Track Aircraft With ADSBee, an Open Source ADS-B Receiver

From Make: magazine: What is ADS-B? It’s what the airplanes speak! Automatic Dependent Surveillance — Broadcast (ADS-B) is a protocol used by aircraft for transmitting their location and other information to other aircraft and to air traffic control. With a novel demodulator based on the RP2040 microcontroller and its PIO peripherals, the ADSBee 1090 board provides commercial-grade ADS-B decoding that’s affordable enough to integrate into a wide variety of projects.

Sponsored:

SNAPBLOQ™ HOTO I-A06 Soldering Iron, the Most Powerful Cordless Soldering Iron

SNAPBLOQ™ I-A06 Cordless Soldering Iron Set delivers high-output performance
with up to 60W cordless power and up to 140W with external power. Its rapid heat-up reaches 400°F (204°C) in as little as 3 seconds from room temperature, minimizing downtime between tasks and keeping projects moving wherever they happen.

Last chance: Labor Day sale ends tonight

From Maker Faire Bay Area: The Labor Day sale for Maker Faire Bay Area ends tonight. This is the 20th year the community's gathered to build, tinker, and show off what's possible, with hands-on games, hardware, and inventions from makers all over the country. If you've been putting off getting your tickets, tonight's the deadline before the 30% off door prices goes away. Use promo code LaborOfLove. Grab them now and we'll see you September 25–27.

A City of Makers in the Black Rock Desert

From Maker Faire Bay Area: Here’s a look at some of the art and makers from Burning Man that will be at Maker Faire Bay Area this year, as well as a few makers who are making art in the desert and also a few bringing new art out there that have participated in Maker Faire in the past.

Microducks Exude Macro Charm

It’s as true for robots as it is for animals, the smallest ones are the cutest ones. If you’ve been following the waddling bipedal bot scene, you were thrilled when Disney showed off their BDX droid. Since then it was spun off by the community into the DIY Open Duck Mini, sponsored by Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics. And now those partner companies have launched Microduck, an adorable $400 open source, trainable robot.

Review: ChompSaw Cardboard Cutter for Kids

From Make: magazine: Sure, the ChompSaw — the kid-safe, desktop power tool for cutting cardboard — looks amazing in the ads flooding social media. As an adult who designs educational handmade paper inventions and simple robot projects, author Kathy Ceceri was itching to see if the ChompSaw could help her bring power tools to her books, videos, and classes.

Ready, Set, Make: 5 Inaugural September Maker Faires

September is always a busy month for Maker Faire and this year five first time events, scattered around the world, are joining the scene. Check out one of these events — or one of many other across the world and year — to talk to the makers. See projects in action. Ask questions. Try something with your own hands. You never know what might spark an idea. Who knows, you might get hooked!

From Copper Foil to Custom PCB: Building a DIY Touch Piano with Sridhar Rajagopal

From Maker Faire Bay Area: In his 2025 talk, Rajagopal walks us through the evolution of his DIY capacitive touch piano synthesizer and MIDI keyboard, from a scrappy first prototype to a polished, feature-rich instrument built on a custom PCB.

Make: Robotic Arms Premium Kit

From the Maker Shed:

Build not one but three robotic arms with this Arduino-powered kit. Guided by an included book, you'll progress from a simple two-link arm through a four-link design and finish with a full 3D, three-degree-of-freedom arm with a gripper. Along the way you'll learn servo control and inverse kinematics for precise movement, no prior robotics experience required. Everything needed is in the box: Arduino, servos, laser-cut MDF and acrylic parts, breadboard, and all the hardware to complete each build.