Audio Transcript

[00:00:03]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:17]
Ben Newsome: Yes, welcome again to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. Glad to have you, and yet again we are talking STEM education. I tell you what, I really love this particular store. I don’t always say this on this particular podcast, but I tell you right now, Jaycar Electronics has done something very, very cool. They’ve opened a makerspace. The heart of Sydney has been turned into this brilliant site where people can drop on by and work on their projects, access fabrication services like 3D printing and laser cutting, and participate in workshops where they can learn how to code Arduino projects and all that sort of thing. It’s so cool.

[00:00:54]
Ben Newsome: Today I’m speaking with Michael Sutherland, who is the retail innovation manager for Jaycar Electronics. We get to hear a little bit about why they’ve gone ahead and made this thing, how this is going to help support not just their customers who walk through the door, but schools. Considering how many schools there really are around Australia, and how many Jaycar Electronics stores there actually are, this could be a really handy tool if you’re an educator near a Jaycar store. I’ve got this funny feeling it’s going to expand and grow and become part of the furniture, part of the place that you can access, part of your resources as an educator to drop into a Jaycar store if you can’t set up a makerspace at your site.

[00:01:36]
Ben Newsome: So, are you intrigued? Are you interested? Do you want to know what’s happening at the local electronics store, Jaycar? It’s worth checking out. So listen on in. Michael’s got a bit to share about this, and maybe have a think about how you could use these services if you’re near one of their locations. So, let’s find out a little bit more.

[00:01:54]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re all about science, ed tech and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S and click 100 free experiments.

[00:02:12]
Michael Sutherland: Hey Ben, thanks for having me.

[00:02:14]
Ben Newsome: Mate, I’m stoked that you can come along on this podcast because to be honest, full disclosure, I’ve been a bit of a Jaycar fan over the years because let’s be honest, I do physics, I’m a science person and you guys have stuff that can help people like us.

[00:02:30]
Michael Sutherland: Oh, absolutely. I think Jaycar is one of those places that you’ve either never heard of it, or you go in there every day or every weekend. So yeah, glad that you’re a big fan.

[00:02:40]
Ben Newsome: Mate, I really am, and it’s not just because you’re on this podcast. It genuinely is the case. I mean, the thing is though, a lot of people listen to us all over the world and go, “No idea what Jaycar is.” So give us a bit of a heads up about what it is all about.

[00:02:53]
Michael Sutherland: Okay, so Jaycar is an electronics store and always has been. I know it’s got “car” in the name, but that’s a whole another story, a long story behind that. But yeah, we don’t sell car parts, we sell electronics. Everything from home consumer electronics all the way down to your tiny components and resistors, LEDs, that kind of thing.

[00:03:12]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, and this really came out of the hobbyist world, didn’t it?

[00:03:16]
Michael Sutherland: Absolutely. It kind of came out, I think the company’s about 35 years old now, maybe a bit more. And it’s very much a hobbyist mecca. We do a lot in that space. A lot of Arduino, Raspberry Pi is pretty big with us as well as everything you need to build your project, whether it be a little school project or automating your home.

[00:03:41]
Ben Newsome: Well, that’s the thing. Our head office is in Blacktown in Northwest Sydney and there is a Blacktown store. I mean, there are like 150 stores around the place and I just see it as a depot for just stuff when I need to build something fast.

[00:03:53]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, absolutely. We thrive in that kind of, I guess you could call it electronics convenience space, where you’ve got an idea, you just want to come in and go nuts.

[00:04:02]
Ben Newsome: Now, what’s your role? What do you get up to at Jaycar? I know where we’re going with this because I know this Maker Hub that you guys have built in Broadway is awesome, but I’d kind of love to know what you get up to in Jaycar yourself.

[00:04:14]
Michael Sutherland: So, I’m the retail innovation manager. I actually started off just working on the shop floor while I was studying science myself some years ago.

[00:04:23]
Ben Newsome: Oh, whereabouts?

[00:04:24]
Michael Sutherland: UWS, or it’s renamed now, WSU.

[00:04:28]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, Western Sydney Uni, kind of put the letters around the other way. University of Western Sydney, Western Sydney University.

[00:04:34]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, so I studied there back in the day and kind of fell into the creative space and now, thankfully, was put in charge of running this project on the ground which is our Maker Hub.

[00:04:47]
Ben Newsome: Which really brings to the crux of what this is about. I mean, people listening to this know full well that makerspaces have been a bit of a thing for a few years now. But putting it into the heart of a major electronics retailing store is really cool. And you’ve just opened this thing.

[00:05:05]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, it’s been a long time coming. There’s a lot of work gone behind the scenes on this, a lot of people involved. But we’ve opened up the Jaycar Maker Hub at Broadway. What it is, it is a retail store, but in the heart of it is a makerspace. And a true one.

[00:05:24]
Ben Newsome: I was just having a look at it, and it’s not just a couple of soldering irons and things. I mean, you’ve got some serious stuff there.

[00:05:31]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, we’ve got some good gear in there and there’s some more on the way. We’ve got a few 3D printers set up there. We’ve got a PCB printer, which is a pretty exciting bit of kit. A PCB mill. We’ve got some laser gear there. We’ve got a nice big laser cutter engraver on its way as well. So it’s a pretty cool little space.

[00:05:50]
Ben Newsome: So obviously, these sort of things are to support the store, but then again, you’ve got a whole bunch of hobbyists who just want to be able to do stuff and they just don’t have the room in their house or in their school or wherever it is. This place is completely set up properly. I know this is an audio thing, so people can’t imagine, but what does it sort of look like? Walk us through the place.

[00:06:14]
Michael Sutherland: Okay, so I’ll give you a virtual audio tour. You walk in the front door, and you’ve got a nice big retail display area. There’s some really nice interactive displays, some robotics stuff on display, some printers on display. You walk through the shop, you’ve got what you would consider to be a regular Jaycar product range.

[00:06:40]
Michael Sutherland: And then as you make your way down the back of the store, you’ll see about a third of the store is cut out in a workshop style. So we’ve got rows of benches for people to come in and sit down and work on their project or do some soldering, do some coding, what have you. You’ll also see the big machines at the back probably firing away, printing off someone’s project. We’ve also got a collaborative space, which is essentially a sit-down table with an electronic whiteboard and a traditional whiteboard for people to come and work on group projects as well, which I think is one of my favourite places in the space. So it’s pretty cool.

[00:07:16]
Ben Newsome: No, that’s really cool. Even just thinking about that, you’ve got collaborative spaces and you’ve got drop-in spaces. Is this something where you’re running set sessions that people can book into? Or can I just come in off the street with this stuff?

[00:07:31]
Michael Sutherland: It’s a bit of both. You can rock in and if there’s a spare bench, you can pull up and start working on your project or your assignment. But we do have set workshops. We’re starting off nice and slow on this and we’re building our way up because it is quite early. We just make sure everyone’s found their feet. But essentially there will be regular scheduled workshops running out of there, starting next Sunday with our microcontroller, Arduino Snake game.

[00:08:02]
Ben Newsome: Tell us more. What is this? Arduino is a cool thing, but just tell us what you’re going to do with this.

[00:08:08]
Michael Sutherland: So this is a workshop which is essentially everyone from someone who’s familiar with Arduino all the way down to someone who’s never heard of it before can turn up. What will happen is our tech staff there will talk you through turning your Arduino board and a set of components into a Snake game. Like the old Nokia Snake game where you run the snake around, it gets longer.

[00:08:34]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I used that a lot while sitting in airport lounges.

[00:08:38]
Michael Sutherland: So we thought that was a cool little project just to spark the imagination. You won’t walk away from that knowing everything there is to know about Arduino, but hopefully it sparks a bit of imagination and you might think, “Ah, I can think of some cool things I could do with this now.”

[00:08:54]
Ben Newsome: Well, that’s the thing about Arduino. Focusing on one area here, but there is a whole community that really gets right into that.

[00:09:03]
Michael Sutherland: Oh, absolutely. And that’s the community that we really built this space for. And it’s the reason why we’ve done this, why we’ve cut a third of a shop out and just dedicated it to a workshop and collaborative space, is because electronics now and the maker movement is really a community thing. I think that a company can sometimes get too big and forget about that. This is all about reminding people that we are a part of that community and we want somewhere for people to come and in person work on their gear instead of just having to exist in online forums.

[00:09:38]
Ben Newsome: Which really is quite neat, because it really opens up the opportunity for, yeah, you can drop in as the public, whether you’re just a kid wanting to mess around with their parents building stuff or you’ve been doing this for 40 years and you want to come on in and do this. But at the same point, with these activities that are coming in, and I know your next Sunday thing is effectively part of the holiday programmes that comes out, because all these kids just dump out of school and they’ve got to do something. But kids go back to school, and there’s very much an opportunity with a space like this. If there are schools just nearby that don’t have a space like this but would dearly love access to it, this is kind of like a no-brainer.

[00:10:13]
Michael Sutherland: Oh, absolutely. And that’s something that we really want to encourage and that’s something that now that we’ve found our feet, we’re going to start actively doing is reaching out to schools or having schools reach out to us and bringing small groups to us to use our space or even to participate in our workshops with our staff there. Or even for teachers to come along. I think we do some workshops that would be beneficial for teachers as well, not just for students.

[00:10:38]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, that’s highly important because if you don’t know what to teach the kids, it makes it real hard to run the lesson.

[00:10:45]
Michael Sutherland: Some things are intimidating. Like 3D printers are such a common thing in schools now, but it’s not very common to know how to use one very well.

[00:10:55]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, and they’re getting off the hook. I just got back from ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education’s main conference in Philadelphia. I got back last week, totally jet-lagged. But there are some massive 3D printers. It’s not like the box on the shelf anymore. These things can get out of hand.

[00:11:11]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, we’ve got one of our really big ones on display, but we’ve found there’s a real divide between, anyone can just pick one up off the shelf, and you can look at online forums on how to use the printer, but there’s not really much in between that. So that’s one of the things that we offer is we can show you how to service and how to use your printer effectively, how to troubleshoot your prints, things like that. That’s another workshop that we’ll be running is an introduction to 3D printing and servicing your 3D printer.

[00:11:44]
Ben Newsome: So do they have someone there on hand? I’d imagine you guys will, to be able to help with them. When you’re playing with routers and things like that, obviously there’s bits that will cut things because otherwise they won’t route, that’s right. There’s a bit of training with that too. I’d imagine there’d almost be mini-courses almost coming up or something like that, or do you just say, “Hey, I want to build this. Can you help me?”

[00:12:05]
Michael Sutherland: Absolutely. We’ve got someone in that space at all times to not just supervise, but to help. We’ve gone out and recruited technical specialists. People who have experience in the education area as well as in electronics and machine maintenance, things like that. So we’ve got a pretty wide spectrum of skill sets in there. The sky’s the limit on the kind of things that we’re going to run in there. We’re happy to take suggestions as well. If there’s something that people think that we should be doing a workshop on, we’ll happily build one and teach it.

[00:12:43]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, mind you, I must say, considering the tools and devices you’ve got on hand, and they can handle a lot of different materials and quite well, and considering that it is a Jaycar store, which means you can wire up pretty much whatever you want. I can’t see there being much of a drama with what you’ve already got already.

[00:13:01]
Michael Sutherland: Oh no, we’ve come up with some crazy things already. I mean, we’ve been open for about two weeks.

[00:13:07]
Ben Newsome: What have you seen?

[00:13:08]
Michael Sutherland: The first print that we did, so we do offer 3D printing as a service there, which is pretty cool. The first print that we had in wasn’t really anything to do with electronics. It was a guy who had found a 3D model of a pug that looked like his pug and he really wanted to get it printed, and he was over the moon when we said we could print that out for him. So we get stoked. But there’s some more interesting things. We actually built an arcade joystick out of that space there. Drawing up in CAD a lid for a box, and then cutting the holes out of it, and then printing out the lid, putting all the buttons into it, and connecting that up to a Raspberry Pi to make our own little arcade machine.

[00:13:51]
Ben Newsome: Oh, that’s so neat. Often people think they’ve got to buy it off the shelf all the time. But the point of 3D printing and having access to electronics is you can do this yourself.

[00:14:02]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, and if you mess it up the first time, it’s not a real big deal. You can just go back to the drawing board and start again. Have another go at printing.

[00:14:10]
Ben Newsome: Exactly right. As long as your power sources aren’t high, it’s no big deal. I actually remember seeing only recently, you can get these pens, I think they call them 3Doodlers or whatever they’re called, that will print in air. So effectively you’re just running a filament through a heat source and it just prints as you go. And I was watching these people build some things, they were doing this collaborative thing where some kids were making the purple components, some kids were making the green components. I was going, “What on earth are they making?” I came back a couple hours later, because it was at this conference, and they were building this working V8 engine.

[00:14:45]
Michael Sutherland: Wow.

[00:14:47]
Ben Newsome: So some kids were making the pistons and bits, and other people were making the rockers and everything else, like all the bits were there. It kind of takes some time. But when you put a lot of people on task and they’re building components, it’s almost Ford in its nature, and you can make this thing up.

[00:15:03]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, we actually sell a pen like that. I’ve seen some pretty interesting things be created. Those things use the same technology as a regular 3D printer, it just takes a lot more hand-eye coordination to get that to work.

[00:15:16]
Ben Newsome: Oh absolutely. I’d love to see, and I imagine there’d be someone who’d be able to develop it, or if not, it’s already developed and I’m just not aware of it. It would be really interesting whether you’d almost be able to, if you’re able to print a filament that had the insulation around a copper wire, you could almost create your circuits on the fly.

[00:15:34]
Michael Sutherland: Well, it’s funny that you say that. You can actually get conductive filament for 3D printers.

[00:15:40]
Ben Newsome: There you go, so that shows you how much I don’t know. Great.

[00:15:43]
Michael Sutherland: And we have dual filament printers, so you can print the insulation and the conductive material at the same time. So you could, yeah, you could print your own circuit.

[00:15:52]
Ben Newsome: Interesting. And fry your own circuit if you don’t get it done right.

[00:15:56]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah.

[00:15:58]
Ben Newsome: Oh, fantastic. So this is a really great concept. Now currently it’s in Broadway Shopping Centre. So those people who don’t know where that is, it’s kind of in the heart of Sydney, bit south.

[00:16:07]
Michael Sutherland: Yes, it’s the Central Park Shopping Mall there on Broadway. Across from the Daiso, usually say that and people know where it is straight away.

[00:16:15]
Ben Newsome: Got it, got it, got it. But the thing is like Jaycar, you guys have like 150 stores or something.

[00:16:20]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, we’re everywhere now. All over Australia and New Zealand. They don’t all look as cool as the latest concept store, but we all do the same stuff and our staff are all massive electronics enthusiasts in one way or another.

[00:16:35]
Ben Newsome: Oh yeah, well that’s one of the things that I’ve always loved, and I know if any of you listening are going, “Oh my god, this is just a massive ad for Jaycar.” It’s not. These places actually really are a good spot. One of the things I like about it is you rock on in and the people who are staffing the store actually know what they’re talking about.

[00:16:50]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, that’s definitely something that we work really hard on is not only finding people who already know a lot about electronics, but we do a lot of training with our staff as well to get them up to speed.

[00:17:01]
Ben Newsome: And I imagine when you’re dealing with a hobbyist who’s been doing it for 40 years, you’re going to get caught out pretty fast if you don’t know what you’re doing.

[00:17:08]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, you find yourself in hot water pretty quick if you try to make things up on the fly.

[00:17:11]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely right. And that’s cool. So you’ve got all these stores. Obviously, something like this, it’s not a cheap adventure, but at the same point, if people are engaging with this space, I’d imagine you guys might have plans to slowly roll that out into other sites.

[00:17:26]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, absolutely. So the exciting next part of my job is now to take elements from this big concept store and roll them into the rest of the network, which is going to be pretty exciting, I think. And maybe set up another one of these in another city pretty soon, which is definitely on the cards.

[00:17:46]
Ben Newsome: That’d be wild, because there’s one thing to set up a brand new space, but also retrofitting old spaces, that’s going to be challenging, because it’s not a cookie cutter, it’s not always the same.

[00:17:55]
Michael Sutherland: No. I’ve got my work cut out for me, but it’s something that we’re committed to and I think already we can see the elements that are going to work. Even if we can’t fit a full makerspace into a regular store, there are some stores out there where we can fit some smaller but still practical spaces into, which is definitely what we’re aiming at.

[00:18:13]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I can imagine even just roll-out benches and things because space is a premium sometimes, but as long as you can do it, you do what you got to do. People are happy for something they don’t have access to.

[00:18:25]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah. We’ve already started running some workshops in our stores as a bit of a trial, set up on nothing more than a trestle table and a few fold-up chairs and we’ve got an overwhelming response from that so far. So I think if we can put a nice bench in and a practical workspace, I think that our customers and people are going to be over the moon about that.

[00:18:47]
Ben Newsome: Oh this is really cool. It would have been really neat, I didn’t live that far away from a Jaycar at one point as a kid, and it would have been really cool to have a thing where you could just drop in and do the stuff, as opposed to bringing it home and trying to find a spot amongst the kitchen bench.

[00:19:03]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, well I live in an apartment, so I’m pretty excited about this. I finally got some space to stretch out my workshop, so I’m thrilled, so I’m guessing everyone else will be too.

[00:19:14]
Ben Newsome: No, it’s awesome. So look, with this space, there’d be guaranteed there’d be people who’d love to hear more about this and find out more bits about it. How would they need to find out more?

[00:19:25]
Michael Sutherland: Well, there’s a few ways you could do it. There’s always the website or drop into your local store. Drop into the Broadway concept store. Ask questions to the staff directly. Or shoot me an email. If you’re a school interested in getting involved in our workshops, I’d be happy to give you the information or pass you on to the guys who can.

[00:19:48]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, no worries, and like always, we’ll always put those links in the show notes. Like always, it’ll be there and you can click on through and find all that out. Look, Michael, thanks very much for dropping on in and especially considering that you’ve only just launched it. You’re quite a busy person right now.

[00:20:02]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, I’m pretty busy. It’s glad to sit down for 20 minutes though, so this has been really good.

[00:20:07]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, sometimes you do these projects and you reflect back on it and go, “Oh, that all just happened!”

[00:20:12]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah, it’s been a bit of a blur the last six months, I’ll tell you that.

[00:20:16]
Ben Newsome: Actually I’ve got to ask, right from the start, from concept through to actual cutting of the ribbon, how long did it actually take?

[00:20:23]
Michael Sutherland: I’d say pretty close to two years. From the initial kind of ideas. It was about this time last year that this project was still just pictures on a computer screen. So yeah.

[00:20:39]
Ben Newsome: It’s one of those things that you want to do it right, right?

[00:20:41]
Michael Sutherland: Oh absolutely. We wanted to do it right. It was scheduled to open a lot earlier but we made some big changes as we went through just to make sure that it was right and we definitely didn’t want to rush it. So I’m pretty happy with how we came out at the end.

[00:20:55]
Ben Newsome: No, that’s cool, and it sounds like, by the community response already, they’re clearly liking it.

[00:21:00]
Michael Sutherland: Oh it’s been overwhelming. It’s been such a good result and it made it all worth it I think just to see some of the smiles on people’s faces and the feedback that I’ve received. Yeah, the hard work was all worth it.

[00:21:14]
Ben Newsome: No that’s awesome. Look, Michael, thanks again for dropping on this podcast and look I can’t wait to just pop around and just check out how it’s going along.

[00:21:20]
Michael Sutherland: Yeah great. Well thank you so much for having me on.

[00:21:22]
Ben Newsome: Alright, all the best.

[00:21:24]
Michael Sutherland: Thanks mate.

[00:21:26]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? We love seeing students get excited about science, and you will too. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au and click on schools for more info.

[00:21:41]
Ben Newsome: Well there we go, we just heard from Michael Sutherland who is the retail innovation manager for Jaycar Electronics. And I tell you what, I really love the idea of a local retail site being able to support true education projects that really make a difference. And even if you’re not in the school system, just even being able to just pop on down and build your stuff with some tech experts that can help you out, that is so valuable.

[00:22:05]
Ben Newsome: And considering there’s so many stores across Australia and New Zealand where Jaycar Electronics exists, that is going to help out heaps and heaps and heaps of people. That’s really cool. And I’ve got this funny feeling it’s going to keep on growing and growing and growing. So anyway, that’s enough from me for this week. We do have more STEM education stuff coming up throughout the Fizzics Ed Podcast. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education. I hope you have a fantastic week and I’ll catch you another time.

[00:22:28]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.

[00:22:56]
Announcer: This podcast is part of the Australian Educators Online Network. aeon.net.au.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is the Jaycar Maker Hub and where is it located?

The Maker Hub is a specialised Jaycar Electronics store that features a dedicated makerspace taking up about a third of the retail floor. It is located at the Central Park Shopping Mall on Broadway in the heart of Sydney, New South Wales.

What kind of specialised equipment can visitors access at the hub?

Makers have access to a variety of high-end fabrication tools, including multiple 3D printers, a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) printer and mill, and a large-scale laser cutter and engraver. There are also dedicated soldering stations and coding benches.

Are there structured learning opportunities available at the Maker Hub?

Yes, the hub runs regular workshops. These range from beginner projects, such as building an Arduino-based “Snake” game, to technical sessions on how to service and troubleshoot 3D printers.

How can schools and educators utilise this space?

Michael Sutherland encourages schools to reach out for group visits or to participate in staff-led workshops. The space is designed to support students who may not have access to advanced STEM tools at their own school or home.

Will more Maker Hubs be opened in the future?

Jaycar plans to roll out elements of the Maker Hub concept across its wider network of over 150 stores. While not every store will have a full hub, many will see improved workspaces, and there are plans to open similar large-scale hubs in other major cities.

Discussion points summarised from the Maker Hub at Jaycar Electronics with AI assistance, verified and edited by Ben Newsome CF

Extra thought ideas to consider

The Value of Physical Community in a Digital Age
While online forums are a staple of the maker movement, Michael Sutherland emphasises the importance of a physical space where people can collaborate in person. Consider how a shared physical environment changes the way people troubleshoot electronics and share creative ideas compared to digital interactions.

Retailers as Educational Partners
With 150 stores across Australia and New Zealand, Jaycar represents a massive infrastructure for informal science education. Discussion could focus on how commercial retail spaces can supplement school resources, especially for high-cost equipment like laser cutters and PCB mills.

The Importance of Troubleshooting and Maintenance
One of the workshops mentioned focuses on servicing 3D printers rather than just using them. This highlights a shift from being a passive consumer of technology to an active maintainer, which is a critical skill in engineering and manufacturing.