Opening back up

Evil Mad Scientist front door with signs about opening and COVID-19 requirements

A couple of months ago, we wrote about our status under our county’s shelter in place order and it’s time for an update! The situation has been gradually changing locally and the newest guidelines allow for us to bring our employees back to work. With their help, we’re starting to ramp production back up and that feels great.

Our Sunnyvale retail location will remain closed to walk-in business for the time being, but we are offering no-contact local pickup for orders placed online.

We have been excited to be able to help out on a few COVID-19 research projects during this time. We want to reiterate that if your order is related to health care or related to COVID-19 research, please let us know so that we can prioritize and expedite your order.

We’re grateful to all of our customers and community for being so understanding and helpful during this time.

Linkdump: April 2020

Illustration of spacecraft and orbits for lunar landing

An EggBot Brunch Party

Eggs in basket
Photo by Raka Mitra

Heather Seeba wrote in to let us know about a gathering she has hosted around the EggBot.

EggBot set up for Brunch
EggBot set up for Brunch: Photo by Heather Seeba

The EggBot brunches have been big hits with my friends. Seeing the fascination and excitement showing new people my EggBot has to be my favorite part of playing with it. The inspiration came when I took the ‘bot to my (engineering) office so colleagues could make eggs for their kids: people were skeptical then couldn’t stay away. Thus for an EggBot brunch, invite awesome nerdy people over, feed them, and gather round the EggBot.

Heather told us about her events earlier this year, before the advent of physical distancing. Many of her suggestions can be adapted for family groups living together and we’ve added some suggestions for remote attendees as well.

Egg with flowers
Photo by Raka Mitra
Flower pots as backdrops
Photobooths for Eggs: photo by Heather Seeba

Some recommendations for an EggBot brunch include:

  • Print outs of suggested (speedy) designs will engage interest quickly.
  • For in-person attendees, buffet and easy lap food works better than a sit-down meal so the focus can be on the drawing.
  • For remote attendees, have a camera set up pointing at the EggBot so they can see their design being drawn.
  • Print some outline designs in advance and let folks color eggs if they like.
  • Make a photo shoot station for guests’ creations. Flower pots with herbs and blossoms are a great example.
Eggs in the herbs
Photo by Raka Mitra
Eggs in grass
Photo by Heather Seeba

The photo booths can be used even for eggs decorated without the EggBot!

Linkdump: March 2020

Dial Indicator Clock

Sheltering in place

Picture of shop door with closure sign on it.

We started Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories in 2006 as a “personal project blog”, to capture, organize, and share some of the things we do for fun. It has evolved over time to become a resource for our customers as well as a way for us to share interesting and educational information from a variety of sources. It also gradually become our livelihood, as the hobby projects started to take over more and more of our lives.

Right now, we want to let you know where we’re at. Here in Santa Clara County (the south end of the San Francisco Bay Area), we are under a Shelter in Place order due to COVID-19. Windell and I are working from home, and checking in on Zener at the shop regularly. We’re bringing work home with us, and have even been able to start shipping some orders again. Our employees cannot come in, which means that assembly, kitting, packing and shipping have slowed to what the two of us can do.

We’ll be doing our best to communicate with our customers about their orders and we’re doing tech support and customer service as usual. Orders will likely be going out every few days instead of every day. Some items will not be restocked as quickly.

As we work through these details, there are a lot of resources here on the blog that may be useful to all of you doing your part by staying at home.

We have many tutorials for projects that can be made from things you can find around the house. We have lots of cooking projects, some of which are also math or science projects. We have a series of basics articles you may enjoy for people getting started in electronics. And our linkdumps have lots interesting links to occupy your time.

We want you all to stay safe and healthy! Please reach out to us if you have questions, concerns, blog post ideas, or pictures of projects that we may have helped you instigate!

Thank you all for being such a great community, such amazing customers, and sharing with and helping each other so generously!

Open Hardware Summit 2020

Alicia Gibb, Ayah Bdeir, Kate Hartmann, Lenore Edman at OHS 2011
Photo from OHS 2011 by Jacob Gibb

The tenth annual Open Hardware Summit will be in New York held online on March 13. I’ll be participating in a panel looking back at the past ten years of open source hardware and looking forward to the next decade as well. The schedule is filled with great speakers and I’m looking forward to seeing so many friends, old and new.

Note: the session has been turned into a podcast so you can listen at your leisure!

Edited March 11 to reflect the change to online.
Edited March 18 to add podcast link.

Linkdump: January 2020

PCBs swung out on wiring harness acting as hinge or book spine

Windell and Lenore on the Embedded.fm podcast

Hilton's Aeolid

Elecia and Chris of Embedded.fm invited us to come back on the show for episode 317: WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY DISINTEGRATED?. We also had the added enticement of a low tide adventure after recording.

Lenore had been on the show back in 2014 for episode 40: MWAHAHA SESSION, and Windell was on the following year when The Annotated Build It Yourself Science Laboratory was published for episode 124: PLEASE DON’T LIGHT YOURSELF ON FIRE.

We enjoyed the conversation immensely. We wandered from talking about our kits, to plotter art, to PCB art, even to seaweed. The tide pooling afterwards was wonderful as well!

Linkdump: December 2019

Touch Screen UI for navigation system for the USS John S. McCain