Lenore and Windell of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories are one of the purest forms of open source that I know of. From the start of what we’ve all called “open hardware” their voices and leadership has inspired many of us to be as open, and sharing as much as we can.
The Evil Mad Scientist about page –

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is the blog and R&D arm of Evil Mad Science LLC, a family owned small business in California, designing and producing “DIY and open source hardware for art, education, and world domination.”

Established in 2006, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories strives to live up to its motto, “Making the World a Better Place, One Evil Mad Scientist at a time,” serving as a resource for budding evil mad scientists everywhere.

Check out the product directory, most are open-source hardware and/or have open-source software.

They might be most known for their bots, including The Original EggBot, an open source CNC art robot.

However, they also made the now famous Mooninite kit, Peggy (MAKE link is broken).

Here are a couple screenshots from when our cats would video chat with each other back in 2010 and talk about hardware, we (Adafruit) were still an apartment company back then.

Here is a great profile of Lenore and Windell on MAKE from this year (2019).

And for more retro, a photo from the second (!) Maker Faire in 2007 of Ladyada with Lenore and Windell. Oh! They also made BristleBots.

Related

• EMSL – GitHub.
• EMSL – Twitter.
• EMS-Chat Discord server.

Open source hardware month @ Adafruit:

• MicroPython, bringing Python to hardware for everyone – Day 22, 10/22/2019.
• Open Hardware Month Hack Chat at Hackaday.io – Day 21, 10/21/2019.
• Parallax Open-source hardware – Day 20, 10/20/2019.
• Growing Your Open Business – A Digital Meetup for Open Hardware Month – Day 19, 10/19/2019.
• Open-source hardware at the Museum of Modern Art, posted on 10/19/2019 – Day 18, 10/18/2019.
• Open Hardware Licenses CC BY-SA, CERN, TAPR … – Day 17, 10/17/2019.
• Open Source Hardware Month at SparkFun – Day 16, 10/16/2019.
• How many Open-Source Prusa 3D printers are there? Posted on 10/19/2019 – Day 15, 10/15/2019.
• The RepRap Project Self-Replicating Open-Source 3D Printing – Day 14, 10/13/2019.
• The first 2 orders at Adafruit… now up to 2,161,166 orders – Day 13, 10/13/2019.
• Photos of the first Arduino (2005) – Day 12, 10/12 2019.
• In 2010 there were 13 Open Source Hardware companies that were making $1 million or more… – Day 11, 10/11/2019
• Opening Hardware 2010 at Eyebeam in NYC – Day 10, 10/10/2019.
• The Open Source Gift Guide, the early years – Day 9, 10/9/2019 (posted it on 10/10/2019, whoops)
• Before the iPhone, before the Raspberry Pi, before Amazon Echo Show, there was Chumby – Day 8, 10/8/2019.
• Mitch Altman Open-source hardware pioneer – Day 7, 10/7/2019.
• The Open Source logo(s) – Day 6, 10/6/2019.
• Open Source Hardware events all month long, EVENTS! – Day 5, 10/5/2019.
• Open Source Hardware Certifications and more! – Day 4, 10/4/2019.
• Teuthis Open Source MP3 Player 2001 – Daisy by Raphael Abrams – Day 3, 10/3/2019.
• What is the Open-Source Hardware Definition? – Day 2, 10/2/2019.
• Open hardware summit – Limor “Ladyada” Fried keynote 2010 – Day 1, 10/1/2019.

October is open-source hardware month! Every single day in October we’ll be posting up some open-source stories from the last decade (and more!) about open-source hardware, open-source software, and beyond!

Have an open-source hardware (or software) success story? A person, company, or project to celebrate? An open-source challenge? Post up here in the comments or email [email protected], we’ll be looking for, and using the tag #OHM2019 online as well! Check out all the events going on here!