Engineered Reality: Prototyping Inventions for Television

Invention has always made popular television, and the advent of reality TV, along with advances in rapid prototyping technology, has made it possible to design and create inventions in front of the camera. There is also growing interest in producing TV that attracts home viewers who are, or aspire to be, hackers. The authors describe their experiences making a cable TV show in which each episode is dedicated to creating a novel prototype. To achieve this goal within the time and budgetary constraints of the TV process, they must hack or repurpose both hardware and software elements.