You’re looking at the first USB-photo-phono-Wi-Fi-locator-RFID thingie. Let me explain. Make-it-yourself kits are all the rage in the high-tech world. There is a hybrid car kit to add batteries and modify your bumper to turn a conventional hybrid into a plug-in hybrid. There is a kit to modify a mobile phone to make it do what you like.

But there is no kit to build something that exists only in your mind.

For example, to turn a GPS geotagger and a camera into a wireless personal tracker. That’s exactly what Peter Semmelhack found himself needing following the terrorist attacks of September 11.

"In October, 2001,” he tells, “I really wanted to find a wireless GPS tracker that I could use to keep track of the folks whom I cared about, in the wake of 9/11, and that device just didn't exist." So Peter decided it was time for an electronic Lego set. A set of electronic blocks that can be configured in any way you want. Thus, he founded Bug Labs, and began making the pieces he now holds in his hand for this demonstration.

Peter demonstrates Lab Bugs to real live inventors.

The modules are now made by Peter's company Bug Labs. Most people who see the kit for the first time make the Lego connection, even though the toy company has nothing to do with these modules.

"One day, I was playing Legos with my son, and I said to myself, 'Well, here's a great metaphor for a device. Why can't we have or build devices like that?' And that's kind of the start of it."

Initially, the product line is aimed at inventors who know software called Java. Peter’s audience at TechShop in Silicon Valley are typical customers.