Links

Information overload is a thing. In the age of trivially easy Google searches how do you actually find things you weren't looking for? Or maybe sometimes the completely obvious isn't completely obvious to somebody new to making stuff.

There's still a role for the bookmarks page, honest. :-)

  • No space in your flat and don't fancy buying a 3D printer, welder or whatever? Consider London Hackspace, based in Wembley there are loads of tools and resources available with a 'pay what you want' membership approach.
  • I'm a frequent attendee at Raspberry Pint, a friendly London maker meetup. In principle focused on Raspberry Pi related topics they also cover all manner of tech enabled projects.
  • Looking for pretty much the definitive tutorials on working with microcontrollers, small board computers and a huge range of their own products. It has to be Adafruit.
  • Need something to read offline with lots of helpful starter information. All back issues of Hackspace magazine are available as a PDF for free.
  • Check out Andreas Spiess' YouTube channel for an endless source of useful tutorial/informational videos on microcontrollers and so on. His slow, dry style is an antidote to more hysterically awesome YouTubers and everything he does is well documented.
  • Want a good starting point for complete microcontroller projects, particularly IoT things and ESP8266/32 content, check out Sara and Rui Santos' blog, Random Nerd Tutorials.
  • Teardowns of cheap Chinese gadgets with an eye on electrical safety and explanations of basic electronics. It's the absurdly pointless but amusing bigclivedotcom on YouTube.
  • Lots of random makes, mostly from the fun pile, look at bitluni's lab on YouTube.
  • Another maker with lots of helpful info and their own Tindie store where they make breakouts and so on is Brian Lough.
  • Looking for the de-facto default microcontroller to start a small project. Consider an Arduino. Yes everybody will have heard of it but how often do you check their new products?
  • Need something more powerful, the yardstick by which all small board computers is, it has to be the Raspberry Pi. Others come and go and there are definitely more powerful things around, but the level of community support keeps it on top.