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In late July, the Arduino IDE - or, more accurately, the toolchains bundled with the Arduino IDE - received a much-needed overhaul with the promise that users of AVR-based Arduinos and Genuinos like the Uno and Mega could expect smaller sketch sizes and increased performance. Since the AVR Core was updated to 1.6.10, we've been doing some in-house testing to verify these claims - delayed somewhat by several subsequent releases, up to the current AVR Core 1.6.13 revision. We've already discussed the claim of reduced binary sizes, but it's worth going over our findings again. Depending on the complexity of...

Wuthering Bytes, the UK Maker Belt's preeminent technology festival, is now underway, and while it's too late to attend today's opening event tickets are still available for the remainder of the week - including the Open Source Hardware User Group (OSHUG) OSHCamp weekend, which takes place this Saturday and Sunday in Hebden Bridge. We've already discussed our personal highlights from tomorrow's OSHCamp talk schedule, but the Sunday has still more to offer: a range of hands-on workshops aimed at all skill and experience levels. For those who are just beginning their journey into electronics, Chelsea Back will be running a...

Our countdown to Wuthering Bytes 2016 and the Open Source Hardware User Group's OSHCamp has thus far concentrated on the talks to which attendees will be treated this weekend. While a great reason to attend, there's something extra to tempt people along: as always, OSHCamp guests will be given a special electronics kit to take home and build - or assemble during the traditional soldering workshop on the Sunday - with this year's swag-bag containing the Denkimono Noise Generator Kit. The 'noise' that the kit creates doesn't refer to sound, although thanks to an on-board piezoelectric buzzer it can indeed...

Whenever makers get together to chat, one topic invariably comes up: project overrun. What starts out as a simple solution to a simple problem inevitably balloons into something that can absorb your evenings and weekends for months or even years, whether as a result of hidden complexity or feature-creep. It's an issue which has definite parallels in the commercial world, and the solution is the same: sensible project management. At the Open Source Hardware User Group (OSHUG) OSHCamp talks day on Saturday the 3rd of September, the second day of the week-long Wuthering Bytes 2016 festival schedule, maker Melanie Rhianna...

There was once a time when there was a gulf between a hobbyist building something and a business building something: making one or two of a thing was easy, and making a few thousand of them was easier still, but double- and triple-figures proved difficult. Thankfully, that gulf is narrowing every day: project like Sandy Noble's PolargraphSD, Ben Pirt's Mirobot, and Eberhard Rensch's Pleasant Flasher are great examples of how technological and ingenuity are bridging the gap and making it easier for hobbyists to turn their creations into products. During the Open Source Hardware User Group (OSHUG) OSHCamp day at...