Among the friends we've been making over in the PopSci booth at Maker Faire include the guys from Octoparts—an aggregate search engine for electronic components. If you've ever tried to buy resistors, capacitors, or any other component on the Web, you know how obscure and confusing some of these ordering sites can be—if you don't know your part number, you're often out of luck. With Octoparts, just type in what you're looking for and find the best price. In the works is an online app to save and share your parts list for your project. Now that Radio Shack has  almost entirely moved out of the components trade in their stores, Octoparts is a new tinkerer's dream. —John Mahoney

Time: 1 hour

Retail Cost: $43.94 (includes free coffee and cookies)

MJB coffee: $3.50


Pepperidge Farms Pirouette: $6


Copper wire: $1, Radio Shack


N-Female panel connector: $10, electro-comm.com (RF Industries part no. RFN-1022)

If you've ever thought it'd be cool to make your own robot but didn't because your options were Legos (ho-hum) or fabricating one from scratch (who's got the time?), listen up: RadioShack's new Vex Robotics Design System (vexrobotics.com) is the ultimate compromise. The $300 kit contains more than 500 parts, including steel plates, motors, radio receivers and a six-channel remote. What to build? That's up to you.