Like many companies. Nevermore Labs, LLC has been affected greatly by Covid-19 / Coronavirus. We have always prided ourselves for being a collection of software, security, and robotic innovation laboratories. Our mission is, and will continue to be to provide innovative solutions, that meet non-traditional intellectual property needs for our customers.

Innovation is a fickle but required service in a world of fast moving expectations. It's often the first to go during economic crisis, while also being the first to return during economic growth. Feb 1, 2020 was no exception to this rule. Facing the choice between letting go of long time employees, or cutting innovation. Most companies chose to cut innovation.

Facing what was surely to be one of the worst pandemics in modern history. We at Nevermore Labs, LLC decided to whatever we could to help.

Masks

This started with creating both fabric masks, and printing popular 3d masks with the resources we had on hand.

We later discontinued the 3d masks as research showed the micro air holes created during there forming while not a short term risk, would absolutely lead to long term risk if the virus was to collect on them. It was also questionable if dish washing could reach the holes in question well enough to disinfect.

UV-C

While washing machines work just fine at disinfecting, they do take quite some time to wash, and dry. While living in our fast paced world it become difficult to keep enough cloth masks on hand every time you go out. It's also started putting some stress on our machines as we continue to wash masks more regularly.

Research was put into mercury lamps, and UV-C LEDs @ 253 - 254nm. Historically, mercury lamps have been the only option for disinfection and sterilization. With UV-C LED advances, there are now new smaller, more robust, toxin-free, long lived, energy efficient and infinite switching options. This allows solutions to be smaller, battery powered, portable and with instant full light output.

Ultimately it was concluded that UV-C disinfecting was extremely effective if the masks where suspended by straps (much like a hammock) so that both sides could be covered, while rotating by servo.

However, finding the right UV-C LED in the right wavelength is an actual living nightmare. We had to create a UV light sensor testing box to was able to validate the UV-C LED's sent to us actually functioned in the wavelengths they were sold at. Unfortunately the vast majority did not. There were plenty of excuses to go around from manufacturers, everything from "sending the wrong batch", to explaining that the "manufacturing process is not perfect" and it's up to us to find the right ones.

This ultimately meant that while effective, viability would be difficult without extreme QC procedures in place to not only validate that the LED's functioned in the right wave length. But continued to do so while operating.

Test Kits

One or most loyal customers we work with, is a distribution company out of Santa Ana, California. While offering a myriad of services nation wide to it's customer base. One of those key services during the Covid outbreak has been distributing at home Covid testing kits for major health providers, and doctors offices in the United States.

While the company was amazing at managing their inventory, and order load. Concerns with scalability creep with the incoming frequency and speed of distribution that was required if Covid where to continue to increase. It was concluded that moving from a non-scaling but effective on-site system to a scalable but more temporary cloud based system might be the best solution.

We were brought in to help their existing teams design, create, and ultimately manage a system that could accept, process, track, and scan packages through full automation, on an assembly line while continuing to work with the systems they already depended.

Remote Team Building

Pre-covid, Nevermore Labs, LLC functioned in a unique way. We were founded as a fully remote technology based innovation laboratory. This was fringe at the time as brick and mortar where still considered key for presence. Our remote outlook has allowed us lower overhead, while raising our portability to meet the unique needs of each of our customers no matter where they are. Post-covid our way of business is becoming more of a standard, then a fringe.

Using our experience in dealing with the difficulties in migrating from an on-site team to a off-site remote team. We have been able to help many companies through consultation, and education with how to migrate there business, adapt to new tools, and lower overhead in a remote world. While also, balancing complicated topics such as productivity, monitoring, and mental health of workers who might be used to in-office environments.