The August recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is The Factory, a student-run hardware design lab at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The Factory aims to give students access to advanced tools for their hardware projects, space to work on their projects, and support in developing technical skills.

The Factory has previously offered workshops on VIM, VHDL, C, and PC building. They also run a Hackathon called The Forge. In one instance of The Forge students formed teams and built a line tracing robot to race against the other teams. In non-event related times, students in this lab have completed projects such as an IoT system for the trash cans on the McGill campus to alert the cleaning teams when a trash can is full, custom video game controllers, and an automated watering system for plants. About 40-50 students currently frequent The Factory, and they are all passionate about electronics, hardware, and related research.

We are sending The Factory a HackRF One so their lab members can fulfill their hopes of offering workshops and creating materials on wireless systems, satellite communication, and spectrum analysis. Good luck and have fun!