Introducing a useful SOPA- The Stop Online Productivity Avoidance box. After having an extremely productive day on January 18th, I had a thought: What if every day were January 18th? Well, at the push of a button, now it can! The button, switch, and display are wired to an Arduino.  The Arduino communicates with a [...]

This list will be kept up to date on the wiki: http://meatandnetworking.com/w/Kicad_Resources KiCad is an Electronic Design tool, similar to EagleCAD. KiCad is free, open source software, and runs on OSX, Linux and Windows. KiCad is unrestricted. All features may be used for hobbyist or commercial works. Here are some features of KiCad that might appeal to [...]

Another PCB design gets shipped off to China for manufacture! This is a tiny balloon computer.  Without battery or GPS, it weighs less than 40 grams.  It can transmit RTTY or CW at 25 mW on the ham 2M and 70cm bands, and will last up to 16 hours on a single AA. This board [...]

LVL1 has a small rivalry with a few of the regional hackerspaces.  Back in October 2010, when we were but a fledgling space, we hosted a Sumo Bot tournament.  Hive13 and Bloominglabs came by, and we kicked their butts.  Hive13 held the rematch a few months ago, and I started work on my SumoBot.  Unfortunately, I didn’t finish in time, but the effort itself is worthwhile, and my bot will live to see the next match.

LVL1 is great.  A place for creative and motivated people to get together and goad each-other into doing more creative things.  It’s also a great gathering place for tools, as well as knowledge.  A few months ago, the spoiled electrical engineer that I am, I never would have considered making my own PCBs.  Any project [...]

I decided to take a personal day today, and I sat down and knocked out the schematic for a project I’ve wanted to work on for a very long time. This is a  wireless mesh-networking garden monitor.  It’s configured to monitor soil moisture, soil temperature, ground temperature, as well as air temperature and humidity. This [...]

I am Brad, a twenty-something electrical engineer, tinkerer, balloonist, and gadfly. Why Meat and Networking?  I’ve owned this domain since 2007, when I moved in to a house with three friends.  In the months leading up to moving  in together, every conversation about the house ended on the topic of  either meat or networking, so [...]