We build physical things
Project Blue Bird is a studio, a laboratory and a workshop in roughly equal measure. The proportions shift depending on how the week is going.
A studio for the unproven
Most engineering work has a known shape. There is a specification, a comparable product, and a path from one to the other. That work is valuable and we are not the right people for it.
Blue Bird exists for the other kind — where nobody is sure the thing can be built at all, where the specification has to be discovered by building something and watching it fail, and where the useful output includes everything learned on the way.
In practice that means electronics, robotics, embedded systems and instrumentation, usually where those four overlap. A rover that has to hold a heading without GPS. An instrument that has to dissipate 150 watts without cooking itself. A sensor mesh that has to survive a winter nobody will visit.
Five standing rules
Build the object early
An argument about whether something will work is settled faster by a rough version of it than by another meeting. First versions are meant to be wrong in useful ways.
Publish the failures
Every project here carries a 'what broke' section. Work that only shows finished results teaches nobody anything, including us.
Measure before replacing
The instinct to swap a part is usually wrong. Find the test that distinguishes the explanations first, then act on what it says.
Boring where it counts
Novelty belongs in the problem, not in the power supply. Proven parts in the infrastructure buy the freedom to experiment where it matters.
Leave a trail
Bench logs, thermocouple traces, scope captures. A build that cannot be re-derived six months later was not really finished.
Design studio
Where the problem gets named and the approach gets argued. Sketches, and deciding what not to build.
Laboratory
Where claims get measured. Scopes, logic analysers, thermal cameras and long log files.
Workshop
Where the object gets made, broken, and made again. Solder, swarf, and the third revision of a bracket.
Work with us
We take a small number of projects at a time so each one gets the bench time it needs.