For every edition of Elektor Labs magazine the editorial team makes a concerted attempt at balancing what effectively goes in print and online. In the process, various ‘ranges’ contend as we want to keep as many readers happy as possible without being sycophants to fans of just one field in electronics. A weighting quadrant already arises by declaring the ranges hobbyist – professional as one “scale” (say x) and 100% hands-on – nice to know as the other (y). But there are confounding ‘z’ ranges as well, meaning more aspects to complicate our final compilation: old school versus programming only, microcontroller versus analogue, sponsored versus journalistic, technology versus ethics, and Homelab versus Elektor Labs, just to mention a few. And I mean versus in the sense of: contrasting with; not: opposing. [read on]