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Temperature, the day's sun arc, a two-cycle tide curve, and the next 12 hours.
Salt Light Instrument™
A calm coastal instrument, hand-built in Maine.
A local-first, privacy-first, open device. A hardwood frame around a 7-inch screen, with a slim lit diffuser strip above the glass and a machined aluminum kickstand on the back. It puts a beautiful, easy-to-read face on the weather, tides, sky, surf and the next ferry, computes the sun and moon on-device, and updates over the air. No account. No subscription.
Coming soon Pricing announced at launch.
At home by the water
The same calm screens you swipe through on the device, here on the wall and on the sill.
Built like furniture
Each instrument is cut, assembled and finished one at a time, built for the rugged New England coast and the wind-and-salt-whipped cedar-shingle houses along it. Choose the wood; the lit diffuser strip and the machined aluminum stand come standard.
A warm line of light
Just above the glass, a slim frosted strip diffuses a row of warm LEDs into one soft line, the physical echo of the Data Beams mark. It glows soft and warm, never a harsh white bar.
A machined aluminum stand
On the back, a brushed-aluminum easel leg hinges near the top and angles to the surface, exactly like the support on a picture frame. One clean metal element against the wood.
Six calm views
One quiet pane of glass, swiped between six screens. Each one shows only what's worth a glance.
Sky
Tonight's moon phase, and where the sun, moon and planets sit over your deck.
Sea
Surf height and framing, swell, water temperature and trend, and shark activity near the island.
Ferry
A departure board for the next boat to and from Point Judith, stamped “Done for the Day” once the last boat has sailed.
Settings
Brightness and night mode, notifications, quiet hours, and the offline-mode ladder.
Notifications
Glanceable alerts for surf, wind, rain, sharks, air quality, aurora and worth-seeing sky events.
What's in the instrument
The launch version is a love letter to Block Island: custom made for that coast, and fine-tuned and tested on and by the island. Work is underway to make it a device for everywhere, with more pre-tuned locations on the way.
The public feeds above are included over Wi-Fi. Non-public or commercial data feeds require self-hosting or a subscription.
Yours to run, private by default
Set it and forget it, or tinker with it yourself.
The instrument sends us counts and numbers only, only to Edge Coastal Instruments, never to anyone else, and you can switch it off.
Open source, yours to change
The firmware is open source. Repair it, modify it, tweak it, build your own as you see fit. Nothing is locked down, and you can read every line that runs.
Feed it your own data
Point it at your self-hosted data streams. The cloud features are additive and optional, never the price of admission.
Useful and versatile offline
Sun, moon and tides are computed on the device, and the last good reading stays put, so it works with no connection at all. Cloud just adds to it.
Minimal telemetry, even in the cloud
With cloud features on, it still sends counts and numbers only, first-party only, and one tap turns it off. The full breakdown is on the privacy page.
Where it's headed
Marketed in the open, so you can watch it grow. These are in development, not yet shipping capabilities. The full plan, including what's further out, lives on the development roadmap.
Concept renderings of features still in development.
Outdoor sensor
A weatherproof sensor that lives outside and reports your exact-spot conditions, including outdoor air quality, back to the display, not just the nearest station.
Air quality, indoor and out
Outdoor AQI is on screen today. A small indoor sensor is coming, measuring CO2, VOCs, PM2.5 and more, so you can watch the air inside your home and outside it, side by side.
Birdsong ID (BirdNET)
An external sensor module, coming soon, listens with BirdNET to name the birds singing around you all day, and flags the rare and interesting ones you'd want to step outside to see and hear for yourself.
Built-in cellular
An LTE data option so the instrument can stay current on its own, without leaning on your home Wi-Fi. On the bench now.
Long-range local mesh
Long-range LoRa radio so instruments and sensors can talk to each other directly, local-only, with no internet and no cloud, even out of range. On the roadmap, not shipping yet.
More coastlines
Block Island is the first tuning, and custom latitude and longitude are already in the firmware. More pre-tuned coastal towns are on the way.
Alpine & ski conditions
Units tuned for the mountains, not just the coast: snow depth and quality, mountain weather, and the day's ski and lift conditions, on the same calm pane of glass.
Salt Light Edge Instrument
A 5-inch, LoRa-enabled remote node for far-flung spots. It receives data from the base unit even miles away, license-free, with no subscription and no internet or Wi-Fi needed.
See the development roadmap Plans and direction, open to your feedback. Specs and timelines can change.
Good to know
What happens if it's offline for a long stretch? What still works?
Quite a lot, because the instrument does its own math. The clock, sunrise and sunset, the moon phase and the overhead sky map, the tide curve, and the ferry timetable are all computed on the device, so they stay correct with no connection at all. Your last synced weather, marine and air-quality readings stay on screen too, marked as the last update instead of disappearing. What pauses is anything that needs the internet: live weather and surf, shark activity, air quality and aurora, and over-the-air updates. They pick back up the next time it's online. There's also an Offline mode in Settings if you'd rather it stop reaching out entirely.
How often does it need to get online?
Never on a schedule, and never just to keep running. Tides, sun, moon and the ferry are worked out locally, so they stay accurate for years with no connection. The only things that go stale offline are the live readings (weather, surf, air quality), so connect it when you want those fresh. Firmware updates are optional and occasional: when it's online it checks every few hours on its own and installs quietly, with a rollback safety net. There's no account and no required check-in, so nothing locks up if it sits offline for weeks.
Can I travel with it?
Yes. It runs on USB-C from any mains outlet, and on Wi-Fi it will sync wherever you are. It ships tuned for Block Island, but you can set your own latitude and longitude in Settings, and the weather, tides, seas and sky then follow that spot. It's wood and glass, built like a small picture frame, so pack it the way you would a framed photo.