Huntersville, North Carolina
Our History
One prototype whip light, built in a garage out of off-the-shelf parts. Everything below is what happened next: our own products, then our own circuit boards, then our own controller, firmware and iOS app. We took the long way around on purpose.
The short version
RhinoLink did not start in 2026. It started in a garage.
Every step below was a prerequisite for the next one. You cannot write firmware for a board you did not design, and you cannot design a board until you have already learned what a light has to survive.
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2019
A prototype whip light in the garage.
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2020
Whips, bases, springs and rock lights of our own design.
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2020 – 2021
Our own circuit boards, and a full RGB ecosystem that syncs.
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2021 – 2022
Connex: lighting that answers the vehicle, not just the music.
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2023
Our own Bluetooth hardware, so we could write our own firmware.
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2024 – 2025
RGB+W and Axion, plus eleven revisions of a Bluetooth board.
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2025 – 2026
Our own iOS app, and a priority system that understands a vehicle.
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2026
RhinoLink: our board, our firmware, our app, one platform.
2026
8 milestones
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Turning point
August 2026
RhinoLink Reaches Release Candidate
After years of building the board, the firmware and the app alongside each other, the whole system went through a production-readiness review. Brightness and speed that survive a power cycle. Microphone and channel settings that stay where you put them. Startup Profiles that come back the way you saved them. Storage written so that a battery pulled mid-save leaves the controller holding the old configuration or the new one, never half of each. Relay outputs that fail safe. It is the least exciting engineering we do, and it is the reason a controller can live on a machine.
Status today: BETA pre-order — first production units are preparing to ship.
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August 2026
Longer Runs, Smoother Motion
Long LED runs moved onto a new driver architecture inside the firmware. Big builds animate more smoothly than they ever have, and the controller got back a large amount of working headroom for whatever we ask it to do next.
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June – July 2026
Every Light Moving Together
A rock light and a four-foot whip hold very different numbers of LEDs, and for years that meant they never quite moved as one. We rewrote the patterns to scale across devices, then put the automotive animations on a shared timing source so every zone assigned to a turn input runs the same variant and stays in step. A new generation of show patterns landed in the same stretch.
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Turning point
May 2026
The Vehicle Gets Priority
Brake, turn, reverse, a show pattern and a plain color all want the same LEDs at the same moment. We built one priority system to settle it. Every action carries a priority, the higher one takes the zone, and only the contested zone changes. When the signal clears, that zone comes back to the pattern, colors, brightness and speed it was running. The same work made physical switches software-defined: one input can change what your zones are doing and fire relay outputs in the same instant, and hold both for as long as the signal is on.
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May 2026
Complex Hardware, Simple Setup
5 zones, 12 inputs and 8 outputs is a lot of controller to get right by guessing. The app gained a setup wizard that walks an owner through connecting, configuring channels and LED counts, and choosing how the machine should come up on power. Sophisticated stopped meaning intimidating.
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April 2026
One Board, One Firmware, One App
Switch inputs, output behavior and the production board design were brought into alignment in a single stretch of firmware work. It is the least glamorous entry on this page and one of the most important: this is where RhinoLink stopped being three parallel projects and started behaving like one product.
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March 2026
Connect and Go
The app learned its controller and started reconnecting on its own when the machine came back into range. No pairing ritual, no menu to dig through. RhinoLink began behaving like part of the vehicle instead of a gadget you had to wake up first.
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Turning point
January 2026
RhinoLink
The Bluetooth controller we had been working toward since 2023 got its name and opened for pre-order. The board is ours. The firmware is ours. The iOS app is ours. It is not somebody else's controller with our sticker on it, and that was the whole point of taking the long way around.
2025
7 milestones
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Turning point
December 2025
The App Becomes a Dashboard
We rebuilt the app around a HUD you lay out yourself. Build your own buttons, point each one at a lighting function, a power output or a whole theme, and arrange the screen around your machine — "Inside Light", "40 Inch Bar", not channel numbers. Quick Themes, My Palette and Startup Profiles arrived in the same stretch. This is the month RhinoLink stopped being a Bluetooth remote and started being an interface.
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December 2025
From Light Controller to Vehicle Controller
Two things happened at once. We built out an automotive pattern library — sequential turn signals, the F1 triple flash, sweeps, heartbeat brake effects — reaching roughly eighteen automotive patterns at that stage of development. And programmable power outputs came into the app, so a trigger could switch an accessory as well as drive LEDs. Both grew well past this milestone: the shipping controller carries 21 automotive patterns and 8 relay-driving outputs today.
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August 2025
Connex Pro Bluetooth V11
Another revision of the Connex Pro Bluetooth board. Eleven versions in, the hardware was close — and the app and firmware we had been writing alongside it were getting close too.
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June 2025
RGB+W Housings Finalized
Our RGB+W housings are finished. This one took a while: the housing has to pull heat away from the LEDs as fast as they make it, and every revision was a trade between light output and thermal headroom.
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May 2025
RGB+W Housing Prototype
After a few revisions the RGB+W housing reached a point where we could start testing it properly, to be sure we were getting the best possible performance out of its heat dissipation.
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March 2025
RGB+W Boards Are Here
Our RGB+W boards arrived from fabrication. Getting them in hand let us move on to the part we could not do on paper: designing a housing that could hold them and survive a trail.
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February 2025
Connex Pro Bluetooth V7
Version seven of the Connex Pro Bluetooth board. Every revision taught us something about the one before it, and every one of them fed the app and firmware we were writing in parallel.
2024
6 milestones
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December 2024
RGB+W Boards on Order
We are officially in the queue with our PCB fabrication shop, which means production of the first batch of our RGB+W boards is about to begin.
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Turning point
November 2024
Connex Pro Bluetooth V6
Holy moly — we finally got the Bluetooth working. Now we start developing our own app to go with it. We will not say much more, but look out for what is coming next.
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August 2024
RGB+W Prototype Rev 3
We spent some time testing this setup. Without giving too much away, these things are going to be badA$$.
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May 2024
Connex Pro Bluetooth V5
We updated the Bluetooth hardware to fix issues we were having with the last version, and wireframed more app layouts to clean up the interface.
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February 2024
RGB+W Prototype V2
We ran into several issues with the first prototype and spent a long time debugging them. Once we finally tracked down the causes, we started designing another PCB to address them.
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January 2024
RGB+W Prototype V1
We took a stab at our first RGB+W rock light, with high hopes for powering six massive RGB+W Cree LEDs in one housing.
2023
9 milestones
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November 2023
Bluetooth Connex Rev 4
More Connex board upgrades to our Bluetooth prototypes, addressing the issues that came up in testing so we deliver the best product we can.
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October 2023
Pod Light Upgrades
The first piece of feedback was to make the pods throw farther. We tested and tested until we found the right upgrade to our lens.
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July 2023
Duo Ring Light Prototype
Pushing limits with a ring light Diamond Duo. This light can act like a normal Diamond Duo but can also run strobe modes using a SHO-ME module.
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June 2023
Connex Lite Released
We released our Connex Lite version. It brings internal and external blinking to whips only — a focused option for customers who just need turn signals on their whips.
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April 2023
Duo Pod Light Board Rev 3
Going even bigger with a 7x7mm Cree LED as the center light, because with that much aluminum in the housing it can always be brighter. The improved pod design also links together to build a light bar.
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March 2023
Duo Pod Light Board Rev 2
Upgrading the pod light board to make them even brighter while using fewer components.
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Turning point
February 2023
Bluetooth Connex Development
We are engineering an upgraded Bluetooth module for the Connex board. This is the one that lets us start writing our own app and our own firmware to control LED lights, instead of building around somebody else's.
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January 2023
Duo Pod Light Board
We are developing our first pod light prototype board. We want a bright white with a secondary color channel inside a small pod light housing.
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January 2023
Tri-Board Development
We are prototyping our tri-board, which brings our RGB ecosystem to pod lights — starting with a high-powered Cree LED and three secondary-channel Cree LEDs.
2022
4 milestones
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October 2022
Successful Connex Pro Build
Fixed the major issues with the Connex Pro board and solved the component switching problems. More testing ahead on different build configurations before the final release.
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July 2022
UV Rock Light Lens Clarity
We learned that the glue we used with the lens gave off vapor inside the housing, which made the lens look cloudy. It did not affect performance, but it looked bad. We pushed hard this month to find a solution — and we did.
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June 2022
Booster V5
We are making our RGB Boosters stronger and better. More efficient than ever before.
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May 2022
Connex Pro Rev 7
We got a new prototype update, Rev. 7, out the door despite all the component supply challenges we are facing.
2021
4 milestones
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December 2021
Overcoming the Challenges
We live by the saying "Once you stop learning, you start dying." We have learned so much, and we keep learning and growing through the challenges. 2020 and 2021, bleeding into 2022, were rough, and the long-term effects will haunt us for years. We have no choice but to keep moving forward. We value our customers' feedback to see how and where we can improve. Without it, we will not succeed.
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Turning point
August 2021
Connex-ing the Dots
Since the beginning of this journey, the end goal was to have a whole ecosystem of lights that could not only dance to the music but also work for the customer. Off-roading has exploded over the last decade, including side-by-sides being ridden on the street, and the rules came with it. We wanted to give riders a way to add the turn signals and brake lights those rules ask for without making the machine look like a compromise. This is a long way past an old-fashioned turn signal system: we set out to build something we could not buy. It has come with challenges, triumphs and changes, and we are working to exceed our customers' expectations as well as our own.
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June 2021
This Is Not a Drill
After months of searching for the right space to make this dream a reality, Josh secured a great location that included everything he needed. The space filled up fast with components, machinery and a flash of what the future held.
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January 2021
Two Is Better Than One
Not everyone wants lights dancing to the music, so we wanted something more subtle for the folks who want a great accent on their machine, truck, car or motorcycle. We looked at what everyone else was doing with single-color rock lights, but two is always better than one. That idea sent us down the path to our Diamond Duo series, which lets a customer run white plus an accent color.
2020
9 milestones
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December 2020
Boost It or Lose It
After introducing the RGB rock lights, we realized that if someone wanted to power eight or more rock lights, whips, halos and mirrors, they needed one thing: in the words of Tim the Toolman Taylor, "MORE POWER!" We were not going to limit anybody's dream of being seen from outer space, so we developed our Rhino Boost™ technology. So powerful it must be handled with care.
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Turning point
November 2020
No Looking Back
After working on this passion in his garage on nights, weekends and any other time he could get, Josh made the leap into a full-time business. There is no looking back — only forward, to more products, more innovation and more passion.
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November 2020
Rock Lights Rev 1
We finished the first version of our RGB rock lights, and the result was better than we imagined. An awesome display of lighting, and some sick syncing with our whips. It was a party just watching them bounce with the music.
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November 2020
Spring Development
Rhino whips were heavier than the springs on the market could hold, so we began developing our own springs to carry them.
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August 2020
Branding Blitz
Learning quickly that branding is everything, we worked feverishly to get our name into the market. We added product branding to the whips so that anyone who saw one would know whose it was.
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June 2020
RGB Rock Light Development
We knew customers wanted a synced lighting system, so we started development on our addressable RGB rock lights.
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June 2020
Improved Heat Shrink
We quickly improved the quality of the components we used by upgrading our clear heat shrink to a state-of-the-art UV-resistant product.
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May 2020
Locking Key Base 2.0
After quick feedback from customers we improved the design and added a keyed locking system. We also adjusted the size to keep the base as compact as possible.
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April 2020
Rhino Whips 2.0
After many designs and iterations of a quick disconnect system, we introduced Rhino Whips 2.0 with the built-in quick disconnect mounting system.
2019
3 milestones
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Turning point
December 2019
The First Prototype
Josh built his first prototype whip light in his garage, using off-the-shelf parts.
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January 2019
LED Strip Manufacturing
We did our first large-scale LED strip manufacturing run, using custom-engineered components and a special high-quality UV-blend clear coat to protect them from the elements.
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January 2019
Hired an Engineer
Josh learned quickly that to be different he had to do what others would not. So he hired an engineer to work with, and started developing his own products.
Still going
See what we're building today
5 RGB zones, 12 vehicle inputs and 8 relay triggers, behind one app on your phone — and the rock lights, whips and pod rings it was built to run.