Summer 2025

I've said it before, but I'll say it again - the hardest part of these posts is striking a balance between brevity and depth. Brief updates are great because I can write them in a few hours and I think they appeal better to the masses. On the flip side, thorough and exhaustive posts give me a chance to dive deep into a technical side of my work, or business hang-up I've been having. They're an opportunity to write about more than what's happened over the last x [months/weeks/days].

The problem here I think is three-fold:

1. Who am I writing for? Me, blue tech people, or the general public who are just interested in my antics
2. How do I/Should I have a consistent voice or format?
3. I have a perpetual inability to stay focused for more than 2 hours, how do I stay on track long enough to write anything worth publishing?

I'm not going to answer any of those today, but it is the beginning of major period of soul-searching in the Brain of Andy Whitman.

I started this post last week on my way to a wedding, aboard the awfully familiar Cheers on Wheels - Amtrak Downeaster train from Boston, MA. Unfortunately, most of the blog failed to materialize, so I've traded train tracks, for cottage-core, and now I'm determined to finish this post from the porch of the Burnt Coat Harbor Lighthouse. Peep the webcam - Fall is definitely starting to break, but it's still a phenomenal day.

What's Goin' On?!

I moved back to Swans Island last fall, and spent the winter and spring designing and iterating on the first modular monitoring system. Then this summer, I sublet a place back in Boston so I could get back into the Tech Center. And a summer it has been. In the last three months, I've managed to: relax for the first time since Christmas; travel the world; fulfill my biggest buoy order to date; and think long enough to spark my next identity crisis. I've actually done a lot of personal growth and mental housekeeping.

I've been in a holding pattern for a while trying to straighten out everything going on; fulfilling all my commitments; and prioritizing what I should do next.

Modular Monitoring System

I think I've talked about this a little bit before, but when I started Seaport Systems years ago, I was convinced that I needed to find a very specific industry or application, and build a full-stack solution. Meaning, I went and found the oyster farming industry, set out to build a single combined hardware and software solution that just worked for oyster farmers to see the water quality and farm operations info. This was a good way to focus early product development, but wasn't a great long-term plan. Painting myself into a corner, both technologically and strategically would hamper future growth and ultimately, it wasn't what I wanted - my vision was a lot bigger. I want everyone to have easy access to environmental data.

So out of this, the modular monitoring system was born. In the very first round of prototyping, I often wound up stuck because every component and capability of the buoy was interlinked with one another. If one part broke, it broke everything. If I needed to swap out a broken part or try something new, I'd have to completely rebuild the entire buoy. Every iteration since then, each part and subsystem has become more self-contained and independent. Not only does this speed up development, but it also makes the platform highly configurable. While an oyster farmer might need measurements like temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen; a harbormaster may want currents, wave data and AIS information; and the Navy might radar and passive acoustic data. With a modular system (that's been architected correctly), it becomes trivially easy for me to build a huge range of capabilities tailored to every customer.

A modular system also plays incredibly well with the open-source strategy I've had since day 1. Black box systems, where you have no idea how they work, without any ability to troubleshoot or change them are infuriating to work with, and stunt innovation. When the system is open-source, anybody can come in, see how things work, make improvements, and add new features or change the way things work to make it fit their use case. A great example of this is in research institutions.

One of the more formative cruises during my time at WHOI was a research lab testing a new instrument they developed to measure something very specific and unique. In addition to all the R+D they had to work through to make the instrument work, they also had to develop their own datalogger, communications and other "brains" to make the instrument work. This is a common theme and I've heard this exact story from many dozens of scientists. With an open and modular system like I'm trying to build, they can focus all their efforts on the science then easily and rapidly connect it into the modular platform to handle the rest of the mundane stuff. This saves them a lot of time and money, and makes their path to commercialization far less cumbersome. After iterating, they can release that new sensor or capability as a module, for anyone else to buy and plug into their Seaport Systems buoy!

A second, proven, example of this materialized this summer while I was helping a friend of mine get data from cargo ships. He needed a bunch of vessel voyage, weather and ship attitude data. In two weeks, we were able to: take the existing modules I've already built to instrument oyster farms, reconfigure them for his application; design, fabricate and test two new modules; then deploy the system on a ship in France!

All that to say: modular is the way - it's easier for me to develop; it maximizes the impact I can have on the world; and is a far more interesting business!

Wait, wait, wait... you went to France?

Yes, I did, it was so cool.

My friend and I flew to France to meet up with a cargo ship that he's been working with to collect a bunch of ship information to help him build sails that he'll later deploy on the same ship to reduce fuel consumption and emissions.

We flew in to Paris, and stayed there for a couple of days. I was exhausted, but did manage to get some touristy things in. I literally just pulled up the filming locations for Emily in Paris and tried to check off as many as I could (I'm incapable of writing a blog without an EiP reference at this point and I won't apologize). Plenty of wine and cheese along the way as well.

After a little bit of sightseeing, the real fun began. We took a handful of trains from Paris up to Dunkirk where we'd be meeting our vessel for installation the next day. The rest of our trip however, ended up being quite the comedy of errors. The ship was delayed due to first, a storm off the coast of Africa, then a regatta off of Portugal, and then finally a broken conveyor belt in the port. Every morning we'd wake up and wait for the noon report, and everyday for a week it would say "docking tomorrow". Eventually, we figured out how to smuggle ourselves aboard the ship while it was anchored in the middle of the English Channel.

We took a small boat out to the anchorage field, climbed aboard, and while they were happy to accommodate us, the first thing the captain said was:

Are you crazy? Leaving beautiful France, with its wine and beautiful women, to what come hang out with us? We've run out of coffee, cigarettes and the stores are almost gone.

The installation went off without a hitch though - the data collection boxes were deployed in a matter of hours, and transmitting data back to the cloud! Then we hung around on the ship for a few days until it finally made port 10 days after it was originally scheduled. All in all, a phenomenal trip.

DB-X

Post trip, I took a couple of slow weeks working regular hours and picnicking along the Charles River before an all out blitz to build and deliver my largest buoy order to date.

This was an order for 25 DB-X drifting buoys for the State of Massachusetts Department of Marine fisheries! This is a really exciting order for a number of reasons. Obviously it's the biggest order I've gotten to day, which is exciting. It's also the first full batch with my most recent set of manufacturability and ease of use improvements. I've cut part count significantly, made nearly every part easier and cheaper to manufacture, and the entire system is far more robust. Finally, it's my first government sale! There was some rigamarole with purchasing and procurement cycles, but this was a phenomenal shakedown test of being able to deal with that. And now, I'm all set up as a vendor for the state, making future orders by DMF and other departments far easier!

Most of the fabrication was pretty uneventful, which is exactly what I wanted, but the last week of integration and assembly was grueling. I stayed up two straight nights getting all the software configured and bolting everything together. We hit the delivery target though with no major issues, and all the buoys are now in their hands!

Home Sweet Home

After months of hard work, and travelling (I think I travelled every single week in August), I was finally on my way home. I stopped in Brunswick for a friend's wedding, which was fantastic - got to reconnect with a bunch of 0ld friends, and meet a handful of new ones too!

Now, I'm back on Swan's Island. I've made a point to relax the last two weeks - watch some guilty pleasure TV, start running again - but it's about time to wrap that up and get moving again.

What's Next?

So much!

I have been in somewhat of a slump, I haven't really been making anything. While it was insanely stressful at times, I had a blast all spring constantly building, iterating and testing. It's really fun to be able to post on Instagram a couple times a day with whatever I was working on and get feedback from everyone online. I need to get back to that.

There's a handful of projects that are tee'd up at the moment, most notably is the next generation of the modular monitoring system. I need to experiment and determine a form factor for all of the individual electronics modules; I need to finally start 3D printing XB-X hulls on the Formlabs 3L printers I bought earlier this year; and I also am making it a priority to get my business strategy and vision figured out.

So stay tuned for updates on all of these things!

Saying Goodbye to Summer

Really, the last 3 years of my life have been a constant firefight, and I've lied to myself and many others over and over again saying "I think next month everything will be wrapped up and I can reset". This is the first time where that's actually been true. I feel like there's been a really clear break in the madness, and a chapter has finally been closed. The summer has been fantastic, I'm finishing it on a high note, and it's a really good feeling to have permission to start with a clean slate and clear head.

Honorable (and slightly unhinged) Mentions

French Pikachu 3-in-1 Shower Gel

One of my best friends is a dermatologist and audibly gagged when I told her about this, but I stand by it.

"If it smells like anything other than ozone it's false marketing" - Madeline

Trains

Would it be an Andy Whitman blog without shouting out trains? Europe has this shit figured out, people. You can get anywhere from anywhere with no hassle. In no state to navigate, a dead phone, and speaking 0% French, I was able to get around on the Paris subway without any issue whatsoever. Amazing.

Gameboy

I've been trying to play more video games lately. I played somewhat in high school when it was a social event, we'd run LAN cables between our dorm rooms. Now, I'm looking at it as a way to unwind a little bit, and as a medium to stay more regularly connected with my friends that have all dispersed around the world. My first step of that, has been to buy a little knockoff Gameboy, and I've been re-playing Pokemon Emerald. It's been the perfect thing to take with me when I fly!

Train Track of the Day

Rushing Back (feat. Vera Blue) - Flume (Apple Music | Spotify)