Computers & Mobile

The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!

Mighty Modules: Pluggable Boards To Get Your Project Built

Mighty Modules: Pluggable Boards To Get Your Project Built

Tim Deagan

By Tim Deagan

Tim Deagan

Tim Deagan (@TimDeagan) likes to make things. He casts, prints, screens, welds, brazes, bends, screws, glues, nails, and dreams in his Austin, Texas, shop. He's spent decades gathering tools based on the idea that one day he will come up with a project that has a special use for each and every one of them.

Tim likes to learn and try new things. A career troubleshooter, he designs, writes, and debugs code to pay the bills. He has worked as a stagehand, meat cutter, speechwriter, programmer, sales associate at Radio Shack, VJ, sandwich maker, computer tech support specialist, car washer, desk clerk, DBA, virtual CIO, and technical writer. He's run archeology field labs, darkrooms, produce teams, video stores, ice cream shops, consulting teams, developers, and QA teams. He's written for Make: magazine, Nuts & Volts, Lotus Notes Advisor and Databased Advisor.

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If you’re taking your microcontroller or SBC project to market, these pluggable boards might be what you need.

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Lights… Camera… Make! Tips for Getting Started on YouTube

Lights… Camera… Make! Tips for Getting Started on YouTube

By Mike Senese

Mike Senese

Mike Senese is the Executive Editor of Make: magazine. He is also a TV host, starring in various engineering and science shows for Discovery Channel, including Punkin Chunkin, How Stuff Works, and Catch It Keep It.

An avid maker, Mike spends his spare time tinkering with electronics, doing amateur woodworking, and attempting to cook the perfect pizza.

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These standout creators offer advice for putting your projects on YouTube.

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Core Memory: Why We Used 60-Year-Old Tech in an Arduino Shield

Core Memory: Why We Used 60-Year-Old Tech in an Arduino Shield

Ben North

By Ben North

Ben North

Ben has a background in maths and engineering, with a doctorate in computer vision. He worked for many years in finance. He is now working on Pytch (pytch.org), a system to help young students move from programming in Scratch to programming in Python. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.

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Oliver Nash

By Oliver Nash

Oliver Nash

Oliver is a mathematician by training, with a doctorate in geometry. He spent ten years working in finance, and a few years at a tech startup. These days he’s involved in formalising mathematics with the Mathlib project. He lives in Dublin, Ireland.

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About ten years ago, we designed and made an Arduino shield implementing “core memory,” a technology that was sixty years old even then. Our shield stored 32 individual 1s or 0s using magnetic fields going either clockwise or anticlockwise around 32 tiny doughnuts of magnetisable ‘ferrite’ material. This kind of memory, invented in the 1950s, […]

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Getting Started With Python on Hardware

Getting Started With Python on Hardware

Helen Leigh

By Helen Leigh

Helen Leigh

Helen Leigh is an author, education writer, and maker with a focus on creative use of new technologies. She has written playful technology education materials for National Geographic, Intel Education, and Adafruit and has developed a Design, Coding, and Electronics Course for the Royal Court of Oman.

Alongside her writing, Helen makes creative technology products with a focus on education, including her latest collaboration with Imogen Heap, MI.MU, and Pimoroni, a gesture-controlled musical instrument glove that you can sew, wire, code, and play. To see some of the things Helen has made and find out more about some of the projects she has worked on, visit her website, www.doitkits.com.

Helen lectures on electronics, physical computing, and music technology at Ravensbourne University and Tileyard Studios in London. She was previously director of the education platform Mission:Explore, with whom she published six acclaimed children’s books.

Helen lives in Berlin but is often found in London. You can say hello, ask questions, or show off your DIY electronics on Twitter (@helenleigh), on YouTube (HelenLeigh), or on Instagram (@helenleigh_makes).

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Python in physical computing is on the rise.

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Meet the Duo Behind Online Robotics Education Platform CodeJoy

Meet the Duo Behind Online Robotics Education Platform CodeJoy

By Dale Dougherty

Dale Dougherty

DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

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Meet the team behind the streaming robotics-education platform, CodeJoy

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