Dynamic Müller-Lyer Illusion Could Venus have a bacterial infection? How the bones in your hand change as you grow up Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? Probing a simulated 6502 and evaluating it like a set of neurons A Sinclair...

For this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire we are excited to be collaborating with Eric Schlaepfer and Ken Shirriff. We’ll be bringing decapped chips like the MOS 6502, the 555 timer and 741 op-amp along with microscopes to let visitors...

We’ve written about the Silicon Valley Electronics Flea Market many times before. Make that many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times before. It’s a great source of inspiration, beautiful objects and interesting conversations. We’re writing about it now...

Quick Sort explained by IDEA instructions Daytime fireworks are a thing. (Second example.) An air breathing electric motor for low earth orbit satellites Automatic Machine Knitting of 3D Meshes How two photographers captured the same millisecond in time 8-bit emergency...

It is lemon season here yet again! Given the quantity of fruit my Meyer lemon tree produces, I have many opportunities to remake my marmalade recipes with little adjustments and changes. This time, I added ginger. Quite a bit of...

The folks at Sac City Brews use an AxiDraw to create their tap list. The AxiDraw plots out the beer name, info and logo onto a piece of acrylic which gets mounted in the tap list above the bar. Best...

How Carob Traumatized a Generation How Christine Peterson coined the term ‘open source’ OpenSC2K: An open source remake of SimCity 2000 A deep dive into the history of the Automatic Pencil Sharpener Company (via @john_overholt) The ReCode Project is a...

On Monday, February 19, we’ll be celebrating Presidents Day at The Tech Museum in San Jose. Spend your Presidents Day with us! We’re bringing you even more hands-on science fun than usual. You’ll build straw rockets and design colorful climbing...

Lee at Sawdust and Solder is building a kids spaceship cockpit and used a Larson Scanner for one panel. I wanted to spread out the LEDs over a large arc to simulate the sweep of a radar screen. The idea...

Today we are releasing our newest set of “Download and Print” cards for Valentine’s day. This is our sixth year, and sixth set of cards: The 2013 set had six equation-heavy cards, the 2014 set was a set of six symbol-heavy cards, and the 2015 set included love,...

The Idiot’s Loop: Dropping a nuclear bomb with a backflip was a 1950’s US Air Force tactic. History of Philips’ Semiconductors in the 1950s Terry Gilliam reveals the secrets of Monty Python animation Vintage Computing for Trusted Radiation Measurements R.I.P....

We’re bringing the MOnSter 6502 and the Digi-Comp II to the Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest February 10-11 at the Living Computers: Museum+Labs in Seattle, Washington. Living Computers: Museum+Labs is an incredible museum! Bring your camera, bring your children, and...

Matt DesLauriers published a two-part blog post, Pen Plotter Art & Algorithms exploring his JavaScript workflow with AxiDraw and generative art. Unlike a typical printer, a plotter produces prints with a strangely human quality: occasional imperfections arise as the pen...

Computing a world of snowflakes 6 Animatronic Eye Mechanisms You Can Download and 3D Print Parafilm: What is this thing? (YouTube) The colorful modern history of ancient crookneck watermelons The Boldport Club is a monthly electronic kit subscription The mathematics...

A couple of creative artists, Makio&Floz, are offering custom plotted portraits, drawn by their AxiDraw, playfully named Jojo the robot. Makio&Floz is a duo working on digital based projects. Without limiting themselves to a virtual space or a physical one,...

Last year while attending FIRST robotics competitions with the Firebots, I had the privilege of serving as a judge at both the Central Valley Regional and the Sacramento Regional. Judging gives an opportunity to get to know the folks involved...

JR has been volunteering in a high school programming class and wrote up a thoughtful post about his experiences using the WaterColorBot in the classroom. He wrote a Python library that allows users to directly control a WaterColorBot by writing...

Fifty-three year old nuclear missile accident revealed Racetrack core sample: What 108 Years Of Repaving Looks Like Under Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Asphalt The folks who make Generatively Designed Socks also made a Processing library for use with Google’s Quick, Draw!...

This Thanksgiving, we are grateful for you, our friends, readers, and customers. We’re grateful for all of the awesome things that you make and the projects you share with us. Our Thanksgiving sale this year runs all through the holiday...

robot fun with #axidraw for #theatermarie #liveperformance pic.twitter.com/kQq7nPZeyp — Michael Flückiger (@miflck) November 13, 2017 In unusual uses for our drawing machines, AxiDraw is playing the role of the master of ceremony in Joël Maillard’s play “Last sheet (after the...

We’re excited to be holding the Silicon Valley Hardware Meetup at our shop in Sunnyvale on Wednesday, December 6 from 6:30-9:30 pm. The event is hosted by Supplyframe and Tindie and will have food, drink, speakers and demo time. For...

Gravitrack is a fantastic new build-it-yourself desktop-scale marble machine kit from our friends at SolarBotics, and available now at our store. Gravitrack is available in two versions: A no-soldering battery-powered version (shown above), or a soldering-required solar version. We also...

Seamus B. sent in this picture of building Interactive Game of Life kits with kids. After they finished he sent in the video below of it working. We always love to see progress photos, especially when kids are getting into...

I also thought you might enjoy seeing the design we were running today in the classroom… Spencer Yonker sent in these skull paintings made by WaterColorBot in the classroom. And we had a customer stop in the shop to show...

ARとは関係ないけれど、首都大学東京のブースで見たゴミ箱が未来かっこいい。これは素材や仕上げをこだわって、高級路線で行けば売れると思う。欲しいです。#DCEXPO pic.twitter.com/nE5rlY291y — お休みさん@あんたまにあ (@zFdqQWPoR2tYmF7) October 29, 2017 The cutest little ultrasonic iris trash can that you’ll ever see Minute physics on polarized filters and quantum mechanics CableEndy Cable-Driven Parallel Robot. (Bonus with tennis ball.) Pedro Medeiros is creating Pixel...