Simon Willison’s Weblog

A Turing Machine. Someone finally built a real turing machine—and it’s beautiful. All calculations are carried out on a tape, which has 1s and 0s written on it by a robotic dry-erase marker. Hypnotic.

# 29th March 2010, 2:28 pm / turingmachine, hardware, hardware-hacking

bunnie’s blog: OLPC XO-1 (via) Bunnie Huang critiques the hardware design of the OLPC XO-1.

# 12th January 2008, 9:39 am / bunniehuang, olpc, xo1, hardware

Johnny Chung Lee: Projects Wii. Awe-inspiring hardware hacks built on top of the Wiimote, including a dirt cheap interactive whiteboard and a head tracking system that turns a normal display in to a 3D VR environment.

# 23rd December 2007, 9:23 am / wiimote, wii, johnny-chung-lee, hardware-hacking, make, hardware, 3d, vr

OLPC: Give 1 Get 1. The long rumoured “buy two OLPCs, donate one to the third world” scheme is actually happening. I plan to get one; the robustness, battery life and WiFi range should make for an excellent conference / outdoor machine.

# 24th September 2007, 11:07 am / olpc, charity, hardware, conferences

TechShop: Geek Heaven. Like a fitness club for people who make stuff: a ridiculous amount of exciting hardware (including laser etchers, robotic milling machines and a 3D printer) and trainers on hand to show you how to use it all. Sadly it’s in Menlo Park which is a bit of a trek from Brighton.

# 14th September 2007, 9:55 am / menlopark, hardware, techshop, hardware-hacking

BBC Olinda digital radio: Social hardware. Schulze and Webb made a social radio prototype for the BBC; the IPR will be under an attribution license so manufacturers can run with it without asking for permission first.

# 20th August 2007, 9:47 pm / schulzeandwebb, matt-webb, jack-schultz, hardware, bbc, radio, digitalradio, socialradio, attribution, olinda

Arduino. Open source hardware hacking. It’s way easier than you would think.

# 17th May 2007, 6:30 pm / open-source, hardware, arduino, hardware-hacking

From Pixels to Plastic. Awesome talk given by Matt Webb at ETech, on the emerging culture of Generation C, cheap hardware prototyping and physical extensions to the online world.

# 30th March 2007, 11:09 am / matt-webb, hardware, etech, generationc, hardware-hacking

Mono-based device wins Best-of-Show at CES. “The Sansa Connect is running Linux as its operating system, and the whole application stack is built on Mono, running on an ARM processor.”

# 17th January 2007, 11:21 pm / mono, linux, hardware, ces, open-source