Power meters like the Kill-A-Watt are great for keeping track of energy usage, and are also very hackable. The Kill-a-Watt in particular puts out analog signals proportional to current and voltage, ...

This is the type of crowd that’s famous for building their own test equipment. If you need a way to program a flash chip, don’t go out and buy one — you can just build one. Need a spectrum analyzer?

One part that I find myself using somewhat regularly in microcontroller-based experiments is the “USB power bank” that provides USB-standard 5-V DC output and offers some basic protection features.

The Raspberry Pi is all the rage for hobbyists in search of cheap, credit card-sized computers that can run a full PC operating system. Arduino boards have been around nearly a decade, meanwhile, ...