All About LeafLabs

We Build Digital Tools for Human Beings

LeafLabs was founded in 2009 on the premise that science should not just be confined to expensive labs filled with shiny equipment, but also found on cluttered workbenches in musty basements everywhere. We are dedicated to making the latest in computer science and electrical engineering accessible to all engineers, regardless of budget or specialized training.

The company got it's start developing and selling a user-friendly physical computing board built around a new-to-market ARM Cortex-M3 32-bit microcontroller. These controllers were more powerful and had a larger feature set than the most popular existing 8-bit chips, and were rapidly decreasing in cost, but were signifiantly less accessible due to a combined dearth of toolchain integration, functional and human-readable peripheral libraries, and hardware platforms that met the common sense expecations of modern folks. After several production pitfalls and financial droughts, in 2010 the team finally released the Maple and Maple Mini boards with an open source software development toolchain.

Around this time most of the team had graduated from college, and some spun off into high-end audiophilia, theoretical condensed matter physics, and other such nonsense. The remaining Leafers were joined by Marti and have embarked on a series of increasingly ambitious and interesting contract jobs.

We do business with component distributors, PCB fabrication factories, and surface mount assembly houses both in the United States and in China. We are always, always, always looking for affordable prototype fabrication services in the New England area (for some definition of "low-cost")... let us know if you have any tips!

The Team

After first bouncing through dorm rooms and apartments, we moved in to our first real office space in Spring 2010: a repurposed cubicle farm in the middle Central Square in Cambridge, MA. Starting out as the first tenants, we quickly filled the space with like-minded freelancers and small technical businesses: 3D printing dreamers, robo-toast-video-calligraphy artists, interaction architects, solar power hustlers, etc. When that building shut down, we moved a 15 minute walk away to Inman Square and started Industry Lab, where we cheerily find ourselves at this very moment:

Use the contact page to get in touch.

Crufty, Hibernated Leafs