I recently soldered up a Boarduino from Adafruit Industries. Boarduino is simply an Arduino clone with a smaller form factor, designed to plug directly into a breadboard rather than giving you the female headers of the original. I thought I’d post a few photos of the process.

I really like the idea of the Boarduino, because I found I was doing almost all of my prototyping on a breadboard, and it seemed like I was always trying to figure out new and different ways to anchor the big Arduino down.

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MAKE Blog pointed me to this extremely cool project called a Wave Bubble. Essentially, this device is a portable, battery-powered radio frequency jammer, that will effectively disable cellphone and other RF communication (RFID, GPS, WiFi) within about a 2-meter radius of the user.

The design of the Wave Bubble comes from an MIT EE/CS masters thesis entitled “Social Defense Mechanisms: Tools for Reclaiming our Personal Space,” in which the author describes the tradition of designing and using electronic devices as social commentary, known as “Design Noir.”

In addition to providing a detailed description and circuit diagrams for builing the Wave Bubble, the thesis is also rife with intelligent commentary on the psycho-social implications of using electronic products and is quite an enjoyable read.

From the thesis:

Manufacture and use of Wave Bubble is not exempt from FCC regulations. Anyone who decides to build and use it is performing an act of civil disobedience.

I love it! More information and some great photos are available at ladyada.net.