SparkFun Free Day… behind the scenes
We got 104 comments on our SparkFun Free Day aftermath post, several of which were rather… lively. This video shows what went on at SparkFun HQ during Free Day.
Electronics
Toolbox: Parts storage (excerpt from Make: Electronics)
In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your […]
Alt.CES: RCA’s Wi-Fi “Power Harvester” Snakeoil?
Mark F. posted an interesting piece on Boing Boing, skeptical of the RCA “Airnergy WiFi Hotspot Power Harvester,” a device that can allegedly charge its internal battery via Wi-Fi radio signals. They definitely get endless demerits for a groaningly-bad product name. How can you say “Airnergy” without choking on your own bile? Mark quotes from […]
Jim Kelly’s Make: Electronics lab update
Jim Kelly, who’s doing a daily online lab journal, working his way through Make: Electronics, is now six experiments into the book. Looks like he’s having a ball. He has people looking over his shoulder from all over the world, 25 registered followers, and is started to get decent numbers of comments and questions from […]
Wii Wand of Power watchdog circuit
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed to get up to go do something, but didn’t want to leave a game for fear your system would go to sleep while you were away and you couldn’t use a software hack to nudge the system? Maker Todd Harrison had a similar issue and decided to build a device that closes a circuit every 25 seconds inside a Wiimote shaped candy tin.
“Letters, we get letters…”
Yesterday, our fantabulous Director of Retail Marketing, Heather Harmon Cochran, sent the following email to the internal Maker Media mailing list. I thought I’d share it with you all. (The images above are of the Dalek plushies referred to in the letter.) To: Maker Media Re: I love our customers During the Christmas season, the […]
A Make: Electronics lab journal
Tech author Jim Kelly (who’s written a stack of books on Lego Mindstorms) has decided to do all of the 35 experiments in Make: Electronics and to document the entire process. This is likely to be immensely helpful to others who are using the book as a self-taught course in electronics. He’s done the first […]