Virtuabotix

The electronics company I founded in 2011. It taught me most of what I know about shipping real products (and a fair amount about what not to do, which is the expensive half of any education).

What it was

Virtuabotix LLC designed, manufactured, and sold Arduino-ecosystem hardware out of Colorado Springs: the Versalino board family, sensors like the DHT11 and DHT22 temperature/humidity modules, ultrasonic rangefinders, accelerometers, robot and rover kits, and the guides that made all of it usable. Manufacturing happened in-house — pick-and-place, laser cutting, 3D printing — because when you're small, owning the line is how you own the quality.

The part I'm proudest of wasn't the hardware. It was the documentation and support. Every product shipped with a real guide, I wrote the libraries myself, and I answered the comment sections personally for years. One of the era's best-known Arduino educators put it this way in a 2013 review: "This review is specific to Virtuabotix as the supplier. Other suppliers do not provide the same documentation and support." That was the whole strategy, honestly.

What it left behind

The open-source libraries outlived the store — the DHT11 library especially, which spread far beyond our own customers. So did the printable designs: the Virtuabotix Thingiverse account has been publishing 3D designs since 2011 and is still up today. The Versalino designs live on in my archives, the teaching habit turned into classroom programs (and later a science channel), and the operational lessons became the backbone of everything I've built since. Virtuabotix folded into Date Palm Media around 2017, which is still my operating company today.

If an old virtuabotix.com link brought you here: welcome! The guides are being restored with their original dates over in writing and open source. Let me know if the one you came for hasn't landed yet.

Full career context on the track record.