The Ware for October 2016 is shown below:
I like this one because not only is it exquisitely engineered, it’s also aesthetically pleasing.
Sorry for the relative radio silence on the blog — been very heads down the past couple months grinding through several major projects, including my latest book, “The Hardware Hacker”, which is on-track to hit shelves in a couple of months!
The ware for September 2016 is a ColorVision Sypder-series monitor color calibrator.
Congrats to North-X for naming the ware, email me for your prize!
After reading through the extensive comments on August’s ware, I’m not convinced anyone has conclusively identified the ware. I did crack a grin at atomicthumbs’ suggestion that this was a “mainboard from a Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup of Things sensor platform”, but I think I’ll give the prize (please email me to claim it) once again to Christian Vogel for his thoughtful analysis of the circuitry, and possibly correct guess that this might be an old school laser barcode scanner.
The ware is difficult to evaluate due to the lack of a key component — whatever it is that mounts into the pin sockets and interacts with the coil or transformer near the hole in the center of the circuit board. My feeling is the placement of that magnetic device is not accidental.
A little bit of poking around revealed this short Youtube video which purports to demonstrate an old-school laser barcode mechanism. Significantly, it has a coil of similar shape and orientation to that of this ware, as well as three trimpots, although that could be a coincidence. Either way, thanks everyone for the entertaining and thoughtful comments!
The Ware for August 2016 is shown below.
Thanks to Adrian Tschira (notafile) for sharing this well-photographed ware! The make and model of this ware is unknown to both of us, so if an unequivocal identification isn’t made over the coming month, I’ll be searching the comments for either the most thoughtful or the most entertaining analysis of the ware.
