This is a great reminder that these projects are pretty accessible these days. The hardware is reasonably priced, and the code can either be written (or scavenged) pretty easily.
I don't say that to take away from the hard work and exceptional execution of this project, but rather as a reminder that we should all get off our butts more often and make something. In the end this is stuff that almost anyone with enough motivation can tackle (though perhaps not with the same panache).
A few weeks ago I started playing with some AVR (arduino) chips and a box of electronics parts, and it's been way more fun than I thought it would be. There's a certain satisfaction of actually building something tangible that is missing in my professional high-level coding, for example flipping a bit in a register and watching an led turn on or a motor start turning. It's also fun to see what I can get out of 8KB of storage and 512 bytes of RAM, something I'm not used to with the 96GB servers I normally write code for. I've also learned a ton about digital and analog electronics.
If you have any programming experience (which on this site you more than likely do), you can get up and running with an Arduino starter kit in like 10 minutes. It has a very active community and there's tons of articles covering all the basics.
Where do you go after making a few variations on blink with the starter kit? I lost interest a year ago after managing to lose parts of the kit, but I was lucky enough to complete an Arduphone at linux.conf.au [0]. Definitely looking to get back into this as a hobby!
After doing the workshop, I think I do better with set projects rather than experimentation.
I don't say that to take away from the hard work and exceptional execution of this project, but rather as a reminder that we should all get off our butts more often and make something. In the end this is stuff that almost anyone with enough motivation can tackle (though perhaps not with the same panache).