The last decade has witnessed a resurgence of interest in engineering as a hobby, spurred by the appearance of consumer level 3D printers and “boutique” hobby electronics shops. There has been a veritable Cambrian explosion of user-friendly tools for the design and programming of simple circuits. The team behind Yale’s Engineering Day outreach effort has employed these resources for the creation of contraptions that students are amazed they can build on their own. Such contraptions have even ended up in the research labs of graduate students running the outreach activities. I will present how we have approached teaching those tools, and how one can cheaply and quickly apply them to non-critical parts of one’s own lab work.
RadioShack might have gone bankrupt, but Sparkfun and Adafruit are here to fill the void, and thanks to their like it has never been a better time to pick up electronics as a hobby (or a secret super power).