[Overflo] recently tipped us about HackerspaceShop; his plan to help fund the Viennese and European hackerspaces by creating a marketplace for electronic kits. The idea is to not only sell kits, but to also create an easy way for others to sell their own kits through the platform, which is pretty awesome if you ask us.
Their kit they sent us to play with is a sun tracking flower developed by [daniel schatzmayr] in the metalab hackerspace. All and all, it’s a pretty awesome kit that’d be perfect for any geeky girlfriend, and of course, it’s arduino controlled. Whether or not that is a good or a bad thing is up to the hackaday trolls to decide, but it does have an FTDI header; something we’d personally like to see on a lot more of these electronic kits.
Currently there’s not to big a catalog on their site but hey, wickedlasers started out as a guy selling modified laser pointers and Hewett Packard started out as two guys selling a better function generator. It’s always awesome when a hacker uses their skills to become an entrepreneur, especially for a good cause.
Good luck [overflo]!
Cool, I’m an hour from Vienna, so will definitely support them.
Me too, also check out the Funkfeuer meeting every week!
FTDI headers are way better than FDTI headers.
europe needs more hackerspaces i wish there was one in swizerland…….
on another note to help fill the shop they could try to arrange to be the european retailer for sparkfun electronics i think a lot of people living in europe would be gratefull to save some time and shipping cost…. at least i would…
ohai guys,
thanks for the posting :)
just a little correction: the SolarRoboFlower is not actually driven by an arduino but rather by an arduino compatible board based on the boarduino design from adafruit.
we just removed some unnecessary components, switched the MCU and added connectors of the servos, buttons and sensors.
the whole layout and all files for this project are found here: http://instructions.hackerspaceshop.com/solarroboflower1.1
if any of you want us to resell your kits or if you need help to get your prototype into a packed kit dont hesistate to contact us.
we will help.
@snowdruid: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Switzerland
there are hackerspaces in switzerland.
fun fact: i just became a distributor of sparkfun products yesterday.
i will add some of their stuff to the hackerspaceshop.
thats great.. great minds think alike apparently i’ll check the page regularlely from now on…
ok so im not really up to date with whats happened recently but last time i checkend a couple of years ago most of the “hackerspaces” near me where like a couple of guys in a shack … not exactly what i call a hackerspace….
will check the links out thx for posting
That would be a “shackerspace” then. badum tish. I’ll get my coat…
Cool news on the Sparkfun partnership! More than once I have cleared my cart because of the shipping cost. I know, right, but I’d rather build something out of cheap locally sourced parts than pay a lot for something ready made. Now if I can do both… :)