Our Story

Who Are the RoboBros?

My brother and I are identical twins.*

*Actually, we are triplets, but our other sibling isn't into technology quite the way we are.

We call ourselves the RoboBros.

Our fascination with technology goes way, way back.

It all started with trains when we were in preschool…

… and then somehow expanded to vacuums. 

Our 5th-grade science fair project was a vacuum experiment.

We were already fascinated by how things worked, but we weren't content just to

use technology.

We wanted to understand it!

Our interest in robotic vacuums eventually expanded from vacuums that operated

on dry land to robotic vacuums that operated in swimming pools.

After the 2009 Station Fire, which came within a block of our house, our family got

a robotic pool cleaner to help remove the ash and debris that our poolman simply

couldn't get out. 

We were hooked.

Not just on pool cleaners.

We were also hooked on robots!

By then, we were already building things ourselves.

This is Richard with the robot we built in first grade. 

Then we discovered e-waste...

Robotic toys weren't nearly as interesting as what we could find at e-waste

recycling centers.

Taking apart old technology, researching what we found, figuring out how it

worked, and then getting it to work again taught us an enormous amount.

Before long, we were fixing things around our own home.

And the more we explored, 

the stranger and more interesting the technology became.

We visited e-waste recyclers, searched eBay, scoured thrift stores, and accepted

old technology from family and friends.

Eventually we had accumulated a remarkable collection of fire alarm and smoke

detection equipment, security systems, sprinkler & sprinkler control systems,

computer networking hardware, and all sorts of other technological Odds &

Ends.

To our parents' horror, this photo shows what greets you when you walk down the

hall to our bedroom.

We don’t just collect stuff.

We experiment with it.

For our 2019 Los Angeles Science Fair project, for example, we figured out how to

activate sprinkler systems remotely from a phone.

Along the way, we learned something important: technology doesn't have to be

new to be interesting. In fact, some of the most interesting things we encountered

were old, obsolete, discontinued, poorly documented, or simply never intended to

be used in the ways we wanted to use them.

That meant learning how to read technical manuals, patents, schematics,

specifications, service documentation, and whatever else we could find. It meant

taking unfamiliar equipment apart, tracing connections, testing components,

figuring out protocols, and reverse engineering systems when the documentation

wasn't enough.

Just so you know, our curiosity about the world around us isn't limited to finding

the bugs in our technology.

We also like learning about all the bugs* around us.

*Did you know that the scientific study of insects and their relationship to humans,

the environment, and other living organisms is called entomology? It is not to be

confused with etymology, the study of the origin and development of words and

how their meanings and forms change over time. Hence the old joke:

People who can't distinguish between etymology and entomology bug me in

ways I cannot put into words.

But I digress.

Back to the history of RoboBros.

We have been into technology for almost as long as we can remember.

By the time we were 10, we started calling ourselves the RoboBros.

Then, on Monday, September 24, 2012, we officially launched RoboBros by

creating RoboBros.net, offering robotic pool-cleaning services to help augment

our neighbors' regularly scheduled pool-cleaning services.

As a pool-cleaning venture, RoboBros was not exactly a spectacular success…

But something much more interesting came out of it.

What started as two kids fascinated by their robotic pool cleaner and vacuums

became a long-running independent technical research and engineering effort.

Over the years, we have explored unfamiliar, obsolete, and interconnected

technologies through documentation research, experimentation, reverse

engineering, restoration, modification, and hands-on testing.

Today, RoboBros has expanded into IT support and repair, 

but the basic idea hasn't changed.

Find something interesting. Figure out how it works. Take it apart. Make it work.

Make it better!

That's what we've been doing for more than a decade!

SHARING WHAT WE KNOW.

.

Oh, and when possible, we also like to share what we know with others.

Here we are giving kids a demonstration of 1980s gaming technology.

We gave the presentation dressed as Bill Gates (Richard) and Steve Jobs (James)

and brought two of our salvaged 1980s computers

(A TI-99-4a running MS-DOS and the other an Apple 2e) 

with games on them for the kids to play on.

So now you know a little bit about who we are.

Spoiler alert: We don’t usually dress up as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, 

but we have been known to dress up as each other. 

Case in point: our 2016 Halloween costumes, where we swapped identities.

Even though we no longer look quite as identical as we did before,

We are still the RoboBros!

Richard Burch James Burch

richard@RoboBros.net james@RoboBros.net

richard.RoboBros.net james.RoboBros.net

Feel free to reach out if you would like to learn more about our projects or connect with us about open opportunities. We look forward to hearing from you!