techshop
Latest
Don't like what Santa gave you? Destroy it
'Tis the season to, you know, get a lot of gifts you don't necessarily want. We at Engadget know how it goes, and we also know how badly you'd like to burn, break and bash those bunk presents. So we did the dirty work for you -- literally. If you like watching gadgets get mercilessly destroyed while being serenaded by an angelic choir, then consider this our very special holiday gift to you. (Special thanks to our friends at TechShop San Francisco!)
TechShop Inside is a modern shop class on wheels
Once upon a time it was a mainstay of American education: shop class -- a place where students learned to use common tools to build, create and repair just about anything their hearts desired. This curriculum is all but gone from most schools, but a spiritual successor is worming its way into some Silicon Valley after school programs. It's called TechShop Inside, and it's a 24-foot trailer outfitted with laser cutting machines, 3D printers and an arsenal of traditional tools. Its mission? Teach America's students how to design, prototype and manufacture their dreams. On Friday, the mobile TechShop made its first stop in San Francisco's Sunset district; we dropped by to check it out.
Waterloo Labs uses paintball guns to make automated works of art
Waterloo Labs is at it again, but instead of concocting eyeball-controls for Italian plumbers, it's futzing with paintball guns. The team has rigged a trio of the paint-filled firearms to make automated art with a little help from a webcam, Labview software, 3D-printed parts and an awful lot of wiring. What winds up on the canvas is pulled from a 50-pixel by 50-pixel image that is fed into the Labview suite. From there, the data moves to the three servo-mounted paintball guns, which precision-fire at their target to replicate the original art. If this description sounds slightly simplified, that's because it is -- the video embedded after the break has the nitty-gritty details. While this setup probably doesn't serve a real-world purpose, it might give your favorite Jackson Pollock wannabe reason to pause.
DARPA-funded TechShop location to open in Arlington, VA next year
Just ahead of its Menlo Park location's crowdfunded move, TechShop has announced a second (or third, if you want to get technical) space to let your inner maker flag fly. Later this year Arlington, VA's Crystal City neighborhood will see construction begin on the new idea-friendly space near our nation's capitol, with a projected opening of early 2014. It's the latest effort from a partnership between TechShop, DARPA and the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Innovation, and could help the state's 837,000 veterans develop usable skills through free job-training programs. We thought TechShop might consider a region with lower rent for its next space, but since Virginia has one of the highest veteran populations in the area, who are we to judge?
TechShop to relocate its Menlo Park workspace, wants your help funding the move
Do you appreciate TechShop's community-driven hackerspaces? If so, the company would like your help in keeping one of those facilities alive. TechShop has to relocate its original Menlo Park workspace before October 31st, and it just launched a $250,000 crowdfunding campaign to help cover the moving costs. Should the fundraiser prove successful, TechShop will reward contributors with both prizes and passes to a Halloween benefit party; it will also hand out gift memberships to military veterans. Those who want to give the Menlo Park workshop a second chance can make a pledge at the source link.
The Daily Roundup for 05.31.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
TechShop CEO Mark Hatch on his Toshiba T1100 Plus and radio tech magic
Every week, a new and interesting human being tackles our decidedly geeky take on the Proustian Q&A. This is the Engadget Questionnaire. In the latest installment of our high-tech queries, TechShop CEO Mark Hatch discusses annoying reboots, the ka-chunk of classic tech and much more. The full gamut of answers -- from Leatherman to Siri -- await your perusal on the other side of the break.
The Daily Roundup for 04.26.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Distro Issue 88: TechShop makes its mark on American manufacturing
There's a hackerspace in San Francisco that's equipping hardware startups with the tools they need to get up and running for a mere $125 per month. A brand new issue of our weekly visits TechShop to take a gander at the industrial revolution that includes the likes of Square among its successes. On the review front, the Samsung Galaxy S 4, Nokia Lumia 720 and ASUS Cube all get put through their respective paces. In the first installment of Eyes-On: Classic Edition, we take a peek back at a dapper handset from 2009. All of this and more awaits your swipes via any of the download libraries below. Distro Issue 88 PDF Distro in the iTunes App Store Distro in the Google Play Store Distro in the Windows Store Distro APK (for sideloading) Like Distro on Facebook Follow Distro on Twitter
TechShop: an industrial revolution for $125 a month
Someone, Mark Hatch, if I had to guess, has left a Square reader just to the left of where we've set up our cameras. It's on a table next to a small, but exceptionally diverse array of gadgets. There's a wooden book that unfolds into a desk lamp and a polymer incubation blanket for infants that's "on track to save 100,000 children's lives," according to Hatch, TechShop's spikey-white-haired CEO. But it's the little white plastic dongle that's the star of this show, through the power of sheer ubiquity, popping up in coffee shops and taxicabs everywhere. Square's modest undertaking has since ballooned to a roughly 300-person operation. The project was born in this very space, eventually moving to a building in San Francisco's SoMa district a block or so away, the mobile payment company having opted not to travel too far from the place where it was first conceived. When it comes to proximity, Square is by no means an anomaly -- if anything, the company's strayed a bit away from the pack. TechShop's overseers have, quite cannily, begun to offer up a portion of the warehouse's 17,000 square feet as office space, giving its members a shot at some prime San Francisco real estate, a flight of stairs up from an impressive array of machine tools -- laser cutters, waterjets and more 3D printers than most mortals have seen in one place. "Literally everything you need to make just about anything on the planet," says Hatch, in typically definitive terms. And while there's arguably still some sense of hyperbole in the notion of the "next industrial revolution" (as 3D-printing evangelist Bre Pettis loves to put it), it's hard to stand here in the well-lit warehouse amongst the buzz of machinery and ideas and not appreciate the sentiment.
