Join today's new revolution in creativity and community: hackerspaces. Stop letting other people build everything for you: Do it yourself. Explore, grab the tools, get hands-on, get dirtyand create things you never imagined you could. Hack This is your glorious, full-color passport to the world of hackerspaces: your invitation to share knowledge, master tools, work together, build amazing stuffand have a flat-out blast doing it.
Twin Cities Maker co-founder John Baichtal explains it all: what hackerspaces are, how they work, who runs them, what they're buildingand how you can join (or start!) one. Next, he walks you through 24 of today's best hackerspace projectseverything from robotic grilled-cheese sandwich-makers to devices that make music with zaps of electricity. Every project's packed with color photos, explanations, lists of resources and tools, and instructions for getting started on your own similar project so you can DIY!
JUST SOME OF THE PROJECTS YOU'LL LEARN ABOUT INCLUDE
Kung-fu fighting robots
Home-brewed Geiger counter
TransAtlantic balloon
Twitter-monitoring Christmas tree
Sandwich-making robot
Interactive Space Invaders mural
CNC mill that carves designs into wood, plastic and metal
Telepresence robot that runs an Internet classroom
Toy cars that are ridden by people
Bronze-melting blast furnace
Laptop-controlled robot fashioned from a wheelchair
DIY book scanner
JOHN BAICHTAL is a founding member of Twin Cities Maker, a hackerspace organization that has been collaborating for almost two years. Based in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, Twin ities Maker has its own rented warehouse complete with a welding station, woodshop, classroom, and ham radio transmitter. Baichtal has written dozens of articles, including pieces for AKE, the D&D publication Kobold Quarterly, and 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. He has contributed to Wired.com's GeekDad blog for four years and blogged at Make: Online for two, publishing more than 1,500 posts during that time. He is now writing a book about Lego.