MAKERphone 2.0
A mobile phone that arrives as parts and leaves as a phone. The current one, and the reason I have not slept properly this year.
Albert Gajšak Zagreb, Croatia
STEMJESUS
A name I did not pick, on a domain I did.
I design electronics kits that arrive as a bag of parts, a board and a manual. You solder the thing together, and then you write the code that makes it do something. More than 300,000 have gone out since 2017, from an office in Zagreb. The word at the top of this page is not my name. It was handed to me at a conference in New York, because of how I look, and I have stopped correcting people.
300,000+ devices shipped since 2017
MAKERbuino — $100,745 from 1,574 backers
MAKERphone — $324,453 from 2,154 backers
STEM Box — over $400,000, a new device every three months
Batmobile — $388,783, about 2,600% of goal
Officially licensed by NASA and Warner Bros.
Bronze, Rescue Line Secondary — Innsbruck, 2016
One (1) nickname. Issued in New York. Never returned.
01 The name
A conference in New York, and a look I cannot do anything about.
The nickname was not my idea, and it was certainly not a strategy. I was at a conference in New York doing what you do at conferences — standing next to a table, explaining a small circuit board to strangers — and somebody looked at me and called me STEM Jesus. Because of how I look. That is the entire story. I have told it at dinners and it does not get longer.
The correct response, when a stranger decides you look like that, is to say no. I said “ha”. Then I put it in my bio on X, and after that on Instagram, TikTok and Threads, on the theory that a hundred and fifty characters is a forgiving place for a joke. Netokracija then printed it, which turned a joke I was telling into a description other people use.
So there are two of these websites now. albertgajsak.com is dark and quiet and does not mention the nickname anywhere, because it reads very differently in a hero section than it does in a bio. That one is for journalists, licensing people and school procurement officers, and I stand behind every sober word on it. This one is the same person, the same devices and the same office in Zagreb, with the nickname left in. I have never claimed it is accurate. I am only reporting that it is in use.
Exhibits A–D
I did not give myself the name. I have, however, typed it into four biography fields, which is worse.
- Exhibit A X — first line of the bio.
- Exhibit B Instagram — same.
- Exhibit C TikTok — same.
- Exhibit D Threads — same.
- Aggravating Netokracija printed it, which in Croatia makes it permanent.
- Mitigating I have never used it on a purchase order.
02 About
A kid from Karlovac who never stopped taking things apart.
I grew up in Karlovac. My father is a mechanical engineer and he had a habit of handing me things and suggesting I take them apart, so the first thing I ever built was a small car out of Meccano with an electromotor and a switch. School bored me. Most afternoons I went straight from it to the free workshops at the Zajednica tehničke kulture in town, where the tools and the materials cost nothing — still the best-funded project I have ever worked on.
By Gimnazija Karlovac I was building rescue robots with my friend Filip Jakšić under the name CRObotix — him on software, me on hardware — and our weekends went to RoboCupJunior competitions. In 2016 we took bronze in Rescue Line Secondary at the Austrian Open in Innsbruck. What I actually wanted to make was a games console you had to build yourself, so I designed one around an 8-bit microcontroller, called it MAKERbuino, and took the prototype to Maker Faire Rome as Croatia's representative. That phrase suggests a delegation. It was one person and a prototype, in hand luggage. It came home with a Maker of Merit ribbon, and the Kickstarter that followed raised $100,745 from 1,574 backers.
CircuitMess was registered in April 2017. I was 18, still finishing secondary school, working out of my own kitchen after class, with Tomislav Car coming in as investor and co-founder. I never enrolled at university, which is a different thing from dropping out, and I have given up expecting the difference to survive a retelling. Nine years on there are about thirty of us near Zagreb, designing our own boards, writing our own firmware and manufacturing our own hardware, including officially licensed kits with Warner Bros. and NASA and a buildable Rimac Nevera made with Rimac Automobili. The part I liked at fourteen has not changed shape: somebody opens a box of parts and, some hours later, a thing they made themselves turns on.
With CircuitMess, I am trying to make STEM education radically different.Trending Topics, 2021
03 The company
CircuitMess
Electronics that do not work when you open the box.
That is deliberate, and it is the one thing we have never compromised on. Inside there is a board, a bag of components, a case and a manual: you assemble the device, and then you write the code that makes it do something. Consoles, smartwatches, robot cars, synthesisers, encrypted radios. One line starts at age seven; the other is for teenagers and adults.
We draw our own boards, write our own firmware and make our own hardware, in Zagreb. Most of the toys are manufactured in China now. DIY kit production stayed in Croatia, which costs more and is not up for discussion.
300,000+Devices shipped since 2017
2017Registered in April, from a kitchen
$1.2M+Pledged across my campaigns
NASA · Warner Bros.Officially licensed
The hour in the middle — board populated, nothing working yet — is where the entire educational value sits. Removing that hour would make the product easier to sell and worth considerably less.
04 The kits
Fourteen things we make.
Most of them ship as parts and a manual. Ages and build times are what we print on the box.
NASA Artemis Watch 2.0
A programmable smartwatch, officially licensed by NASA. There is a lot of paperwork behind the word “licensed” and I am quietly proud of every page.
NASA Perseverance Rover
Officially licensed, drivable, with a working arm. Roughly twenty hours. Anyone who tells you they did it in one sitting is describing an intention.
Rimac Nevera
A buildable, drivable Nevera, made with Rimac Automobili. Chassis, motors and steering go together first; the code comes after.
Chatter 2.0
Two encrypted LoRa handsets, about 2 km apart. No SIM, no Wi-Fi, no network, because there is no company in the middle of it. It is just radio.
Wheelson 2.0
A self-driving car with computer vision. It drives exactly as well as you taught it, which is the entire point of it.
ByteBoi 2.0
A retro handheld, about ninety minutes. It arrives with games and then hands you the tools to write worse ones.
Jay-D 2.0
A DJ mixer with two playback slots, jog wheels and a crossfader. Household tolerance for this one is finite.
Synthia 2.0
Sampler, drum machine, sequencer and synth on one board. It records through the onboard microphone, so it records the room as well.
Clockstar 2.0
A smartwatch you build and then program. You write the watch faces, so the watch is exactly as good as you are.
Bit 2.0
An 8-bit console, about an hour to build, programmed in Python. Most people start here.
Codee 2.0
A virtual pet you solder together in about thirty minutes. Whether it thrives is between you and it.
Beep Boop
Pocket robots: Mochi, Kirin, Miao Miao and Tochi. The smallest and softest things we make.
Wacky Robots
A trading card game — 14 cards a pack, each with a video-game token that unlocks something new on Bit.
Ages and build times are what we print on the box. Prices move, so they are not on this website — circuitmess.com is the source of truth.
Where this website got its colours.
Every colour in the swatches below was sampled out of a photograph of one of the kits, then darkened until it was legible. That was the entire process.
- Bit 2.0
#D40A16 - Codee 2.0
#DB7E05 - Perseverance
#F2B70A - Beep Boop
#A8035F - Wheelson 2.0
#0B63AC - Synthia 2.0
#6B2A5E - Chatter 2.0
#0A6238 - Jay-D 2.0
#0A1E6B
05 Product development
The halo, rev C.
Nobody has asked me to make the halo a product. If somebody did, here is the review it would not survive.
EN 71-1
Mechanical & physical
The ring becomes a small part the moment it breaks, and it would break.
EMC
Emissions
It is an unshielded loop antenna worn at head height. I know exactly what that is.
UN 38.3
Battery transport
Nobody wants to insure a lithium cell above a face.
Open
Mounting
Unsolved. Everything else on that list is a solved problem.
Every product we actually sell went through this review and came out the other side. This one is on the website instead.
06 Journey
Assembly, in eight steps.
2013 — 2016
CRObotix, and a ribbon from Rome
Rescue robots built with Filip Jakšić at Gimnazija Karlovac — him on software, me on hardware — and years of RoboCupJunior competitions. Bronze in Rescue Line Secondary at the 2016 Austrian Open in Innsbruck. That same year I took the MAKERbuino prototype to Maker Faire Rome as Croatia's representative and came back with a Maker of Merit. Not a trophy. A ribbon. I still have it.
2017
A company, and a school timetable
The MAKERbuino Kickstarter raised $100,745 from 1,574 backers. CircuitMess was registered that April: I was 18, still finishing secondary school, and the premises were my kitchen. Tomislav Car joined as investor and co-founder. Later that year MAKERbuino won Idea Knockout, run by Bug magazine with Hrvatski Telekom, and the prize was a stand at CES 2018 in Las Vegas.
2018
A phone in pieces, and a stage
MAKERphone — a mobile phone you assemble yourself — raised $324,453 from 2,154 backers. That September I gave a TEDxZagreb talk, “Mangup iz garaže koji je osvojio svijet retro DIY igračkom”. TEDx, not TED. I correct that more often than I correct the nickname, which tells you roughly where my priorities have ended up.
2019 — 2020
Something new every three months
A Pokreni nešto svoje grant backed the MAKERphone SNAP project. Then the CircuitMess STEM Box subscription raised over $400,000 on Kickstarter and produced Spencer, Jay-D, Wheelson, ByteBoi, Chatter and Clockstar. A new device every quarter is a lovely idea in a pitch deck and a completely different thing in a warehouse.
2021
The Batmobile
We licensed the Batmobile from Warner Bros. Consumer Products and turned it into a buildable, drivable kit: $388,783 from 2,427 backers, about 2,600% of the goal. CircuitMess placed 24th in Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 Central Europe with 203% growth. I also spent a Sunday on HRT's Nedjeljom u 2 with Aleksandar Stanković, which in Croatia is how your relatives finally find out what you do.
2022
Wacky Robots
We launched the Wacky Robots line and finished 40th in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Central Europe with 790% growth. Talks that year: Infobip Shift in Zadar, LEAP Summit Zagreb, and CARNET's CUC conference.
2023
New York, and Mars
At Toy Fair New York our stand won the Powerfully Playful Award in the Toy Association's first Reimagination Awards. With Geek Club we shipped an officially licensed NASA Perseverance rover kit; that campaign raised $580,710 from 2,871 backers, on Geek Club's Kickstarter account rather than mine, which I mention because somebody always asks. The European Commission profiled me in its Decade of Great Stories series.
2024 — 2026
Everything again, but 2.0
We rebuilt the whole catalogue — better boards, better firmware — added the NASA Artemis Watch and the Beep Boop robots, and made a buildable Rimac Nevera with Rimac Automobili. Most of the toys are manufactured in China now; DIY kit production stayed in Croatia. And MAKERphone 2.0, which is where all of my attention currently is.
07 Recognition
Awards and listings.
A list like this looks planned. It was not. Somebody hands you a certificate, a photographer asks you to hold it up again, and nine years later it is a section on a website. Everything below is real, dated, and in the order it happened.
2016
Maker of Merit
Maker Faire Rome — as Croatia's representative, for MAKERbuino
2016
Bronze, Rescue Line Secondary
RoboCupJunior Austrian Open, Innsbruck — team CRObotix
2016
Oskar znanja & Harvard Prize Book
Awarded while at Gimnazija Karlovac
2017
Idea Knockout winner
Bug magazine with Hrvatski Telekom — prize: a stand at CES 2018
2019
Pokreni nešto svoje
Grant and business support for the MAKERphone SNAP project
2021
Technology Fast 50 Central Europe — 24th
Deloitte — 203% growth
2021
European Young Innovators finalist
World Summit Awards
2022
Technology Fast 50 Central Europe — 40th
Deloitte — 790% growth
2023
Powerfully Playful Award
Toy Fair New York, The Toy Association Reimagination Awards
2023
Recognised at the Warner Bros. consumer products summit
For the CircuitMess Batmobile
2023
Decade of Great Stories
European Commission Representation in Croatia
Ongoing
In Croatian school textbooks
Featured as an innovator role model alongside Mate Rimac and Ivan Mrvoš
08 Speaking & press
I talk about hardware, about manufacturing a physical product a long way from any supply chain, and about why STEM education keeps missing the part that actually works.
I bring hardware. Please confirm in advance that there will be a table.
- 2018 TEDxZagreb “Mangup iz garaže koji je osvojio svijet retro DIY igračkom”
- 2022 CUC — CARNET Users Conference Invited speaker
- 2022 LEAP Summit, Zagreb Speaker
- 2022 · 2023 Infobip Shift, Zadar Speaker, both editions
- 2023 Zagreb Connect Panel — “Kako postati globalni igrač”
- 2021 Nedjeljom u 2, HRT Guest of Aleksandar Stanković
- Also Blend Zagreb, WOLF Conference Speaker
Written up in Forbes Hrvatska, Netokracija, Lider, tportal, Index and Red Bull Croatia. For interviews or a talk, email me.
09 Questions
Things people ask.
Do people actually call you that?
Yes. It started with one person at a conference in New York and it is now the first line of my bio on X, Instagram, TikTok and Threads. Netokracija has printed it. At some point resisting became the larger job.
Is this a religious thing?
No. It is a joke about how I look, made by a stranger, and I stopped fighting it. If you need the serious version of me, it is at albertgajsak.com, and there is nothing funny on it at all.
Did you drop out of university?
I never enrolled, which is a different thing. CircuitMess was registered in April 2017 while I was 18 and still finishing secondary school, working out of my kitchen. It is a smaller and less dramatic fact than the one that circulates, and I would like it used instead.
Do I need to know how to solder?
No. Some kits need it, and the manual assumes you have never done it before. Your first joint will be bad. Your tenth will be fine. That is true for everyone, including me.
Which kit should I start with?
Bit 2.0. Ages 7+, about an hour, programmed in Python. It is the one I hand to adults who tell me they are not technical, and they finish it.
Where are they made?
Most of the toys are manufactured in China. DIY kit production stayed in Croatia, where I can walk in and be told no to my face, which turns out to be worth a lot.
My school wants to buy these. Is there a loud version of that answer?
No. Email albert@albertgajsak.com and you will get a short, boring, useful reply with ages and build times in it. Schools get the least exciting version of me, and they get it fastest.
Can I use the nickname in an article?
It is my own bio line, so yes. Please keep the š in Gajšak.
10 Photos
Nine years of this.
Scroll sideways · tap to enlarge
11 Contact
Get in touch.
Email is the only channel where I am reliable. Partnerships, licensing, press, schools, speaking — or a photograph of the thing you built, which goes straight to the top of the pile. Boards that did not survive the build are also of interest, and I will not be smug about them.
albert@albertgajsak.comNo form, no scheduling link, no chatbot. Just an address.