The lamp on my office shelf glows solid red the instant my camera goes live, and turns off the second the meeting ends. Nobody has to knock and wonder. My wife, a kid, the dog-walker — anyone who glances in knows I’m on camera without me saying a word. And by my own stubborn definition, that little bulb is a robot.
Two and a half years into my whale song project I’ve killed one platform, walked away from a $13K dev kit, gotten my ham license, and pivoted to (water-borne) drones. I can do that link myself across the Bay of Banderas with a radio I’m now legally allowed to key up. Read on.
I’ve been teasing this for a while. Time to stop teasing. Meet Gorai — a modern, open-source robotics framework written in Go.
Next week I get to watch one of my favorite things: see a room full of smart people handed a hard problem and watch them figure it out in real time. I’m headed to InfoComm to mentor, judge, and sit on a panel for an idea sprint about AI at the edge. And I could not be more excited.
I’ve been dorking around with local AI coding agents for a while now. At some point curiosity got the better of me and I had to know: what the heck are these things actually doing under the hood?
Guest Post by Luca Herlein
The artificial divide between robotics and drone ecosystems made sense once. Today, it’s holding back the entire industry.
If software changes something in the real world, it’s a robot.
After two years of false starts with the Bristlemouth platform and permit headaches, I’m revisiting my whale song project with a completely different approach: semi-autonomous floating drones. The regulatory landscape has forced a rethink, and honestly, it might lead to something better.
Looking back at 2025, one theme dominates: AI agentic programming went from novelty to necessity. This year transformed how I think about software development, career advice, and even my personal hardware projects. Here’s what I wrote about, what I learned, and what I expect in 2026.
Python dominates robotics today. C++ is the serious choice. But I’m starting to think we’ve been sleeping on Go. Here’s why I’m actively exploring it.
Think self-driving technology requires deep pockets to play with? Think again. AWS DeepRacer and Autoware are the leading edges of self-driving automation for the maker.
I’m building a board for robotics, but it’s also useful for IoT and home automation. What’s it do? What problem does it solve? It’s basically a WiFi interface to a variety of I2C-driven devices (motors or sensors). The I2C side is Engineered to be highly robust and reliable.