Context
High-school physics classes still run on expensive, dated lab equipment. LABKickstart is a modern, lower-cost alternative: students run experiments with compact wireless sensors and watch live data land on a shared dashboard.
Approach
The flagship hardware is Ronto, a wireless physics sensor module the size of a flip phone: acceleration, rotation, tilt, and temperature over Bluetooth, no base station or cables. Around it I've built a software family: a live experiment dashboard with premade experiments and CSV export, a physics simulator for classrooms without hardware, and Ultraviolet, a cross-platform graphing app (Windows/macOS/Linux). ESP32/BLE firmware in C++, a real-time Python/FastAPI hub, and web dashboards. I own the full technical stack as co-founder and CTO of LABKickstart (a Delaware C-corp).
Result
The prototype (kineti-kit) took 1st place at UCLA IEEE IdeaHacks 2026, the largest hardware hackathon on the West Coast. We were part of Founders, Inc. Offseason II in summer 2026. Drew inbound interest from DigiKey (to be featured via Maker.io); shipped the product site at labkickst.art with an educator pilot program underway.