Valve’s handheld game console is easy to take apart for repairs and upgrades. Swapping in a higher capacity solid-state drive lets you play more of those ridiculously large PC games on the go.
DIY
The Raspberry Pi 4 is here — and it’s an awesome upgrade. Earlier rumors said that it would take a while before a major Raspberry Pi upgrade, but it’s available starting today. When it comes to physical design, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B looks a lot like the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, the […]
The Raspberry Pi Foundation unveils the Raspberry Pi 4
Kano, the London-based startup that builds hardware designed to teach younger people about computing and coding, is taking a significant step forward in its growth strategy today. The startup has inked a partnership with Microsoft that sees Kano launching the Kano PC, a new 11.6-inch touch-enabled, Intel Atom-powered computer, its first to run Windows — […]
Kano, the kids-focused coding and hardware startup, inks deal with ...
Sick of pausing and rewinding YouTube tutorials to replay that tricky part? Jumprope is a new instructional social network offering a powerful how-to video slideshow creation tool. Jumprope helps people make step-by-step guides to cooking, beauty, crafts, parenting and more using voice-overed looping GIFs for each phase. And creators can export their whole lesson for […]
How-to video maker Jumprope launches to leapfrog YouTube
Amazon's Alexa may be in ten thousand different devices now, but they all have one other thing in common: they're new. So for those of us that prefer old things but still want to be able to set timers and do metric-imperial conversions without pulling out our phones, Grain Design is retrofitting these fabulous old telephones to provide Alexa access with no other hints of modernity. There's even a privacy angle!
These antique phones are precious, private Alexa vessels
You think you own your phone, but you don't. Copyright law prohibits you from modifying its software in certain ways, opening you up to a voided warranty, cancelled service, or even a lawsuit — but that's slowly changing as the government acknowledges the need (and arguably right) to repair our own devices. A favorable decision from the Copyright Office gives you considerably more freedom with your gadgets, but it's far from an ideal solution.
What the newly revised copyright law lets (and doesn’t let) ...
There's no shortage of interesting electronics kits out there to occupy an idle Sunday, but with this one you get a phone out of the bargain. The MakerPhone is a kit looking for funds on Kickstarter that lets you assemble a working mobile phone from a number of boards and pieces, and the end result looks about as wild as you'd expect.
Make your own phone with MakerPhone (some soldering required)
Got some spare time this weekend? Why not build yourself a working rover from plans provided by NASA? The spaceniks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have all the plans, code, and materials for you to peruse and use — just make sure you've got $2,500 and a bit of engineering know-how. This thing isn't made out of Lincoln Logs.
NASA’s Open Source Rover lets you build your own planetary ...
Hardware isn't easy — especially if you decline to take advantage of the global manufacturing infrastructure, build everything in a flat in London, and use only local labor and materials. But that's what the creators of successful Kickstarter project Moon did, and they have no regrets.
Building the Moon without leaving the London area
It's been a bit of a tumultuous week, to put it lightly, but one must always remember that no matter how dire things look on the global stage, there are always makers working obsessively to create something beautiful and useless — like this MIDI-driven, robotic music box.