Build a custom sensor.
Turn your measurement needs into working hardware: sensor selection, custom electronics, embedded firmware, and enclosures designed around the animal or environment.
New Lens Labs
Sensing tools for animals and the wild places they live.
What we do
We build sensors for wild places.
We help researchers, conservation organizations, and technology teams build sensor systems for the real world. Custom hardware, firmware, and the data pipelines behind them — carried from first sketch to field deployment. If it needs to survive outside and send back useful data, it’s our kind of project.
Selected work
Curious ideas, out in the world.
Some questions call for a tool that doesn’t exist yet. These are a few we’ve built — designed from scratch by Patrick Chwalek and put to work with research collaborators.
CollarID
A little window into an animal’s day. This solar-powered collar follows where animals go, how they move, and what they hear — all in 150 grams. It’s been out in the world on three continents.
Visit collarid.org
BuzzCam
Telling bees apart by their buzz. A solar-powered listening station built to pick out native and invasive bees by the sound of their flight, among the flowers of Patagonia.
SoundSHROOM
A mushroom-shaped set of ears for the Arctic. These multi-channel recorders listen in every direction, capturing the calls of seabirds and the soundscape of the Svalbard tundra.
AirSpecs
Glasses that notice the air around you. Packed with tiny sensors, AirSpecs connects the environment you move through with how you feel. Built at the MIT Media Lab and worn by 30 study participants across three cities.
Work with us
For the idea that needs its own invention.
An unusual animal, a hard-to-reach place, a tiny signal worth listening for. We like projects with a very particular question at their heart. Bring us yours, whether it’s a sketch in a notebook or a prototype that needs another pair of hands.
Connect it to useful data.
Get recordings and measurements off the device and into your workflow, with wireless telemetry, cloud storage, dashboards, and signal processing.
Get it into the field.
Move beyond the first prototype with power optimization, manufacturing support, field testing, and iteration based on what happens outdoors.
Behind the lab
Hi, I’m Patrick.
I lead New Lens Labs. I work across electronics, embedded software, and mechanical design, and enjoy the whole process: shaping an idea, building it, and putting it to work outdoors.
My background spans mechanical engineering, computer science, and a Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab. I’ve worked at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Gridware, and the National Geographic Society’s Exploration Technology Lab.
Since 2022, I’ve collaborated with National Geographic Explorers on sensing tools for remote environments, from Arctic bird habitats to bee populations in Patagonia.
More about Patrick & his work →What are you curious about?
Tell us about the thing you wish you could measure, hear, or understand. We’d love to help you figure out how to build it.
team@newlenslabs.xyz