Hi everyone! 

When the war started on February 24, we woke up at night in Kyiv from explosions. Our first instinct was: what about our tech? We need to make sure nothing happens to it. And we need to prepare so that we can continue our work in another place. Who knows how long it will take? It could take months. We were used to the 8-year slowly simmering war. But actually, it was hard to even think. We couldn’t sleep because of the sounds of air defense and rockets, there were jets and helicopters flying not far from our windows and air strike warnings several times a day.

Eventually it was hard to make any decisions because we were too sleep deprived and confused. So we packed our projects - a new batch of uECGs, uEMG in various debug stages, other projects. A maker’s survival kit: stuff for soldering, a tester, alcohol, most used passive components, some active ones, some rare ones, some nRF52832s, some EPS32… Lipo cells, connectors, modules. It was surreal to cut the strips from the spools of passives and label them as there was shooting in the streets in our area. We had to avoid windows as per instructions, cause they were shooting at them sometimes. I remember calmly telling my teammate - hey, can you cut the strips a bit further from the window. And they were like - “oh! sorry, okay”. We even packed one of the Creality Ender 3’s with us. And then went to Lviv by evacuation train the next day. 

The train was full of people, they even slept in the corridors. But as we were on our way, in the train, trying to catch some sleep, we could finally think - and feel something. We already wanted back. It just felt wrong. We wanted to help, to fight, anything. In Lviv, it is safe. It’s too quiet here. There’s volunteering here to be done, yes, and it is helpful. But we want to go home. We’ve been sitting here for almost two days having done almost nothing. So we’re going back to Kyiv tonight, and will help there.

Hopefully those who wait for uECGs will forgive us if we accidentally lose the latest batch of uECG in some fire or bombing! We know we promised they will be available soon. But we can produce another one when all of this ends. Don’t worry, this should only take a few days.

P. S. If you want to help, please donate here: https://savelife.in.ua/en/donate/ This is a local non-profit called INTERNATIONAL CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ‘COME BACK ALIVE, they will distribute the funds at once here where needed.

There’s also a possibility to donate directly to Ukrainian Armed Forces, the methods to donate are here on the official website of Ukrainian Central Bank:

https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-spetsrahunok-dlya-zboru-koshtiv-na-potrebi-armiyi 

Any amount helps, but if you can’t, it’s fine too! 

You can find other ways to help, including locally, here: https://supportukrainenow.org/ 

In any case, we know you support our country!

Слава Україні!