This is currently only a very limited index of the things I enjoy on the internet. I'll do my best to update it every so often with new Cool Things.
Software
- CadQuery: OpenSCAD, but designed in the past century: python, constraints, references, STEP export, and more.
- Ondsel: FreeCAD, but usable
- Zip-o-mat's Slic3r: Nonplanar slicing!
- WORHP: decent NLP solver (SQP method) whose name stands for We Optimize Really Huge Problems (helped me fix my life)
- ForcesPRO: create fast embedded optimizers, for free!
- fuckit.py: the greatest python library to ever exist. "This module is like violence: if it doesn't work, you just need more of it."
- qlock, a js quine clock
Hardware
- RepRap: the wonderful project that brought low-cost rapid prototyping to everyone
- Odrive: a beautiful, open-source brushless motor driver
- Rack Robotics Powercore: Wire EDM for everyone
- Rotoforge: an innovative, cheap approach to metal 3D printing
- Poma Lifts, so many bandaid solutions piled together that it's an engineering marvel
Art
Books
- Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design, one of the hardware bibles
- Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations, also known as the software bible or the blue book
- media.catboy.camp, a repository of higher level math, physics, and robotics texts, research papers, and delicious recipies
- Sylvia Herbert, Safe Real-World Autonomy in Uncertain and Unstructured Environments, has a very good intro on hamilton-jacobi reachability analysis
Articles
Misc