Autobibliography: Inspirational makers, electronics edition
A lightly-annotated list of some of my favorite makers of electronics projects, as a companion post to Learning to learn how to play with electronics.
Previous autobibliographies: Feb 2025, May 2025
Early influences
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Lenore M. Edman and Windell H. Oskay of Evil Mad Scientist (RSS feed)
The first folks whose maker blog I started following. Lots of cool stuff around building pen plotters, and their Interactive LED Coffee Table—as demonstrated by Harley Cat—was a particularly formative project that I’ve thought about regularly over the years:
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Amy, aka sailorhg, of electrocuties and sailorhg
Aesthetically pleasing projects and zines. I think I first encountered sailorhg through this functional transit card ring made by dissolving an RFID-based transit card. I got as far as the “dissolving the card” part; I used a cheapo plastic keychain for mine, instead of going the resin route, and it was very satisfying to use to tap onto the T.1
Friends
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Creative, cute, and well-documented projects, often designed for middle-grade kids—oh, and she published her second book just the other day! Check both books out: Maker Girl and Professor Smarts, Hex Allen and the Clanksmiths.
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Kits and tutorials, mainly related to audio—e.g., this comprehensive Electret Microphones write-up.
Sculpture, wearables, audio
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I am obsessed with Mohit Bhoite’s sculptural electronics.
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Debra of Geek Mom Projects
Some glowy, some wearable, some both! Debra does an especially good job of documenting her in-progress projects, playing with different materials, and sharing both what did and what didn’t work—which has really helped me get comfortable in my own build process.
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Maker of fantastic brass and LED jewelry, among other projects.
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Helen Leigh
Beautifully sculptural items, often involving music or fabric.
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Christina Ernst of She Builds Robots
“Fashioneering”!
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Moritz Klein
Circuit design, e.g. for audio circuits.
This is a non-comprehensive list! I reserve the right to update it when I inevitably discover that I’ve forgotten someone.
Footnotes
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Unfortunately I stalled so long on making mine that my city’s transit system enabled their tap-to-pay system basically within a month of me dissolving my card, and it was easier to switch over to using my phone. Ah well. 🙃↩︎
- Created: 2025-11-22
- Type: Link round-up
- Tags: autobibliography, musings, hardware, electronics