About AmbleBee

The story behind the bee

How AmbleBee started

AmbleBee was born out of frustration.

After a long day out in the PNW, the adventure was over, but the work wasn't. The camera had to be plugged into a computer or the SD card swapped. The batteries came out to charge. Then the photos had to be uploaded, sorted, tagged, and finally shared. It was a lot.

Somewhere along the way, I realized photography wasn't what pulled me outside anymore. The adventure itself was. Lugging a professional DSLR started to feel like more trouble than it was worth, so I switched to my phone. That came with its own problems: notifications pulling me out of the moment, and a battery that always seemed to die right at the perfect shot.

I looked at distraction-free cameras like Paper Shoot and Instax, but none of them matched what I really wanted: take a photo, dock the camera, and have it show up on a photo frame at home, already sorted and tagged. No cables, no uploads, no extra steps.

I wanted to build it myself, but at the time, a project like this was beyond what I knew how to do. So I spent the next while building other things and learning as much as I could.

Where the missions came from

When my partner and I started dating, she kept saying we should go on more dates, more adventures, or just get out of the house more. Every time she asked, I blanked. Nothing I found online sounded right. It was too wet, too rainy, too hot, too dark, too late. There was always a reason it didn't fit.

That's where AmbleBee Missions came from. Every mission is tagged with what actually matters when you're deciding: how long it takes, how much effort it is, what it costs, whether it's indoors or out, and the best time to go. So instead of "what should we do?", you open a mission and go.

Where it's going

The two ideas finally fit together. The AmbleBee camera hands you a mission, you go do it and take a few photos, and when you get home the camera docks into the Hive, a little frame that collects your photos without any of the old hassle.

The camera and Hive are still a work in progress. I'm building the first ones for us, and you can follow along on the bee trail. The missions are here for everyone, right now. Someday I'd love for other people to build their own AmbleBee too.

If you have a spot that deserves to be a mission, or just want to say hi, I'd love to hear from you.