Jim Newton has close to 300 ideas that he would like to see realized. About five years ago, when that list seemed more manageable at only 200 items, Newton opened the first TechShop in Menlo Park, California. The idea was to empower other people to turn their one big idea into a reality. “I don’t tinker as much as I thought I would,” Newton recently told Newsweek, by way of explaining the ever-growing list, “but it’s really rewarding to walk around and say, ‘I empower this person to make this thing?'”
For a membership fee of $125 per month (entry can also be purchased annually and discounts are available for students and family), TechShop’s customers get access to hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment, including sand blasting cabinets, pneumatic tools, band saws, sewing machines, milling machines, injection molders, laser cutters, welders and more. “The goal of TechShop is to provide members with every conceivable tool and machine that they would need to build, hack, fix or create just about any kind of project,” according to the company’s official website.
There, in the safe confines of TechShop’s space, where they are surrounded by others brimming with ideas and passion, the members can tinker with the high-end industrial gear and materials, piecing together prototypes for the Next Big Thing.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
