Hardware Hacking is the New Black

I haven’t always been a solder-wielding hardware nerd.  In fact, merely a year ago I didn’t even know what solder was, or why it was useful. So what changed? Well, my love of hardware hacking started something like this:
We’ve all been in this situation. You walk into a restaurant or a coffee shop and see a TV blaring in the corner.  You ignore it at first, but inevitably someone gets distracted, their eyes glaze over and they become comatose by whatever is on the tube. Conversations grind to a halt, interaction dies a slow death and we ask, “What are you watching?”.
Having faced this dilemma many many times, I had resigned myself to that there was nothing to be done.  Then one evening everything changed.  I stumbled upon a hardware circuit hacking class at local hackerspace, Noisebridge, and realized that in about 30 minutes I could build a device to discreetly turn off any TV within a short range. Check it out:

How awesome it that! I built my first TV-B-Gone that evening and haven’t looked back since.  There’s an incredible amount of satisfaction that comes with building a piece of hardware and then seeing it “come to life” once complete.
Apart from turning off TV’s, Noisebridge’s Circuit Hacking Monday class has a var...