After a lot of ordering parts, tweaking of PCB layouts, and optimizing the bill of materials, the new Rascals have arrived from the assembler in Colorado. Whenever I build a new version of the Rascal, the big question is, "Have I made some horribly stupid error that has turned…

I just sent the Rascal 1.1 PCB off to International Circuits for fabrication. I'm calling it version 1.1 because the last version, which was officially 0.6, AKA "the beta," turned out to be 1.0-level in quality. Here's a screenshot of the final layout. (Click…

The first production run of 15 Rascals sold out a few days ago. Thanks to all of you who bought them-- the revenue will go directly back into making the next run. The next batch of Rascals will be nearly identical to the previous batch. The hardware changes are: Added…

The Rascal won the Editors' Choice award in the Open Source Project category at Postscapes a few days ago. Postscapes is a site in South Korea that tracks the "internet of things," which means stuff like the Rascal, more or less. In the aftermath of the contest, Trevor Harwood of…

If you want to mount the Rascal in a metal enclosure, you need a way to hold the board away from the enclosure, so the electronics don't get shorted out. For most of the history of electronics, this sort of task has been accomplished using small, annoying posts called "…

Here's a low quality video of a truly excellent event. I'm working on a project to control the light blades on the Greenway in Boston through text messages. While I was filming the video with my phone, Dan was crouched in "The Vault," a concrete bunker under the…

Today, I am delighted and terrified to announce that the Rascal is available for sale. The Rascal beta testers have done their job. As of today, there are 11 Rascals available for sale in the Rascal store. The hardware is the same as the Rascals in the beta test, but…

Through the unseen machinations of social networks, I was invited by LED zealot Mike Kuniavsky to the Sketching in Hardware conference in Philadelphia last weekend. All 38 attendees were required to give an 18 minute presentation related to the topic of the conference, which is tools for physical computing prototyping.…

The Rascal hardware testing has been successful so far-- no major problems have been discovered so far. As a result, I've been able to spend more of my time working on the Rascal programming tools I started back in late January while waiting for hardware fabrication. The major goal of…

Last weekend, a pile of Rascals, some network infrastructure and I went to the Cambridge Maker Faire, which has been on the tennis courts at Cambridge Rindge and Latin for the last couple of years. (We're talking Cambridge, USA, home of Harvard and MIT, not Cambridge, UK.) Chris Connors, the…