No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to fund my kickstarter

Spark WIFI light fixture looks plausible, if only because the Belkin WEMO already exists at a comparable price point. (The Spark is indoor only, and what I actually want is either an outdoor-socket-capable one, or an indoor light switch replacement, ideally one that can be dropped in as one of a pair of three-way switches, which would actually be tricky…) sponsored, not yet funded

I finally used my Makey Makey - basically a very sensitive closed-circuit detector that comes with a pile of alligator clips, and pretends to be a USB keyboard - the reference standard demo is the banana piano - anyway, I just moved into a new office, and traded up from a well-worn Comfy Chair to a standing desk (with advanced pneumatics, very easy to move up and down.) Stories about standing desks run the gamut from “it changed my life and I need a new wardrobe” to “meh, everyone here just leaves them at the lowest setting and uses chairs”. Clearly I need DATA… and a quick prototype showed I could hang some (zinc-plated) chains from the desktop, clipped to the Makey Makey, and have them trigger a key press whenever the desk was lowered enough for the chains to pool up on the base. That part was easy - the problem is that because it acts as a keyboard, it’ll “hit space” when it gets a connection, but I want to treat it as a distinct channel… libusb was a messy failure, but in the end, the Python EVDEV bindings and in particular InputDevice.grab came through, barring one memory leak that I may be able to work around. (Github link to follow soon…)

Finally, the classic “choose your own adventure” book is sort of like following a program, or at least walking a tree - well, in that spirit, there’s a KickStarter for doing Hamlet in that form - and if that weren’t cool enough, the list of “Amazing People Who Are Doing Pictures For This Book” is about 2/3 comic artists that I read, and 1/3 ones that I probably should :-) If you haven’t gone over there to look yet, do it for this quote: “But I’ll warn you: Shakespeare’s choices didn’t lead to the best ending for the characters.”. Paper and e-book versions. (Ok, that “paper computing” bit was kind of a stretch, I just needed an excuse to included it here, it’s Just That Cool.) sponsored, funded, still aiming for stretch goals

The IO Rodeo Colorimeter kit is building a basic easy-to-assemble (no soldering!) Open Source Hardware colorimeter - a basic scientific measurement tool, which uses different frequencies of light to measure properties of a liquid sample. The design looks very student-friendly, and is a good start on understanding that instruments aren’t magic…

This 8-digit 7 segment display board is a nice module for old-school lots-of-digits output - if you were doing your own version of a DeLorean back-to-the-future dashboard, it’d be a good component to have :-) I’ll note that in practice, a $60 refurb android tablet might be near-useless as a portable appliance, but it would make a great embedded display with graphs and whatever simulated-digit output you want… but I like LEDs so I backed it anyway.

Given how terrible Kickstarter is at actually helping me find interesting gadget projects (hey Amazon! buy them and force them to use your recommendation engine! :-) I owe credit for finding the LED display project to (KickSaver)[http://www.kicksaver.net/] - not actually a search engine, but certainly an interesting browsing alternative - you give them a price threshold, they give you kickstarter projects that need that amount to kick them over to successful funding. (Got a better idea? Fork Kicksaver on github and let me know what you came up with…)