3D printing holds the promise of allowing people to take something they envision and turn it into a tangible object, whether as a prototype for a design or as something that can be useful in and of itself. The biggest problem today is logistics. Despite a low demand for 3D printing, availability is even lower, making the queues for 3D printers at schools and companies long. As the demand goes up, there will need to be a better solution than having a university 3D printing lab trying to keep up. The guys at Dreambox think they have a solution. What if all you had to do was build a design or pick one out of a library,…

The dorm rooms that are often the most visited by friends are the ones with a fridge, a Playstation, and a Bose stereo. The gadgets and features of the “lucky” kids in the high-dollar dorms are great but they have nothing on BRAD. Take a few hundred dollars worth of equipment, a good amount of time putting it together, lots of skill and a ton of creativity and you have what Berkeley Engineering freshman Derek Low put together in unit 2, Griffith’s Hall room 402. The innovative approach to automation may have a short life, however. Despite keeping in line with housing standards of using tape rather than…