Chronulator 2.0 development is proceeding, albeit more slowly than I planned. Here’s what it looks like right now:

Chronulator 2.0 Circuit Prototype

Over the last few weeks, I’ve gotten to know the Arduino development kit. With it, I’ve prototyped new Chronulator software, which is working at least as well as the old version.

I also spent too much time trying to figure out how to hook up an atomic clock receiver, to no avail. I’ll probably offer it as an optional add-on board, since the technical challenges are too great in making everything work with a single chip.

This week, I’m moving on to designing the circuit board. My goal is to make the board easy to program using the Arduino tools. You’ll need an inexpensive add-on USB-to-serial board from SparkFun. It’ll be much easier to tweak than the old Chronulator, which required complex, Windows-only development tools. And, being a ShareBrained project, all the Arduino source code will be freely available.

Once the board design is complete (November 2), I’ll have some prototype boards manufactured. I’ll solder them up and test them (November 9). If everything looks good, I’ll make any last-minute tweaks and send the design off to production.

While the boards are in production, I’ll work on the instructions and get all the other parts ordered. Once the production boards are back, I’ll test a few and then start building an advance batch of kits (November 23).

We should be ready to sell kits on November 24! Stay tuned for more updates…

Life and work are interfering with progress on the next ShareBrained kit. But rest assured, we have some good stuff coming in the next couple of months (meaning, “the summer of 2008″).

Gareth Branwyn (of Street Tech and the MAKE Blog) posted a review of The Chronulator kit to the Federated Media Holiday Gadget Guide. Thanks Gareth!

We’ve sold several dozen Chronulators so far, but have yet to receive any pictures! So if you’ve got a finished Chronulator you’re proud of, please send us pictures at info@sharebrained.com. We’re really anxious to see what you’ve done with your Chronulator!

We made it into the MAKE Blog and Boing Boing!

[Update: We got Dugg too. Thanks Alexis!]

Because of the publicity, we’ve nearly sold out. Get your Chronulator soon! (When we sell out, we’ll make more, but it might take a couple of weeks before they’re available.)

To those who bought kits, thanks! They’ll be shipping today or on Monday. We look forward to seeing what you do with your Chronulators!

(Too many exclamation points! Ahhh!!!!)

Update: We’re now open for business, and the Chronulator is now available.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few months working on the business that will be ShareBrained Technology. I have wasted countless hours attempting to achieve perfection when it’s not really necessary.

• Do I really need to have my Web site ready for a full-on SlashDotting?
• Do I need to optimize my Web site’s download speed or make it look nice on the iPhone?
• Do I need real-time inventory tracking that takes into account that different kits can share the same inventory parts?
• Do I need to offer myriad shipping options and charge shipping that’s accurate to the cent?
• Do I need to write my own custom blog software to do exactly what I want it to do?
• Do I need a seamless shopping cart that will make buying 693 Chronulator kits easy as pie?

The answer to all of these questions is, “not really.” What I need to do is launch this company. I recently discussed my some friends and my wife and came to the following conclusions:

• Perfection can’t be achieved, because by the time you achieve it, your market has moved on. (Or in exceptional cases, you get old and die…)
• Business is messy. No matter what you do, it’ll be too much for some and not enough for others. And you can’t read your customer’s minds. So just put something decent out and improve from there, based on feedback from *real* people, not your own educated guesses.
• There’s a certain amount of fear involved in launching a product. I’ve done all this work and bought all this inventory. Will people really want my product? Will they hate it? Will anybody buy it? There’s an easy way to postpone those potentially painful answers — don’t ever release the product. Of course, by doing that, you deny yourself the greatest payoff of all — success.

So come hell or high water, ShareBrained Technology will launch next week. And if we’re not completely ready, our customers will drive us to polish those last remaining blemishes quickly.

Here we go!

Update: The Chronulator is now available.

ShareBrained Technology is a new company focusing on open-source hardware and software. Our customers are encouraged to explore and experiment with our products, taking them in directions we could never foresee. To help this, we publish complete design schematics and source code. We hope to see communities of hardware and software hackers come together to do astonishingly cool stuff with the materials we provide.

Stay tuned. Our first product (and a better Web site) will appear in just a few months (September 2007)!