This page was last modified: July 18th 2011 at 11:50PM EST

This is the first tutorial in a tutorial series that seeks to provide basic legal guidance to makers, modders, and hackers as they work on their projects. It is an informal guide written by somebody with no formal legal training, and, as such, should not be used as a substitute for legal counsel.

Introduction:

Making has come a long way as a hobby over the past half century. Computers have become cheap, ubiquitous, and powerful, allowing the average hobbyist to do things that were once only available to major corporations. New communities have arisen to help develop new technologies, such as UAVs and 3D-printing. Open source and the internet have spread from a software idea to a hardware idea to a broad subculture of sharing and development. Indeed, some of the projects and ideas that are shared through open licenses are truly advanced, potentially on par with some commercial products.

Due to this, it seems likely that someday, somewhere some maker will develop an advanced project, that, beyond simply being a technological marvel, could be legitimately dangerous if placed in the wrong hands. In the United States, there are legal safeguards and regulations to prevent the export of such information to potential enemies of the country, and heavy fines if these regulations are disobeyed. Therefore, every maker should have a basic familiarity with ITAR.
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This post was last modified on July 18th, 2011 at 11:50PM EST

In part 1 of the Mac OSX tutorial series, we installed X11 and fink on the system to enable open source hardware packages. Now, with that taken care of, it’s time to install PCB layout software.
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This post was last modified on July 18th, 2011 at 11:51PM EST

To kick off the embedded development on Mac OSX series, we begin with the foundation for open source software on the Mac: fink and X11. Embedded hardware development requires good design software, and many of the best design packages are available as free or open source software. For Linux variants, apt-get is the goto method for installing software packages. For those on the Mac OS X platform, however, apt-get is not included in the system by default.

Note: use of fink and X11 requires the mac user to wade into the Terminal and the Unix guts of the operating system. If you are unfamiliar with Unix or the Terminal application, it is highly recommended that you familiarize yourself via some tutorials. Some well written tutorials are included here, here, and/or here.
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This post was last modified on July 18th, 2011 at 11:52PM EST

Documentation is fun!  Well… not really, but it’s a necessary evil if you plan to share your projects with the open-source community (or remember how you did something a year or two down the road).  Documentation may not be glamorous, but it’s an important aspect of producing great, repeatable projects and improving one’s skills over time. What sorts of documentation do you need, though? Below we have written some suggestions of documentation you may want to include in your next project. (continue reading…)

Tutorial Number 2 was posted today, covering Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) operating theory and the differences between hardware and software implementations.  Check it out here!

The mbed is a prototyping platform that came out late last year. Featuring a cloud-based compiler, intuitive development environment, and powerful 32-bit ARM processor, the mbed is designed to help expedite prototyping of electronics concepts. With this in mind, the folks here at NBitWonder created a tutorial that serves as an introduction to the mbed platform. Check it out here.