Evil Mad Science and Atmel at the 2013 Maker Faire

Many Atmel employees will be at our Maker Faire booth this weekend. I will be there both days and open-source guru Eric Weddington has flown in as well. The Atmel booth is right next to the Arduino booth, so we should be easy to find. Be sure to bring your sun hats and sunscreen since many attractions are outside and it is easy to get burned.

I also wanted to give a shout out to my pals Lenore and Windell from Sunnyvale kit maker Evil Mad Science. We met at the eFlea and I have visited their shop. I have bought two Alpha-5 clocks from them, knowing that the super-accurate real-time-clock combined with an Atmel processor will keep precise time.

I went to an open-house they had last year, and got these snaps. Be sure to visit their booth and check out their really cool kits. Here are some pictures:

Here is Windell showing off his latest project— The Digi-Comp, a ball-bearing operated mechanical computer.

Evil Mad Science does not re-sell cheap imported junk. They design, test, and package their kits right here in Silicon Valley.

Here are just a few of the kits Evil Mad Science sells. They all have great style, panache and entertainment value.

Every engineer needs a powerful CO2 laser cutter.

I wanted to show Windell’s bench, since we all can relate. Even young guys like Windell need microscopes to work on modern electronics.

They have this awesome CNC router at Evil Mad Science. That is one of their motion-sensitive LED panels on the bed. You wave your hand over it, and the lights modulate.

Here is a close-up of the light panel. I am pretty sure they use Atmel chips in it.

Typical Maker—Windell spent months designing and perfecting this custom cabinet, rather than buying some chipboard stuff from Ikea.

Here is Lenore, the co-founder of Evil Mad Science. She is holding up my pal Ron Quan’s new book on building your own transistor radio.

And here is Ron, who came down to the open house at Evil Mad Science because he is a maker as well as a brilliant engineer with 65 patents and membership in SMPTE, IEEE, and the AES.

Hope you like the peek inside Evil Mad Science. I will be writing up experiences at Maker Faire as well as keeping you up to date on Ron and Atmel and my other pals.