Just like the garage computer explosion of the 70’s through the 80’s, which brought us such things as Apple, pong, Bill Gate’s hair, and the proliferation of personal computers, the maker movement is the new garage hardware explosion. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement.
Enthusiasts who want to build the products they want, from shortwave radios to personal computers, and to tweak products they’ve bought to make them even better, have long been a part of the electronics industry. By all measures, garage-style innovation remains alive and well today, as “makers” as they are called continue to turn out contemporary gadgets, including 3D printers, drones, and embedded electronics devices.
Making is about individual Do-It-Yourselfers being able to design and create with tools that were, as of a decade or two ago, only available to large, cash-rich corporations: CAD tools, CNC mills, 3D printers, low-quantity PCB manufacturing, open hardware such as Arduinos and similar inexpensive development boards – all items that have made it easier and relatively cheap to make whatever we imagine. For individuals, maker tools can change how someone views their home or their hobbies. The world is ours to make. Humans are genetically wired to be makers. The maker movement is simply the result of making powerful building and communication tools accessible to the masses. There are plenty of projects from makers that show good engineering: Take this Arduino board with tremendous potential, developed by a young maker, as example.
The maker movement is a catalyst to democratize entrepreneurship as these do-it-yourself electronics are proving to be hot sellers: In the past year, unit sales for 3D printing related products; Arduino units, parts and supplies; Raspberry Pi boards; drones and quadcopters; and robotics goods are all on a growth curve in terms of eBay sales. There are many Kickstarter maker projects going on. The Pebble E-Paper Watch raises $10 million. The LIFX smartphone-controlled LED bulb raises $1.3 million. What do these products have in common? They both secured funding through Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website that is changing the game for entrepreneurs. Both products were created by makers who seek to commercialize their inventions. These “startup makers” iterate on prototypes with high-end tools at professional makerspaces.
For companies to remain competitive, they need to embrace the maker movement or leave themselves open for disruption. Researchers found that 96 percent of business leaders believe new technologies have forever changed the rules of business by democratizing information and rewiring customer expectations. - You’ve got to figure out agile innovation. Maybe history is repeating itself as the types of products being sold reminded us of the computer tinkering that used to be happening in the 1970s to 1990s – similar in terms of demographics, tending to be young people, and low budget. Now the do-it-yourself category is deeply intertwined with the electronics industry. Open hardware is in the center in maker movement – we need open hardware designs! How can you publish your designs and still do business with it? Open source ecosystem markets behave differently and therefore require a very different playbook than traditional tech company: the differentiation is not in the technology you build; it is in the process and expertise that you slowly amass over an extended period of time.
By democratizing the product development process, helping these developments get to market, and transforming the way we educate the next generation of innovators, we will usher in the next industrial revolution. The world is ours to make. Earlier the PC created a new generation of software developers who could innovate in the digital world without the limitations of the physical world (virtually no marginal cost, software has become the great equalizer for innovation. Now advances in 3D printing and low-cost microcontrollers as well as the ubiquity of advanced sensors are enabling makers to bridge software with the physical world. Furthermore, the proliferation of wireless connectivity and cloud computing is helping makers contribute to the Internet of Things (IoT). We’re even beginning to see maker designs and devices entering those markets once thought to be off-limits, like medical.
Image source: The world is ours to make: The impact of the maker movement – EDN Magazine
In fact, many parents have engaged in the maker movement with their kids because they know that the education system is not adequately preparing their children for the 21st century. There is a strong movement to spread this DIY idea widely. The Maker Faire, which launched in the Bay Area in California in 2006, underlined the popularity of the movement by drawing a record 215,000 people combined in the Bay Area and New York events in 2014. There’s Maker Media, MakerCon, MakerShed, Make: magazine and 131 Maker Faire events that take place throughout the world. Now the founders of all these Makers want a way to connect what they refer to as the “maker movement” online. So Maker Media created a social network called MakerSpace, a Facebook-like social network that connects participants of Maker Faire in one online community. The new site will allow participants of the event to display their work online. There are many other similar sites that allow yout to present yout work fron Hackaday to your own blog. Today, 135 million adults in the United States alone are involved in the maker movement—although makers can be found everywhere in the world.
7,023 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/17/a-brief-look-inside-a-homebrew-digital-sampler-from-1979/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/an-easy-transparent-edge-lit-display/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Porter
A headphone amp that lets you use your own pedals
https://hackaday.io/project/196611-porter
Porter is a headphone amp for guitar and bass players who want to practice through their own effects, without bugging the neighbors. It’s more tool than toy, a direct response to existing products that are of limited use for serious practice.
The sound is tuned to provide an amp-like response, so distortion pedals sound like they should. It’s a no-nonsense all-analog design, stripped down to just the essentials that you need to practice effectively. There are selectable guitar and bass modes, which change the EQ accordingly. To save space, the micro-USB port also functions as a line-in. The battery is both rechargeable and replaceable, and sized so you don’t have to think about recharging it too often.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/22/2024-business-card-challenge-noisecard-judges-the-sound-around-you/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/using-the-wind-and-magnets-to-make-heat/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/20/ask-hackaday-how-do-you-make-front-panels/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/20/electronic-etch-a-sketch-no-microcontroller-required/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/20/can-you-freeze-dry-strawberries-without-a-machine/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/20/probably-the-cheapest-mac-emulation-hardware/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/19/a-simple-laser-harp-midi-instrument/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/25/injection-molding-using-a-3d-printer/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/06/24/build-your-own-core-rope-memory-module/
Tomi Engdahl says:
POWERING PLANES WITH MICROWAVES IS NOT THE CRAZIEST IDEA
If you don’t mind massive ground antennas and fried birds, that is
https://spectrum.ieee.org/electromagnetic-waves
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reality and objective truth diverge
Are morality and mathematics objective or real?
https://iai.tv/articles/reality-and-objective-truth-diverge-auid-2868
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.tietoevry.com/en/blog/2024/03/akademiska-hus/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.io/project/196598-the-original-ai-business-card
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.io/project/196576-brushless-motor-and-driver-business-card-kit
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/everyone-needs-a-1950s-signal-generator-in-their-life/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/make-a-cheap-robot-mower-much-smarter/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/03/the-ergo-ring-makes-computer-interactions-comfortable/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/02/putting-some-numbers-on-your-nemas/
Tomi Engdahl says:
A vacuum pump with an old fridge motor
How to reuse a fridge compressor to build a vacuum pump for RC planes wings carbon or fiber glass laminate
https://hackaday.io/project/196665-a-vacuum-pump-with-an-old-fridge-motor
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microfluidic Business Card
Who said only electronic signals can flow through circuits? I used water instead.
https://hackaday.io/project/196741-microfluidic-business-card
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.epanorama.net/blog/2017/10/03/esp8266-iot-contest-simplify-the-connected-world-hackster-io-2/comment-page-1/#comment-1831629
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/04/mini-3d-printed-press-is-sure-to-make-an-impression/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/04/useless-robot-gets-cute-has-personality/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/05/how-to-turn-cheap-speakers-into-something-a-little-better/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Build A DIY Spinner To Get Your Tempest Game Going
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/05/build-a-diy-spinner-to-get-your-tempest-game-going/
These days, controls in games are fairly standardized by genre. Most RTSs, FPSs, and RPGs all control more or less the same way. But one type of controller that has fallen by the wayside is the paddle, or spinner. [jesster88] is a big Tempest fan, however, and a spinner is crucial. Thus, what else is there to do but whip up one’s own?
https://www.instructables.com/Easy-DIY-Tempest-Spinner/
Playing Tempest on Retropie or MAME is a compromise unless you have a weighted spinner. Now playing Tempest can feel similar to the vintage Tempest arcade game. By using a spinning drum and wired mouse to sense left and right direction, the performance of a spinner can be comparable to the original Tempest Weighted Spinner.
This spinner may also be used with other games such as Arkanoid and Omega Race and even OutRun. Simply obtain the small list of parts and 3d print the enclosure parts and assemble to create your own Easy DIY Tempest Weighted Spinner.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/freecad-foray-shells-for-all-our-pcbs/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/casting-concrete-with-a-3d-printed-mould/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/08/open-source-high-speed-sige-ic-production-for-free/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/08/hack-all-the-things-get-all-the-schematics/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.io/project/196671-kitchen-timer
Tomi Engdahl says:
Flea-Scope USB O-scope ($18, 18 Msps, WebUSB)
https://hackaday.io/project/192598-flea-scope-usb-o-scope-18-18-msps-webusb
Flea-Scope™ is a very low-cost ($18 at Elecrow) and easy-to-use 18 Msps USB oscilloscope and mixed-signal logic analyzer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cardboard Hovercraft Robot
Answering the question: Why aren’t there more robotic hovercrafts?
https://hackaday.io/project/1769-cardboard-hovercraft-robot
Tomi Engdahl says:
Newly Completed Overly-Complex Clock Synchronizes Multiple Mechanisms
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/11/newly-completed-overly-complex-clock-synchronizes-multiple-mechanisms/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/26/electromagnetic-actuator-mimics-muscle/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/15/nitric-acid-is-the-hot-new-way-to-pick-locks/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/17/a-look-at-the-dec-vt220-a-proper-serial-terminal/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.io/project/192598-flea-scope-usb-oscilloscope-18-18-msps-webusb
Tomi Engdahl says:
A $500 Open Source Tool Lets Anyone Hack Computer Chips With Lasers
The RayV Lite will make it hundreds of times cheaper for anyone to carry out physics-bending feats of hardware hacking.
https://www.wired.com/story/rayv-lite-laser-chip-hacking-tool/?fbclid=IwY2xjawEY2gBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHSkjb3bC1aeEtfV81DQs_v3CGe9N-2isGo-3x4GLVdRA5ODwAIOWaJRHCg_aem_NivnROiTqi13vajzed1oDg
At the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas next week, Sam Beaumont and Larry “Patch” Trowell, both hackers at the security firm NetSPI, plan to present a new laser hacking device they’re calling the RayV Lite. Their tool, whose design and component list they plan to release open source, aims to let anyone achieve arcane laser-based tricks to reverse engineer chips, trigger their vulnerabilities, and expose their secrets—methods that have historically only been available to researchers inside of well-funded companies, academic labs, and government agencies.
State-of-the-art commercial tools for light-based hacking techniques, such as the Riscure Laser Station, have typically cost as much as $150,000, and even lower-budget versions cost closer to $10,000. Yet through a combination of 3D printing, commodity component choices, and clever physics tricks, Beaumont and Trowell built theirs for less than $500.
Their goal in creating and releasing the designs for that ultra-cheap chip-hacking gadget, they say, is to make clear that laser-based exploitation techniques (known as laser fault injection or laser logic state imaging) are far more possible than many hardware designers—including clients for whom Beaumont and Trowell sometimes perform security testing at NetSPI—believe them to be. By demonstrating how inexpensively those methods can now be pulled off, they hope to both put a new tool in the hands of DIY hackers and researchers worldwide, and to push hardware manufacturers to secure their products against an obscure but surprisingly practical form of hacking.
As they built the RayV Lite, Beaumont and Trowell focused on two distinct laser hacking methods. One is laser fault injection, or LFI, which uses a brief blast of light to mess with the charges of a processor’s transistors, “flipping bits” from 1 to 0 or vice versa. In some cases, carefully triggering those bit flips can cause far larger effects. For one automotive chip that Beaumont tested, for instance, glitching the chip with a laser at a certain moment can prevent a security check that puts the chip’s firmware in a protected state, thus leaving it unprotected and letting her scan through its otherwise obfuscated code to find vulnerabilities.
Many cryptocurrency wallets, too, are vulnerable to forms of LFI, Beaumont and Trowell say, such as glitching the chip at the moment it’s asking for a PIN to unlock the cryptographic key to access the owner’s funds. “You take the chip off the crypto wallet, hit it with a laser at the right time, and it will just assume you have the PIN,” says Trowel. “It just jumps through the instructions and gives the key back.”
A second laser-hacking technique, known as laser logic state imaging, focuses instead on surveilling a chip’s architecture and activity in real time, bouncing laser light off of it, and capturing the results (much like a camera or microscope), and then analyzing them—in Beaumont and Trowell’s work, this was often done with the help of machine learning tools. Because a laser’s light bounces off silicon differently based on its electrical charge, that trick allows hackers to map out not only the physical layout of a processor but also the data its transistors store, essentially vivisecting the chip to pull out hints about the data and code it’s handling, which could include sensitive secrets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Making USB Blaster Clones Work For Linux
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/29/making-usb-blaster-clones-work-for-linux/
Tomi Engdahl says:
LightBurn Turns Back The Clock, Bails On Linux Users
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/31/lightburn-turns-back-the-clock-bails-on-linux-users/
Tomi Engdahl says:
MicroClick: Your DIY Open-Source MacroPad
The “Micro Cl1ck” project is a custom, programmable macro-pad, designed to enhance productivity through customizable shortcuts and controls.
https://www.hackster.io/CiferTech/microclick-your-diy-open-source-macropad-550245
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/07/27/print-your-own-magnetic-connector/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/03/get-your-glitch-on-with-a-picoemp-and-a-3d-printer/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/03/how-about-privacy-and-hackability/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/03/steam-deck-or-single-board-computer/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/05/a-two-stroke-engine-made-from-scratch-using-basic-hardware-store-parts/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2024/08/05/cisco-ball-is-the-tumbleweed-opposite-of-a-disco-ball/