DIY Hardware at Microsoft

A while back I posted about The Garage at Microsoft and also posted about the Science Fairs that group organizes within the company. The latest Science Fair recently ran alongside our internal Hardware Summit and there was a real focus on DIY Hardware. Last time around I highlighted .Net Gadgeteer and along with the arduino, nextduino, makerbot we’re seeing a lot of enthusiasm for building things.

In this video with Larry Larsen of Channel 9, we see a number of DIY hardware projects, including:

  • A handmade laser light show projector built by an engineering in the Windows SkyDrive team.
  • A 3D Face Scanner built in a week using an stepper motor from an old floppy drive, a Microsoft LifeCam, and a customer array of LEDs.
  • MakeMayhem – a library that makes it easy for non-programs to rig up their own project

Microsoft has a ton of software geeks around but as I mentioned in my post about the model shop recently, there are plenty of hardware geeks around too!