I am always impressed by the incredible work that entrepreneurs bring to the DIY electronics market.

This is the Logic analyzer by Joe Garrison (Saleae LLC (not to be confused with Saelig (not to be confused with caesar salad))), which can be purchased for $150

The Logic board (like the device it is descended from) is based off of the Cypress EZ-USB series chips (one of the first micro families I worked with!) These chips are quite interesting in that they are ‘flashless’, and can be programmed by using a special driver where the chip downloads the code using a ‘pre-enumeration’ driver. (Its a trip, srsly!)
What I didn’t know about this chip is that not only does it do high-speed USB 2.0 but it can apparently do bulk transfers in a separate core, so that it can provide as much as 24 MB/s to move data from an input port to the USB line. For a 48MHz device, that is damn impressive – 2 cycles per sample!

The cases are milled out of aluminum, then anodized and laser-etched

The windows software is nicely designed, and offers assistance when configuring pins

You may be asking, “How can I know for sure that this business will be successful?” That is easy!

1. Evidence of an LP2844 thermal printer. Anybody who is really in business has one of these. They are the greatest thing in the world. (Hint: they are a ripoff new, buy one on ebay for $100 or convince UPS to give you one) Owning an LP2844 says “I actually send things to people who pay me, and often enough to have a postage printer!”

2. ULine packaging and free Priority mail boxes. See above. The “VHS” style boxes are the bombity-bomb.

Ever wish you had a monkey that would give you permission to avoid work?
Apparently, Marek Bereza does…he got together with some friends to make a stuffed money that will generate a random excuse whenever its glowing bellybutton is pressed.

The monkey is made using an arduino & an adafruit wave shield along with a backlit LED mounted on a aluminum ring

See more photos of the project as it is made on flickr…

Collin has quite a hack on his plate: a DIY MIDI-to-CV box. This will allow him to send MIDI to older/inexpensive synths that have a line into the VCO. It consists of a 12-bit R2R DAC built using a DC boarduino, a MIDI opto-isolator box and a Gakken 150 analog synth kit

See more at his flickr set

Guilherme Martins is learning electronics and robotics the hardcore way: by building a lot of robots! He used an Arduino + Adafruit motor shield (which is ideal for making little DC/servo robots if I don’t say so myself! )
This robot went through a couple iterations, with different sensors and power supplies…See more pix at flickr!

Stacy Millions built her his (sorry!) mintyboost to match up with a OpenMoko Neo phone. By default, the phone uses the ‘correct’ 100mA drain current to charge when there is no USB enumeration. However, it is possible to force the phone into using a 500mA charging current via software. So she he wrote a little app that will hypercharge!
This is pretty cool: if you have a typical phone, there is no way to poke & hack the hardware at these levels