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One of the most wonderful times of the year is finally upon us: the weekend of the Maker Faire UK! As we mentioned last month, we're touring four Maker Faire events this year: Maker Faire UK, Maker Faire Bay Area, Mini Maker Faire Halifax and Maker Faire Shenzen, and it all kicks off at the Life Science Centre in Newcastle this weekend. At an entirely appropriate venue - which is currently seeking a maker-in-residence - this year's Maker Faire UK promises to be even bigger and better than before. For those who've never been, we can only encourage you to come...

The Arduino project has been finding itself basking in the light of the mainstream press of late, but for all the wrong reasons. There's trouble a-brewin' in a spat between the project's founders which is currently working its way through the legal system. Until the parties involved settle their disagreements, there's little individual users can do - but our friends at Adafruit have suggested that a resolution may be more speedily reached by documenting the manufacturing license which exists between Arduino LLC and Smart Projects Srl, now known as Arduino Srl. It's hoped that a timeline demonstrating the presence of...

If you're in or around the Manchester area on Saturday the 2nd or Sunday the 3rd of May, you're in for a treat: the wonderful MadLab, the 3,000 square foot former shop more properly known as the Manchester Digital Laboratory, is playing host to noted maker and all-round fun guy Mitch Altman for a workshop on building various electronics kits. Aimed primarily at those who are unsure about soldering, although open to all, Mitch - co-founder of the Noisebridge hackspace in San Francisco and inventor of the infamous TV-B-Gone universal IR remote - is in the country for this weekend's...

We've written plenty about the exciting products we and others have developed, but little about the boxes in which they come. There's a good reason for that, of course: unless you're in the packaging industry, there's every chance you've never given two thoughts to the cardboard boxes that protect your purchases. Now, though, all that changes thanks to #robox. Our attempt to shake up the staid cardboard industry, each #robox could be thought of as a robot in disguise - if, that is, such a statement wouldn't attract the attention of Hasbro's lawyers. Nevertheless, it's an accurate summary of the...

Here at oomlout we're terribly proud of our ARDX Starter Kit for Arduino, also known as the Arduino Experimenters' Kit. Inspired by the classic many-in-one electronics kits of yesteryear, we created a bundle which includes components, example projects with code, and layout overlay sheets for the breadboard - making putting components down in the right place as simple as possible. Better still, it's all open source under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence: you're free to download the files to get a feel for the kit, or to build your own variant. You don't need to take our word for its quality,...