduated with a masters in mechanical engineering and concentration in product design from UC Berkeley this past spring, and we cannot wait to see how she excels on the TL team in the coming year! We also had the pleasure of working with more freelancers to not only support on TL’s projects, but also strengthen our local and national network. And of course, we had two fantastic interns earlier this year, Roshni Arun was with us for the summer in the mechanical engineering department, and Shuang Cai started out as an intern, and then brought on full time in the electrical engineering department. Check out what things these two ladies find inspiration from on the daily in this past blog!
Tomorrow Lab projects this year had an expansive range from 🍴R&D for ghost kitchens, 🏊swimming safety devices, 🚴bike navigation, 🛀solution based bathroom fixtures, 💄beauty applicators and even 🇺🇲smart implementations for the defense industry. We have a super exciting, game changing project we are in the middle of and absolutely cannot wait to share it with our community and the world – stay tuned for that update in mid 2025. (here is a hint: 🏃)
It can often take years until we can share a project on our website, and we were elated to finally launch our page for The Mint, a haircare styling tool created by Dawn Myers of The Richualist. Myers was lucky enough to land not one, but two Sharks when she walked into the tank on an episode this past April. The Mint is a powerful new tool intended specifically to detangle, moisturize, mask and style textured hair. The system dispenses haircare products from recyclable, reusable pods, while gently warms and working product into hair follicles. The results are described as “minting” your hair. We look forward to seeing The Mint in stores in the near future!
Our sponsored YouTube series, Potentially Genius has one more episode to debut for Season 3 coming out in early 2025, with Season 4 on the horizon! The Adafruit Clue Box and OURS, are two season favorites for good reasons. The newly debuted Adafruit CLUE Kit is a sensor-packed development board with a small front screen, and the TL team was challenged with creating a “companion pet.” For the final and adorable design, the team connected the various sensors to different behaviors and facial expressions, customized the CLUE into a pet shape using various papers, developed stickers for customization and developed an electronic “Pet Operating System,” from all the inputs and outputs to bring the CLUE to life. OURS stands for Office Universal Regulatory System, in which the final design team TL came up with is a controller interface that lives in your desk. Using many components from our series sponsor, DigiKey and highlighting SparkFun’s Thing Plus MATTER MGM240P, a feather wing style electronics development board, made creating OURS an enjoyable breeze. When OURS is integrated into a desk, the user can set their preferred temperature, set their vibe (do they have their door open, in deep work or overall high energy) and set when lunch has arrived! We can’t wait to share more potentially genius ideas with our community!
And finally, behind the scenes we have been spending many hours with our SEO partner, PaperBox updating our website and refining our SEO needs, to make for a better navigation and overall experience when perusing our site. Get ready for a brand new site launching in early 2025!
We are entering 2025 ecstatic for what is ahead and are curious who we will meet and what project challenges will come our way! We are so ready for it! 🎊
If you are a designer and engineer looking for freelance work – we are always looking to connect with talent and please do apply here.
And If you are looking for a talented firm to bring your new hardware idea to life – fill out a new business inquiry here for a free consultation with the TL team.
Leave a Reply