Mad Season, Cream, Prophets of Rage, the Traveling Wilburys — what do they have in common? Perhaps it’s that you’ve never heard of them, but they are also all supergroups — successful artists teaming up to create something new and exciting. In the world of LEDs, instead of Layne Staley, Tom Morello, and Tom Petty, […]
There have been several occasions where I’ve been in the presence of electrical engineers, discussing the proliferation of Arduino in the maker community and seeking their thoughts. Often, the conversation turns to the divide between makers tinkering at home and engineers working with PLC systems. For those who are not familiar with PLCs, I’ll keep […]
With how important desktop and laptop computers are to the world today, it’s hard to imagine that, not too long ago, they used to be the size of refrigerators and entire rooms. However, Nicolas Temese has found a way to keep the memory of these gigantic machines alive — by shrinking them down to a fraction of […]
So you want to fight robots? Try these battle-hardened kits for building antweight (1lb) combat bots.
If you haven’t been paying attention to twitter, you might feel a tiny bit lost on this one. I’ll recap simply, without getting political. Many people are leaving the platform based on how the process of Elon Musk taking ownership have unfolded. For a lot of us, this means a bunch of our friends are […]
Fixing broken things was just a normal part of my family life. I was born in New York City and was raised in New Jersey in a home with lots of tools, a garage, a basement workshop, and a backyard. My father was a Depression-era baby who grew up with a sense of frugality. He […]
For years, my organization, U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group), has been campaigning with iFixit,Repair.org, and a plucky team of repair shops, makers, and hackers to pass laws that guarantee access to what people need to fix modern gizmos, specifically the parts, tools, and service information. We’ve had “right to repair” bills in 40 of 50 […]
