Windell is the guest on the most recent episode of Embedded.fm, titled Please Don’t Light Yourself on Fire. This episode’s contest prize is a signed copy of The Annotated Build It Yourself Science Laboratory.
Category Archives: General News
Evil Mad Scientist Open House: November 19
You’re invited to our annual open house!
When: Thursday, November 19, 5 pm ? 9 pm
Where: Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
175 San Lazaro Ave, Suite 150
Sunnyvale, CA, 94086
You can check out our latest projects, play with the giant Digi-Comp II, meet Zener the cat, and share in food and conversation.
As seen in the JameCo Newsletter
We’ve been shopping at JameCo since long before we started Evil Mad Scientist, and were tickled when they started carrying our kits. This month, they featured us in their newsletter.
…all about taking creativity to the next level, bridging the gap between art and technology, supporting education, and inspiring new minds to transform themselves…
Hackaday Prize Deadline
The deadline for the Hackaday Prize is just a month away now!
BUILD SOMETHING THAT MATTERS
The creative energy and years of experience found in our huge community of Hackers, Designers, and Engineers is waiting to be unleashed. Let’s use that potential and move humanity forward.
We’re helping to judge the Best Product category, which has fewer than 50 entrants so far. The prize for Best Product is $100k and 6 months free rent in the Hackaday Design Lab with mentoring.
One example project is Eye of Horus, Open Source Eye Tracking Assistance, to increase accessibility for people who are disabled or physically separated from a work area.
Another entrant is DIPSY, an FPGA module in a DIP-8 package, shown here with an LED daughterboard in 6-pin DIL format.
Submissions are due August 17, so get your entries in right away! If you have questions or want feedback on your project, there’s a meetup on the hackaday prize channel on July 21 at 6 pm PDT.
We’re looking forward to seeing your entries!
Intel Open Source Hardware Advisory Panel
I’ve been participating in the Intel Open Source Hardware Advisory Panel this year.
… Intel hosted a series of conversations with the company’s Open Source Hardware Advisory Panel – a group of key enablers in the global open source hardware ecosystem – about licensing, best practices, sustaining development communities, business models, path to product, Shenzhen, and the evolving relationship between the global maker movement and chip manufacturers.
We’ve had some interesting conversations and Intel has been publishing video from our meetings. At the session titled Open Source Hardware Communities, Case Studies, and Guidelines, I talked about the EggBot and its communities of users; Adrian Bowyer talked about the RepRap community; André Knoerig about Fritzing; and David Scheltema about Make and Maker Faire. I enjoy seeing these issues being grappled with, and hope that our conversations will help others as they think about these topics. Videos from the sessions can be found on the panel page at Intel.
Retro-tech Style in the New York Times
I’m excited to be included in an article on retro tech style in the New York Times today, titled Nintendo 64s and Vintage PlayStations as Home Décor.
Not surprisingly, these techie hobbyists share their passion in online communities. One of the more popular forums is a D.I.Y. tech blog run by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, a family company in Sunnyvale, Calif., that produces open-source hardware. The site features tutorials on making earrings out of linear regulator chips, wine charms from capacitors and a wooden footstool in the shape of a classic 555 integrated circuit chip from the ’70s.
The 2015 Hackaday Prize
We are very pleased to be amongst the judges for this year’s Hackaday Prize, which was announced today:
Last year we challenged you to build the next generation of connected devices. Six months later, the best teams and projects from around the world battled for the greatest prize of all: the respect of their peers and a trip to space. This year, we’re issuing a call to hackers, engineers, makers and startups from all over the world, to focus their creative efforts on nothing less than solving serious issues facing humanity.
Prizes this year include a trip to space on a carrier of your choice, a laser cutter, a builder kit (pcb mill, 3d printer, cnc router, bench lathe), and tours of CERN in Geneva or Shenzhen in China. New this year is a “Best Product” award. Show a production-ready (and ideally, open-source) device and you can win $100,000 in addition to being eligible for the other prizes.
You can read more about the contest and sign up at http://hackaday.io/prize
Inkscape version 0.91
A new version of our favorite vector graphics software, Inkscape, was just released! It’s faster and better than ever.
We’re particularly excited because Windell’s Hershey Text extension for rendering stroke-based engraving fonts is now in the set of included extensions.
Evil Mad Scientist Open House: November 13
Reminder: Our annual open house is TONIGHT.
When: Thursday, November 13, 5 pm ? 9 pm
Where: Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
175 San Lazaro Ave, Suite 150
Sunnyvale, CA, 94086
You can check out our latest projects, play with the giant Digi-Comp II, meet Zener the cat, see our latest projects (including some sneak previews!) and share in food and conversation.
Women in the Maker Movement
In honor of National Women in Engineering Day, the Make blog is profiling women in the maker community this week, including me!
…this week we’d like to bring you profiles on women who are roboticists, artists, designers, programmers, and makers of all kinds over the next few days, and we’ll be making an effort to make sure that the women in the maker movement get their fair share of the spotlight as we build our maker community in the future.
