alt If you read this blog and you've followed our story, then you know that here at Rest, we do all of our own research and product development. We love being close to the product, manufacturing, and all steps of fulfillment. Fundamentally, we believe that this ensures our customers are getting the very best.

Here, the next installment in our "Made in the USA" series on the Maker culture at Rest:

Part of the R&D process involves making Turtles and Lilypads, so we thought we'd give a glimpse into the Turtle-building process. Here, Tigran is building Turtle bases, and programming their boards to ensure super easy connectivity for parents when they open their Mimo and are going through setup. Thomas, our CTO and co-founder, is also frequently involved in each step, as he develops innovations (e.g., a robot for aligning Turtle bases) that make manufacturing more efficient and production ultimately more successful.

First: we use a super technologically advanced method to give our Turtles their magnetic feet: stamping. The Turtle base is placed in the mold, magnets attach to the stamp foot, and voila!

Once the Turtle bases are given feet, they're placed in long lines called "snakes" (yes, we like to confuse them by telling them they're actually a different reptile), for easy stacking and inventory:

Now we're ready to give these Turtles some guts. The heart (seriously) of our Turtles is the board: where all the magic happens. As we've talked about before, the boards contain some pretty important stuff, including an accelerometer to pick up baby's activity, and a bluetooth module to connect it to the Lilypad. Here, Thomas is programming these boards to wake them up and get them ready for action:

Stay tuned for more on the R&D front, including the conclusion to our Hatching Turtles story, and more updates on the software front.