Rewind: 14 pocket-sized projects of 2014

And who said big things can’t come in small packages? A CD-sized printer you can take anywhere Think printing is boring? Tedious? Annoying? You may want to check those thoughts at the door after checking out this portable, handheld printer from a team of students from Lev, the Jerusalem College of Technology. The young Makers — who together launched ZUta Labs — have […]

Rewind: 30 Maker musical masterpieces from 2014

There’s music making and then there’s making music. From gloves that play tunes to modded printers that blare songs, Makers have proven that just about anything — and we mean everything — can be transformed into sound. And well, as you can tell from our #ThrowbackThursday chippy takes on ‘90s hits, we love music. Not to mention, a […]

Rewind: These successfully-funded Kickstarter projects are powered by Atmel

Kickstarter first opened its virtual doors on April 28, 2009. Since then, the wildly-popular crowdfunding site has tracked just shy of $1.5 billion in pledges from 7.6 million individuals actively backing 75,800 creative projects. Many have pondered as to whether the crowdfunding bubble would burst anytime soon, and as the burgeoning Maker Movement and Internet of Things have conveyed, the answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT! By 2025, the crowdfunding […]

Rewind: Oh. My. God. Becky, look at those wearables…

From GPS logging dog harnesses to MIDI drumming gloves, Adafruit’s Director of Wearable Electronics Becky Stern has unveiled some pretty wonderful wearable projects over the past couple of months. So much so that we’ve decided to pay homage to the LED-lovin’, gadget-glowin’ Maker by showcasing several of our favorites. While the inherent versatility of Atmel’s MCUs have made our silicon a favorite amongst […]

Deck the halls with this hacked dot-matrix printer

Now, what would ’tis season be without its fair share of Christmas carols? Well, MIDIDesaster has decided to give the traditional sing-a-longs a bit of a Maker twist using his MIDI compatible dot-matrix printer. As previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the rigged DMP is equipped with an ATmega8 MCU that interprets the inbound MIDI data, which then feeds the information to an FPGA and drives the stepper […]

Video: 3D printers hacked to play Star Wars’ Imperial March and more

It seems like Makers are able to hack everything these days, from disk drives to dot-matrix printers, to give once-ordinary devices some symphonic superpowers. And, while 3D printers have been used to create one’s own Imperial Army of miniature stormtroopers, did you know that the same machine could also play their theme song? That’s right. The team at Zero Innovations has successfully rigged a 3D […]

Rewind: 13 products inspiring the next generation of Makers

With Computer Science Education Week in full swing and the holidays just around the corner, we’ve decided to list some of our favorite creations from this year that are inspiring the next generation of Makers to not only tinker around, but pursue STEM disciplines. littleBits Created by Ayah Bdeir, littleBits was launched with hopes of making DIY […]

SuperDuino is a coin cell operated, Arduino-compatible board

Created by Maker Mohsin Farooq, SuperDuino is a coin cell operated, Arduino-compatible board with a built-in 1.7-inch color display and a three-axis accelerometer. Recently launched on Kickstarter, the board is powered by an ATmega328 MCU and as you can see below, is suitable match for a wide-range of DIY games, gadgets and wearable devices. Designed for experienced engineers, hobbyists and […]

Bare Conductive launches Touch Board Inventors Kit

Our friends at Bare Conductive have recently announced the launch of their Touch Board Inventors Kit, an all-in-one DIY box that contains everything a Maker could possibly need to start getting creative with the ATmega32U4 based board. Open the box and you will find not only a Touch Board, but some Electric Paint, other key components as well […]

Arduino-powered incubator helps save lives

Inspired to use his skills to help humanity after watching a documentary about the harsh living conditions in Syria, a Maker by the name of James Roberts sought out to create an inflatable incubator, aptly dubbed “MOM.” The inexpensive, electronically controlled mechanism was developed to decrease the number of premature child deaths within refugee camps — where an estimated 150,000 child births occur […]