Over at the Life Scoop site, I posted about several hubs of hardware hacking online. BB readers will be familiar with most of the communities I mention, but hopefully it's a decent starting point for new makers fighting against planned obsolescence. Seen here, a MintyBoost kit from Adafruit Industries.
When I was a kid and our family's TV went on the fritz, my big brother would open the back with a screwdriver, glance at the circuit diagram printed inside, and pull a tube out. We'd go to the hardware store, test it, purchase a replacement that he would install, and be fully operational in time for Star Trek that evening. Ah, the good old days. Now, curbs everywhere are littered with the rotting corpses of big black televisions that have given up the ghost in the machine. Sadly, consumer electronics have entered an age of "no user serviceable parts inside." That may be the rule, but a growing culture of hardware hackers is voiding warrantees with glee and sharing what they learn online. From simply replacing an iPod battery to customizing a store-bought espresso machine with a scavenged industrial sensor to modding a Microsoft Kinect into a vision system for a homebrew robot, these makers are pushing technology beyond the limits set by the manufacturers.
