MR1 Molecular Streaming Device
| MR1 Molecular Streaming Device | |
|---|---|
 The company's image of a "squad of MR devices": the red handheld ten times over, each with a white fluid cell and a teal cap | |
| Developer | Molecular Reality Corporation |
| Type | Handheld solid-state nanopore reader (prototype) |
| Price | $300 (stated) |
| CPU | ESP32-S3 |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi; SD card |
| Power | Rechargeable lithium-polymer batteries |
| Dimensions | "About the size of a large smartphone" |
| Predecessor | demonpore 64 |
| Other names | MR1 Handheld Molecular Streamer |
| Status | Prototype |
The MR1 Molecular Streaming Device, also called the MR1 Handheld Molecular Streamer, is a handheld nanopore instrument that Molecular Reality Corporation developed as a prototype for citizen scientists. The company's descriptions call it "a portable device about the size of a large smartphone", built around an ESP32-S3 microcontroller and an LMP7721 amplifier with a snap-on fluid cell, and give its price as $300.[1] It was designed to run the company's game, Maxine's Quest, and to send its recordings to the company's servers, where they were to train software that would learn to recognize molecules.[1]
No source states that any unit reached a customer. In May 2026 the instructions for the company's chatbot said "We are not ready to ship MR series Molecular Streaming Devices",[1] and in August the company's field guide gave the device a sentence of its own: it "is one of several prototypes the team has built over the years, a citizen science device that carries the electronics we tested in earlier rigs".[2] In October 2026 the company gave the name MR1 to a different instrument, the MR1 Nanopore Reader.[3]
History
Origins
The handheld descends from the demonpore 64, a nanopore reader in the shape of a 1980s game console that the company built in 2020 and 2021, when it was still called demonpore, inc. Kemmish's CV gives the lineage in its name for the device: the "MR Molecular Streaming Device (formerly demonpore 64)".[4] The company has also said that it was using "the same basic electronics and flow cells we tested as far back as 2020".[5] "MR" stands for Molecular Reality, and the MR1 was the first of the MR series.[1]
The phrase in its name is the company's own. Molecular streaming, in Kemmish's definition, has two senses: analytes "streaming" through the detector, and data "streamed" from the detector to whoever its owner chooses to share it with.[6] A device in every home that did both was the first step toward what the company calls Universal Molecular Streaming.
Description (2024 to 2025)
By 2024 the company was describing the device in detail, and early in 2025 it introduced it on molstream.com, a website where a chatbot speaking as its felt mascot, Keltar, answered visitors' questions.[1] The chatbot's prepared answers are the fullest description of the MR1 that survives. It "can collect raw electrical signal data as molecules pass through its nanopores. It cannot yet identify specific molecules, but is gathering data to train algorithms that may enable this in the future." On what it could test, the answer was broad: "anything you can dissolve or suspend in water is fair game."[1]
The same answers list what would come in the box: "the device itself, standardized reagents, flow cells, pore chips, and liquid handling accessories." Its first version would use silicon micropores, and a cartridge "might last for a few dozen to a few hundred experiments before needing replacement". On batteries it would run for "several hours", it stored its data on an SD card and uploaded it over Wi-Fi, and owners could keep it offline if they preferred not to share. Users were free to modify it, using an "experimenter's area" set aside for the purpose. An "initial batch of around 50 units" was planned.[1] One prepared exchange is about the case, and reads, in full: "Do you really offer lapis lazuli?" "Yes, we'll get the lapis lazuli filament and make you a lapis lazuli case. And several other colors."[1][a] The case was 3D-printed, and in 2026 the chatbot's instructions still described it as "available in various colors including lapis lazuli".[1]
2026
In February 2026 the company's website answered the question "Are these medical devices?" with "NO." It continued: "All of the R&D phase MR molecular streaming devices serve strictly as research instruments for education, exploration, and gamified data collection."[7] The same site published an electronics summary of the "MR series" board, and the members' help pages answered the question "Will I be able to sequence my own DNA with the current MR1?" with "No, not right now", naming the speeding bullet problem (DNA moves through a pore too fast) and the whisper in a thunderstorm problem (its signal is too faint).[7][8]
By May the chatbot's instructions said that the devices were not ready to ship. In August the field guide moved the MR1 into the company's list of prototypes, and explains that it keeps the device's "details light here because this guide is about the science, and the science does not depend on any single box."[2] When the company released the design files of a desktop instrument in October and renamed it MR1 two days later, the handheld became the older of two MR1s.[3]
Design
As the company described them, the electronics are a four-layer circuit board with an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, an LMP7721 operational amplifier used as the transimpedance stage that turns pore current into a voltage, a MAX11169 16-bit analog-to-digital converter and an MCP4822 two-channel digital-to-analog converter that sets the voltage across the pore.[1][7] That converter can sample 500,000 times a second, but the company planned to run it at 10,000 to 100,000 "for better noise performance", and its overall figure for the device was 10 to 125 kilosamples a second. According to the website, the board was meant to measure currents "in the picoampere to microampere range" through pores "from < 1 nm to ~100 microns in diameter", and the earliest versions would "focus on larger analytes (large viruses and up)".[7]
Two company videos describe the hardware. In "MR1 preview video" (5 minutes 24 seconds), a walkthrough of the CAD model and the circuit board, the fluid cell is introduced as "the setting that holds the diamond nanopore", with a Luer-lock port and silver chloride electrodes, and the circuit board is divided into five zones.[9][1] In "Keltar explains MR1" (3 minutes 47 seconds) the mascot tours what the company calls the "5-kingdom circuit board" and explains how signals at the "scale of a gnat's whisper" are amplified, digitized and streamed.[10][1]
One schematic sheet shown in that video labels an output of the board's digital-to-analog converter "BURN".[10] A compact unit for burning pores into membranes with voltage, the Burnerphone, was described by the company's chatbot as "a modification of the MR1".[1]
A tutorial animation on the company's site shows the device in use in three captioned steps: "1. Add sample", in which a syringe drips liquid into the fluid cell; "2. Snap on Fluid Cell"; and "3. Play Molecular Games!", in which the screen switches to Maxine's Quest, with its purple arena and a live current trace.[11] In the game, the events in the current appear as monsters.[12] The plan was for every owner to be a Player Scientist in the Molecular Streaming Corps, and for thousands of devices together to act as what the company's help pages call a "Virtual Ultra-Device", collecting more data in more places than any single laboratory could.[8]
Name
Apart from its name, the MR1 Molecular Streaming Device is unrelated to the MR1 Nanopore Reader. The reader is an open design for a desktop instrument that has not been built, with pumps, pressure sensors, a four-electrode cell and a leak detector. Both use the ESP32-S3, the LMP7721 and the MCP4822, but the handheld used a different converter and ran on batteries.[3] The company's explainer material for the newer device warns: "This is a different device from the earlier Molecular Reality 'MR1 Molecular Streaming Device'."[1]
Reception
Debye Length, an industry newsletter, compared the two devices in "There Are Two MR1s and That Is Fine". Its author, having read what the company had published, wrote that "nothing I have found says a unit went to a customer", and concluded that a name used twice causes trouble only when someone has to pick the right box off a shelf, which for the moment nobody does.[3]
See also
Notes
- ^ Lapis lazuli is a blue rock, chiefly lazurite, that was ground to make the pigment ultramarine. The answer refers to plastic filament of that color.
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "Company records". Molecular Reality Corporation. October 2026.
- ^ a b "Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality". Molecular Reality Corporation. August 2026.
- ^ a b c d Ferris Calloway (October 23, 2026). "There Are Two MR1s and That Is Fine". Debye Length.
- ^ "Stanley Kent Kemmish, Jr." Molecular Reality Corporation. May 2026.
- ^ "Provisions". EQBio-OS. Molecular Reality Corporation. 2026.
- ^ Kemmishtree (March 28, 2026). "Marching orders". EQBio-OS.
- ^ a b c d "Molecular Reality Corporation website". Molecular Reality Corporation. February 2026.
- ^ a b "Frequently asked questions". EQBio-OS. Molecular Reality Corporation. 2026.
- ^ MR1 preview video (Video). EpicQuestBio.
- ^ a b Keltar explains MR1 (Video). EpicQuestBio.
- ^ "MR1 loading animation". Molecular Reality Corporation. 2026.
- ^ Pixel Marchetti (June 2, 2026). "Maxine's Quest Review: The Monsters Are Real Current Spikes". Ludicious.