I'm the editor of Spectrum's "Hands On" DIY column: thank you so much! The general goal is to have projects that can be done in a weekend or three for less than roughly $300 and which point to something interesting beyond just the build itself. A lot of credit has to go to David Schneider who is the author of this piece, and has contributed many of Spectrum's citizen science projects.

BTW, If you want to see just the DIY projects instead of all our DIY-related coverage (which can include e.g. interviews or news articles) another handy link is:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/type/hands-on/