I spent the day in Mexico City buying components for my forthcoming Euroaxacan workshop in electronics and software for craftsmen. I usually get here fairly cheap wheels for my robots, nice soundspeakers for building music instruments, wire -lots of wire-, great responsive buttons and some other stuff. I try to avoid LEDs, since they are more expensive than in Europe … those and the Arduino boards I bring from home. I usually get them at Electrokit, which is very close to my studio in Malmo.

(c) 2012 D. Cuartielles, Don Ingeniero showing off his Anti-Shield

The street where to find the electronics in Mexico is called Republica del Salvador. In about 100 meters you can find more or less everything you need: motors, potentiometers, wire, USB cables, breadboards, Atmega8L … but also, since two years ago there is Electronica Estudio, our only distributor in the city. I like passing by to visit to Don Ingeniero (Mr. Engineer) or how I like to call him. We usually speak for a while about the future of the platform, I get to see his designs and we plan for forthcoming events (beware, I will be making something during the Easter week at Electronica Estudio).

This time, Don Ingeniero flashed me with one of his biggest sales. He likes to call it the anti-escudo (Spanish for: anti-shield). It is a shield with 8 relays and 3 pin connectors for servo motors. He of course realized that a lot of people just want to hack their home appliances, so his local factory is making a lot of those anti-shields. The reason behind the name? That he decided to put the board upside down. Don thought I wouldn’t like it … the fact is that I loved it, yet another reason to show ToDo’s great design on the boards. You can see it is Arduino even from the back.

Next I will leave for Oaxaca to run a workshop at the Talleres Comunitarios de Zegache until February 22nd, 2012. If you are around the area and want to hang out, just drop me a line at d.cuartielles AT arduino DOT cc, or @dcuartielles on twitter.