You want to know the best way to help get our country out of a funk? Spend money on small businesses. Small businesses create an inordinate number of jobs in this country. Plus, they foster innovation. Take the folks at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

Among a lot of other stuff, they produce some really really cool kits. They are the people who created the gigantic Peggy. After some back and forth, Evelyn and I decided to populate our Peggy with a bunch of white LEDs. So, here comes project #1:

That bag you see is 640 white LEDs. All those suckers will need to be soldered into the Peggy below. Once ‘she’ is populated, we can program Peggy to do all sorts of stuff. Static signs, animation, games, or whatever. We’re going to mount Peggy into a glass-topped table that Evelyn garbage picked. What people will throw away!

At the 2008 Maker Faire in Austin Evelyn met Wendell, who heads up the Evil deeds. He was showing off their newest kit, the Meggy Jr RGB. This is a DIY game system, in a Game Boy Advance form-factor. Here is the box containing the kit:

Now keep in mind, these are people with no staff, creating kits and projects. I’m always impressed by how well done their stuff is. A nice box, cool labels, and so on. Very professional.

Opening the box you see the kit itself.

Look at this work! The parts are in carefully labeled bags. The PCB looks fantastic. This kit even includes a laser cut (?) acrylic faceplate. Even the printed manual looks cool, with a nice little binder clip. 

What many people don’t realize is how much time and energy it takes to produce such a well presented kit. These aren’t people who have a $700 billion bailout to do their work. These are hard working people,  like all of us, who are trying to create a business. 

If you are looking for cool electronics kits that support hard working people, then take a look at the stuff the Lady Ada, Evil Mad Science, and so many more.