Five students. One mission. Real hardware.
AWSTRA is a Latvian Student Learning Enterprise building professional electronics tools for makers, students, and classrooms — while we learn engineering by doing real engineering.
What is a Skolēnu Mācību Uzņēmums?
In Latvia, a Skolēnu Mācību Uzņēmums (SMU) — Student Learning Enterprise — is a real business founded and operated by school students. AWSTRA is built around that model: students develop products, support customers, and learn by taking responsibility for the work.
The SMU programme teaches students how to run a company by actually running one. Our five-person team takes work from PCB design and embedded programming through assembly, documentation, marketing, and operations.
Why AWSTRA exists
Most educational electronics fall into one of three traps: too expensive for a classroom budget, too complicated for a beginner, or too poorly documented to actually learn from. Teachers spend more time troubleshooting broken examples than teaching concepts.
We started AWSTRA because we were those students — excited about electronics but frustrated by tools that weren't designed for learning. So we designed our own. miniEDU ships with every SMD component pre-soldered, every through-hole part ready for assembly, and documentation that matches the actual hardware in your hands. No forum archaeology required.
We're not trying to compete with Arduino or Raspberry Pi. We're building something adjacent: hardware that is designed from the PCB up to be taught with, not adapted from a general-purpose dev board. And we're building it while we're still in school — which means every improvement you see is something we learned by doing.
The team behind AWSTRA
Five students. Different skills. One company.
Herberts
Gustavs
Martins
Janis
Daniels
What we believe
Education before profit
Every product decision starts with one question: does this help someone learn? Revenue fuels R&D, not the other way around.
Engineering quality
Being students doesn't mean cutting corners. We design to professional standards because students deserve professional tools.
Open by default
Schematics, firmware, documentation — public and version-controlled. You should be able to understand how your hardware works.
Learn by building
The only way to learn engineering is to engineer. Our products guide you through real projects — from blinking an LED to wireless sensors.
Long-term thinking
We're building tools that should still be useful five years from now. No disposable gadgets. No abandoned platforms.
Grow together
Our customers, volunteers, and partners are part of the same community. Everyone learns. Everyone builds.
Our journey so far
Want to Volunteer?
We're looking for motivated school students who want real engineering and business experience. This is not a simulation — you will work on products that ship to real customers.
You must currently be enrolled in school to apply.
- Electronics
- Embedded Programming
- PCB Design
- CAD
- Product Design
- Web Development
- Photography
- Video Production
- Graphic Design
- Marketing
- Technical Writing
- Community Management
Want to Partner?
We work with schools, universities, electronics clubs, makerspaces, distributors, and businesses on educational initiatives, bulk purchasing, workshops, and collaborative product development.
- Schools & Teachers
- Universities
- Electronics Clubs
- Distributors
- Makerspaces
- Businesses
- Workshop Organisers
- Community Projects