The workshop bench above the Ipswich River, with radios, county maps, and a printer running a batch

Tailored radio, mapping,
and AI systems.

Ipswich River Labs is a small R&D shop on the Ipswich River in Massachusetts. Some of our work ships as small-batch kits. The rest is built to order for our clients.

Get the free codeplug Small-batch · Built in Massachusetts

What we build.

Four product lines. All of them ship preconfigured on hardware you own, with printed documentation in the box. Nothing phones home and nothing needs a subscription.

Line B · 01

Preprogrammed radio kits

GMRS and MURS handhelds that arrive working. We program the channels, name them in plain English, preset the volume, and print the laminated channel card that goes in the box. Each radio gets a bench test before we box it. Sets are sized for a household or a whole safety team.

$80–170 / radio · family sets $250–600 · codeplug & card downloads $5–15

Talk through your project
Line A · 02

Repeater in a crate

A complete repeater system, assembled and burned in on our bench, shipped to you in a crate. We commission it with you over video. You or your handyman put it on the mast. GMRS for families and farms. Part 90 DMR with lawful encryption for organizations that need it.

$1,500–3,500 / crate · annual care plans $150–400

Talk through your project
Line B · 03

Mesh & perimeter kits

LoRa mesh nodes and driveway, gate, and perimeter sensors that report over your own radio network, so they keep working when the cell network is down. There is no account to create and nothing to subscribe to. Solar options for barns, treelines, and fence corners.

≤$200 / node · property sets $400–900

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Line C · 04

Offline mapping

An offline map server loaded with data packs for your county, delivered as part of organizational repeater projects. It runs TAK, the Team Awareness Kit, and gives a team one shared map with no internet connection. We also publish free regional map packs and comms-plan cards anyone can download.

rides inside Line A engagements · map packs free

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Consulting.

We design and stand up systems, document them, and hand them off. You keep them.

Line D

Business technology consulting

We take on a small number of technology projects for farms, churches, camps, and small businesses. The work covers networks, servers, self-hosted software, offline mapping, and private AI: local models for document search and transcription that run on hardware you own, with no data leaving the building. An engagement ends with written documentation your own people can operate from.

scoped engagements · fixed quote up front

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Who we serve.

Our customers are prepared families, church safety teams, camps, schools, farms, and SAR and CERT units. In each of them, somebody holds the budget and owns the result when equipment fails. The kit has to work the day it is needed, in the hands of whoever picks it up. Our gear is for family and team safety. We never brand around militias or politics.

Prepared families

House and vehicle radios, programmed for your area

Church safety teams

Earpiece comms from the lobby to the parking lot

Camps & retreats

Coverage across the property that new staff can run on day one

Schools

Drills that work when the cell network is down

Farms

Gates, barns, and back fields on one net

SAR & CERT teams

Interoperable radios and printed maps for callouts

How we build.

This is a one-person shop. The person who designed your kit also built it, tested it, and wrote the manual, and is the one who answers your email. Five rules govern the work:

  • Self-hosted by default. No account required to function, no phone-home. What we hand off runs on hardware you own.
  • Documented and repairable. Standard connectors, published bills of materials, and manuals we write ourselves.
  • Licensing done right. GMRS, MURS, and Part 90, sorted out for you. Encryption only where the law allows it.
  • A paper backup for everything. Every electronic deliverable ships with a printed fallback for when screens fail.
  • American-made, small-batch. Open designs where possible. Built here.

Drop Zero.

The first batch is printed integration hardware: enclosures, mounts, and cable management for gear you already have, designed for weather and gloved hands. Nothing is for sale yet. We email the list before anything goes public, and everyone on it gets the New England codeplug now. See what's in the batch.

Start with the
free codeplug.

Get the free codeplug First batches ship fall 2026.
Glad to talk it through.