1800 Mechanical Movements, Devices and Appliances… This looks like a cool book -

A fascinating compendium of early-20th-century mechanical devices, this expansive work ranges from basic hooks and levers to complex machinery used in steam, motive, hydraulic, air, and electric power, navigation, gearing, clocks, mining, and construction. More than 1,800 engravings include simple illustrations and detailed cross-sections.

Thanks Kenneth!

Hack This: 24 Incredible Hackerspace Projects from the DIY Movement by John Baichtal via Chris…

Join today’s new revolution in creativity and community: hackerspaces. Stop letting other people build everything for you: Do it yourself. Explore, grab the tools, get hands-on, get dirty…and create things you never imagined you could. Hack This is your glorious, full-color passport to the world of hackerspaces: your invitation to share knowledge, master tools, work together, build amazing stuff–and have a flat-out blast doing it.
 
Twin Cities Maker co-founder John Baichtal explains it all: what hackerspaces are, how they work, who runs them, what they’re building—and how you can join (or start!) one. Next, he walks you through 24 of today’s best hackerspace projects…everything from robotic grilled-cheese sandwich-makers to devices that make music with zaps of electricity. Every project’s packed with color photos, explanations, lists of resources and tools, and instructions for getting started on your own similar project so you can DIY!
 
JUST SOME OF THE PROJECTS YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT INCLUDE…

• Kung-fu fighting robots
• Home-brewed Geiger counter
• TransAtlantic balloon
• Twitter-monitoring Christmas tree
• Sandwich-making robot
• Interactive Space Invaders mural
• CNC mill that carves designs into wood, plastic and metal
• Telepresence robot that runs an Internet classroom
• Toy cars that are ridden by people
• Bronze-melting blast furnace
• Laptop-controlled robot fashioned from a wheelchair
• DIY book scanner

Getting Started in Electronic – by Forrest M. Mims, III. is a complete electronics course in 128 pages! This famous electronics inventor teaches you the basics, takes you on a tour of analog and digital components, explains how they work, and shows how they are combined for various applications. Includes circuit assembly tips and 100 electronic circuits you can build and test. Forrest has written dozens of books, hundreds of articles, invented scientific measurement devices for NASA, and loves to share his knowledge with eager students! This is a “must have” for the library of anyone interested in learning the basics of electronic theory and principals.

• Begin With the Basics – Learn about static electricity and how to make magnets and solenoids. Find out about direct current and alternating current. Then learn about electrical circuits that use batteries and lamps.
• Basic Electronic Components – Find out how switches, relays, meters, resistor, capacitors, transformers are used.
• Diodes and Transistors – These components are they key ingredients to modern electronic circuits. Find out what they do and how they work.
• Integrated Circuits – From dozens to many thousands of electronic components can be formed on tiny chips of silicon.
• Digital Integrated Circuits – Learn the basics about digital logic gates using switches and transformers.
• Linear Integrated Circuits – Linear circuits respond to only the presence or absences of voltage. Linear circuits respond to a wide range of voltages giving them many applications.
• Circuit Assembly Tips – Learn how to use electronic components to make temporary circuits and permanent circuits using wire and solder.
• 100 Electronic Circuits – Now you’re ready to build any or even all of the 100 tested and working circuits included in the book. The categories of circuits include basic, photonic, digital, and linear.

In stock and shipping now!

NEW BOOK – Making Things Talk, Second Edition by Tom Igoe. Using Sensors, Networks, and Arduino to see, hear, and feel your world. Make microcontrollers, PCs, servers, and smartphones talk to each other.

Building electronic projects that interact with the physical world is good fun. But when the devices you’ve built start to talk to each other, things really get interesting. With 33 easy-to-build projects, Making Things Talk shows you how to get your gadgets to communicate with you and your environment. It’s perfect for people with little technical training but a lot of interest.

Maybe you’re a science teacher who wants to show students how to monitor the weather in several locations at once. Or a sculptor looking to stage a room of choreographed mechanical sculptures. In this expanded edition, you’ll learn how to form networks of smart devices that share data and respond to commands.

• Call your home thermostat with a smartphone and change the temperature.
• Create your own game controllers that communicate over a network.
• Use ZigBee, Bluetooth, Infrared, and plain old radio to transmit sensor data wirelessly.
• Work with Arduino 1.0, Processing, and PHP—three easy-to-use, open source environments.
• Write programs to send data across the Internet, based on physical activity in your home, office, or backyard.

Whether you want to connect simple home sensors to the Internet, or create a device that can interact wirelessly with other gadgets, this book explains exactly what you need.

Updates to the book are already on http://www.makingthingstalk.com/

In stock and shipping now!

UPDATED PRODUCT – Getting Started with Arduino By Massimo Banzi – 2nd Edition. This is the second edition, print September of 2011. This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open-source electronics prototyping platform that’s taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for Arduino projects and helps you get going on them right away. From getting organized to putting the final touches on your prototype, all the information you need is right in the book.

In stock and shipping now!

“Making Things See Available” for Early Release @ Ideas For Dozens. Greg writes -

I’m proud to announce that my book, Making Things See: 3D Vision with Kinect, Processing, and Arduino, is now available from O’Reilly. You can buy the book through O’Reilly’s Early Release program here. The Early Release program lets us get the book out to you while O’Reilly’s still editing and designing it and I’m still finishing up the last chapters. If you buy it now, you’ll get the preface and the first two chapters immediately and then you’ll be notified as additional chapters are finished and you’ll be able to download them for free until you have the final book. This way you get the immediate access to the book and I get your early feedback to help me find mistakes and improve it before final publication.

With this digital Early Release edition of Making Things See, you get the entire book bundle in its earliest form – the author’s raw and unedited content – so you can take advantage of this content long before the book’s official release. You’ll also receive updates when significant changes are made, as well as the final ebook version. 

Welcome to the Vision Revolution. With Microsoft’s Kinect leading the way, you can now use 3D computer vision technology to build digital 3D models of people and objects that you can manipulate with gestures and spoken commands. This hands-on guide provides all the technical and conceptual information you need to build cool applications for Kinect, using the Processing programming language and the Arduino microcontroller.

Whether you’re a student, hobbyist, maker, gamer, or hardware hacker, Making Things See gets you running with several Kinect projects, and gives you the skills and experience you need to build your own fun and creative projects with this magical 3D computer vision technology. Unlock your ability to build interactive applications with Kinect.

Hackerspaces – The Beginning (the book).

This book documents where the hackerspace movement was in December of 2008. In that way it’s a bit of a time capsule. It’s not an exhaustive book, but we hope there are enough stories in here to show that all your excuses for not starting up a hackerspace are invalid. Each group faced down their own dragons to bring their hackerspace into existence including  floods, rats, and drama. If they can do it, so can you.

A reminder, at Adafruit Hackerspaces get up to 40% off their orders. Use the contact for to sign up your Hackerspace!

Getting Started with the Internet of Things @ ZDNet UK.

Never mind 20 million Google+ users. Since 2008 there have been more ‘things’ connected to the internet than there are people on the earth: by 2050 there will be 50 billion connected devices — from cattle with wireless sensors that report when a cow is sick or pregnant, to implanted defibrillators that upload diagnostic information and heart rate patterns, to bridges that record every time a boat sails underneath them.

There are ambitious ideas about monitoring the weather, detecting when buildings have been affected by earthquakes, predicting traffic jams and avoiding accidents by having cars tell each other where they are (something Ford and Toyota are working on together), spotting epidemics before they start — all by building up massive, real-time data sets to analyse and act on.

Unscrewed: Salvage and Reuse Motors, Gears, Switches, and More from Your Old Electronics, thanks Bob!

Admit it: you love to explore how things work. Screwdriver and pliers in hand, no castoff electronics or old appliances are safe. But once you’ve pulled apart your prey, do you really just want to screw it back together again . . . assuming you could? Unscrewed is the perfect resource for all UIYers—Undo It Yourselfers—looking to salvage hidden treasures or repurpose old junk.

Author Ed Sobey will show you how to safely disassemble more than 50 devices, including: Laser Printer, Radio-Controlled Car, Zip Drive, Videocassette Recorder, Paper Shredder, Audiocassette Player, Electric Drill, Computer Mouse, Keyboard, Fax Machine, Joystick, Floppy Drive, Videocassette Camera, Electric Clock, and More!

Each deconstruction project includes a “treasure cache” of the components to be found, a required tools list, and step-by-step instructions, with photos, on how to extract the working components. It also includes suggestions on how to repurpose your electronic finds. Why pay good money to an electronics store when you probably already have what you need in that old VCR, printer, or hair dryer? Fight the mindset of planned obsolescence—there’s technological gold in that there junk!

Hacking the Xbox, An Introduction to Reverse Engineering – Signed Special Edition…

Hacking the Xbox, An Introduction to Reverse Engineering by Andrew “bunnie” Huang. This hands-on guide to hacking was cancelled by the original publisher, Wiley, out of fear of DMCA-related lawsuits. After a period of direct distribution by the author, “Hacking the Xbox” is brought to you by the No Starch Press and now at Adafruit. The book begins with a few step-by-step tutorials on hardware modifications that teaches basic hacking techniques as well as essential reverse engineering skills. The book progresses into a discussion of the Xbox security mechanisms and other advanced hacking topics, with an emphasis on educating the readers on the important subjects of computer security and reverse engineering. Hacking the Xbox includes numerous practical guides, such as where to get hacking gear, soldering techniques, debugging tips and an Xbox hardware reference guide.

We only have 25 of these at this time, a collector’s item for sure!

O’Reilly Media just put up its latest book on program embedded devices using the .NET Micro Framework and the Netduino Plus board. If your thinking about trying your hand at .NET it might be a good read for you.

The Internet of Things consists of billions of embedded computers, sensors, and actuators all connected online. If you have basic programming skills, you can use these powerful little devices to create a variety of useful systems. This hands-on guide shows you how to start building your own fun and fascinating projects. All you need is a Netduino Plus, a USB cable, a couple of sensors, an Ethernet connection to the Internet—and your imagination.

Bookmobile from 1929…

“Vagabond” Shop Supplies Isolated Summer Resorts With New Books. LITERARY needs in fashionable but far distant resorts are provided for by this traveling book shop, shown in the photo below. This movable shop parks in some shady corner of a summer resort where books usually consist of the Bible and a school history of the United States. Its stock comprises popular fiction, classics and rare volumes of all natures. The shop is equipped with a writing desk and dining table for the driver.

NEW PRODUCT: Making Things Move: DIY Mechanisms for Inventors, Hobbyists, and Artists by Dustyn Roberts!

Making Things Move reveals practical mechanical design principles to readers who may have no background in engineering and shows how to apply those principles through a wide range of sample projects, from art installations to toys to labor-saving devices.

This book is for anyone who has ever wanted to make something that moves but didn’t know where to start. Maybe you’re a sculptor who wants your artwork to spin around on a pedestal, or a musician who wants to make custom musical instruments that come alive. Whatever the case may be, this book will show you how to turn your ideas into reality.

Makers no longer need to have a machine shop in their garage or an arsenal of spare parts lying around. You can make 3D models using free software, then actually get them printed in 3D at any number of online shops. Heck, you can even make your own 3D printer! Or cut just about any 2D shape you want out of a variety of materials at Ponoko. Combine these with off the shelf parts and simple hand tools and the possibilities are endless.

A unique guide to practical mechanical design principles and their applications
In Making Things Move, you’ll learn how to build moving mechanisms through non-technical explanations, examples, and do-it-yourself projects–from art installations to toys to labor-saving devices. The projects include a drawing machine, a mini wind turbine, a mousetrap powered car, and more, but the applications of the examples are limited only by your imagination. A breadth of topics is covered ranging from how to attach couplers and shafts to a motor, to converting between rotary and linear motion.

Each chapter features photographs, drawings, and screenshots of the components and systems involved. Emphasis is placed on using off-the-shelf components whenever possible, and most projects also use readily available metals, plastics, wood, and cardboard, as well as accessible fabrication techniques such as laser cutting. Small projects in each chapter are designed to engage you in applying the material in the chapter at hand. Later in the book, more involved projects incorporate material from several chapters.

Making Things Move

• Focuses on practical applications and results, not abstract engineering theories
• Contains more than a dozen topic-focused projects and three large-scale projects incorporating lessons from the whole book
• Features shopping lists and guides to off-the-shelf components for the projects
• Incorporates discussions of new fabrication techniques such as laser cutting and 3D printing, and how you can gain access
• Includes online component for continuing education with the book’s companion website and blog (makingthingsmove.com)

Hands-on coverage of moving mechanisms
Introduction to Mechanisms and Machines; Materials and Where to Find Them; Screwed or Glued? On Fastening and Joining Parts; Forces, Friction and Torque (Oh My); Mechanical and Electrical Power, Work, and Energy; Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Motor? – Creating and Controlling Motion; The Guts: Bearings, Bushings. Couplers, and Gears; Rotary vs. Linear Motion; Automatons and Mechanical Toys; Making Things and Getting Them Made; Projects

In stock and shipping now.

Each day during the week we’re going to have a sale on one item in our store week days 12/6 through 12/21. Just tune in to the site, or twitter or our RSS feed each day for the code that will give you 11% off.

WHAT DID YOU SAY? 11% OFF WITH CODE?

The items will all go to eleven % off. Each day, eleven, eleven, eleven and… It’s not ten. You see, most places, you know, will be doing sales at 10% off. They’re stuck on 10% off – Where can they go from there? Where? Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Put it up to eleven.

With all that said, today’s 11% off item is the Practical Arduino book. Use the code PRACTICAL on checkout and get the Practical Arduino book for 11% off. Today only! 12:01am ET to 11:59pm ET 12/10/2010

Practical Arduino by Jon Oxer & Hugh Blemings. This book is best used for people who’ve gone through our tutorials and want more! Please note that the book does not come with any electronic parts or hardware. You’ll probably want an Arduino starter pack or similar so that you have the Arduino, USB cable, power adapter, wires, and a protoshield. Create your own Arduino-based designs, gain an in-depth knowledge of the architecture of Arduino, and learn the easy-to-use Arduino language all in the context of practical projects that you can build yourself at home. Get hands-on experience using a variety of projects and recipes for everything from home automation to test equipment. Arduino has taken off as an incredibly popular building block among ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) enthusiasts, robotics hobbyists, and DIY home automation developers. Practical Arduino provides detailed instructions for building a wide range of both practical and fun Arduino-related projects covering areas such as hobbies, automotive, communications, home automation, and instrumentation.

Today’s 11% off item is the Practical Arduino book. Use the code PRACTICAL on checkout and get the Practical Arduino book for 11% off. Today only! 12:01am ET to 11:59pm ET 12/10/2010

The growth of the Processing project, ben writes -

Number of Processing users, every four weeks, since 2005. Long version: this is a tally of the number of unique users who run the Processing environment every four weeks, as measured by the number of machines checking for updates.

More:

Books to learn processing – AN ADAFRUIT GIFT GUIDE.

The Art of Electronics – Student manual with exercises, plastic comb binder by Thomas C. Hayes & Paul Horowitz. This manual is both a guide and aid to users of The Art of Electronics. It is carefully organized to follow the chapters of the main text, providing extra explanatory notes, worked examples, solutions to selected exercises and laboratory exercises. Learning aids such as glossaries, reading assignments, objectives, data sheets and summaries are also included. The manual is a product of many years’ teaching at Harvard University, which has given the authors direct knowledge of concepts that students find difficult. The extra explanatory detail makes this manual an essential purchase for students using The Art of Electronics.

• companion to the Text, defines an analog and a digital course
• presents course as 23 class and lab sessions, linked to selected readings in Text;
• class notes explicate Text material; these notes cross-reference Text readings.
• 17 worked examples show problem-solving procedures in detail:
• Jargon and Terms provides glossary for each relevant Text Chapter;
• chapter review flags principal circuits and ideas
• 614 pages; more than 700 figures

In stock and shipping now!

The Art of Electronics 2nd Edition by Paul Horowitz & Winfield Hill. The one and only. The Art of Electronics 2nd Edition by Paul Horowitz & Winfield Hill. Considered the best resource, now available at Adafruit. This is the thoroughly revised and updated Second Edition of the hugely successful The Art of Electronics. Widely accepted as the single, authoritative text and reference on electronic circuit design, both analog and digital, this book has sold over 120,000 copies, and has been translated into eight languages. This book revolutionized the teaching of electronics by emphasizing the methods actually used by circuit designers–a combination of some basic laws, rules of thumb, and a large bag of tricks.

The result is a largely nonmathematical treatment that encourages circuit intuition, brain storming, and simplified calculations of circuit values and performance. This completely new edition responds to the breakneck pace of change in electronics with totally rewritten chapters on microcomputers and microprocessors, substantially revised chapters on digital electronics, on op-amps and precision design, and on construction techniques.

Every table has been revised, and many new ones have been added. The new Art of Electronics retains the feeling of informality and easy access that made the first edition so successful and popular.

• The best self-teaching book and reference book in electronics
• Simply indispensable, packed with essential information for all scientists and engineers who build electronic circuits
• Totally rewritten chapters on microcomputers and microprocessors
• The first edition of this book has sold over 100,000 copies in seven years, it has a market in virtually all research centres where electronics is important

This book clocks in at an amazing 1,152 pages! In stock and shipping now.

NEW PRODUCT – Hacking the Xbox, An Introduction to Reverse Engineering by Andrew “bunnie” Huang. This hands-on guide to hacking was canceled by the original publisher, Wiley, out of fear of DMCA-related lawsuits. After a period of direct distribution by the author, “Hacking the Xbox” is brought to you by the No Starch Press and now at Adafruit. The book begins with a few step-by-step tutorials on hardware modifications that teaches basic hacking techniques as well as essential reverse engineering skills. The book progresses into a discussion of the Xbox security mechanisms and other advanced hacking topics, with an emphasis on educating the readers on the important subjects of computer security and reverse engineering. Hacking the Xbox includes numerous practical guides, such as where to get hacking gear, soldering techniques, debugging tips and an Xbox hardware reference guide.

“Although it’s a technical book, it unfolds like a spy novel.” –SLASHDOT (more reviews!)

If you’re looking for a book on how to reverse engineer, this is the best, from the best.

“Hacking the Xbox” confronts the social and political issues facing today’s hacker. The book introduces readers to the humans behind the hacks through several interviews with master hackers.

“Hacking the Xbox” looks forward and discusses the impact of today’s legal challenges on legitimate reverse engineering activities. The book includes a chapter written by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) about the rights and responsibilities of hackers, and concludes by discussing the latest trends and vulnerabilities in secure PC platforms.

This book contains Xbox security secrets, hardware mod tutorials, interviews with master hackers and the chilling effects of the DMCA. A perfect book for that reverse engineer in your life, or for yourself!

Sample Pages(PDFs):

• Table of Contents
• Starter Hacks
• Circuit Boards
• Hardware
• Software
• Security
• Soldering
• Legal Issues

Chapters:

• Chapter 1: Voiding The Warranty
• Chapter 2: Thinking Inside The Box
• Chapter 3: Installing a Blue LED
• Chapter 4: Building a USB Adapter
• Chapter 5: Replacing a Broken Power Supply
• Chapter 6: The Best Xbox Game: Security Hacking
• Chapter 7: A Brief Primer on Security
• Chapter 8: Reverse Engineering Xbox Security
• Chapter 9: Sneaking In the Back Door
• Chapter 10: More Hardware Projects
• Chapter 11: Developing Software for the Xbox
• Chapter 12: Caveat Hacker
• Chapter 13: Onward!
• Appendix A: Where to Get Your Hacking Gear
• Appendix B: Soldering Techniques
• Appendix C: Getting Into PCB Layout
• Appendix D: Getting Started with FPGAs
• Appendix E: Debugging: Hints and Tips
• Appendix F: Xbox Hardware Reference

NEW PRODUCT – The best notebook on earth, The Maker’s Notebook. From the creators of Make Magazine comes the Maker’s Notebook. Put your own ideas, diagrams, calculations & notes down in these 150 pages of engineering graph paper. We’ve also included 20 bonus pages of reference material, from useful stuff like electronics symbols, resistor codes, weights and measures, basic conversions and more, to really useful stuff like the amount of caffeine in different caffeinated beverages and how to say “Hello, World!” in various computer languages. The covers of this hardcover book are printed in cyan “Maker” blue with a white grid debossed front and back. Grab one today!

Features

• Notebook are 1/8″ engineering graph paper.
• Pages are numbered.
• Every page has a blank heading to list project name, date, sign or note, and a place to link project/related pages (“From Page___, to Page___).
• There’s also a two-page ruled Table of Contents.
• Featuring a pocket in the back, with 2 sheets of stickers.
• Dimensions: 6 1/4″ x 9 1/4″ x 1/2″

We looked around at all the Notebook options from blank moleskins to cheap knock-offs to creating our own, none of them are close to The Maker’s Notebook. Give this as a gift and get one for yourself.

In stock and shipping now!

It’s that time! HOLIDAY TIME! We’re going to do a gift guide almost every day for the next couple months, if you need to print out our store catalog, you can do that here (PDF).

Today is book day, we’ll have other guides about many different topics which have books and make great gifts – but today is about Arduino books! We consider these books some the best resources for learning Arduino!

Getting Started with Arduino by Massimo Banzi
This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open-source electronics prototyping platform that’s taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for Arduino projects and helps you get going on them right away. From getting organized to putting the final touches on your prototype, all the information you need is right in the book.

Inside, you’ll learn about:

• Interaction design and physical computing
• The Arduino hardware and software development environment
• Basics of electricity and electronics
• Prototyping on a solderless breadboard
• Drawing a schematic diagram

And more. With inexpensive hardware and open-source software components that you can download free, getting started with Arduino is a snap. To use the introductory examples in this book, all you need is a USB Arduino, USB A-B cable, and an LED.

Join the tens of thousands of hobbyists who have discovered this incredible (and educational) platform. Written by the co-founder of the Arduino project, with illustrations by Elisa Canducci, Getting Started with Arduino gets you in on the fun!

Practical Arduino by Jon Oxer & Hugh Blemings
This book is best used for people who’ve gone through our tutorials and want more! Please note that the book does not come with any electronic parts or hardware. You’ll probably want an Arduino starter pack or similar so that you have the Arduino, USB cable, power adapter, wires, and a protoshield. Create your own Arduino-based designs, gain an in-depth knowledge of the architecture of Arduino, and learn the easy-to-use Arduino language all in the context of practical projects that you can build yourself at home. Get hands-on experience using a variety of projects and recipes for everything from home automation to test equipment. Arduino has taken off as an incredibly popular building block among ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) enthusiasts, robotics hobbyists, and DIY home automation developers. Practical Arduino provides detailed instructions for building a wide range of both practical and fun Arduino-related projects covering areas such as hobbies, automotive, communications, home automation, and instrumentation.

An Arduino Workshop by Joe Pardue
The really cool thing about Arduino is that you can start playing with Physical Computing, Microcontrollers, and Embedded Systems without understanding much of what you are doing. The Arduino, designed for the novice, has become so popular that there is now an embarrassment of riches when it comes to amount of information and hardware available. So much stuff is out there, in fact, that some folks have trouble puzzling out what they need to just to get started. This text, An Arduino Workshop, and the associated hardware projects kit bring all the pieces of the puzzle together in one place.

Programming Interactivity: A Designer’s Guide to Processing, Arduino, and Openframeworks by Joshua Noble

Make cool stuff. If you’re a designer or artist without a lot of programming experience, this book will teach you to work with 2D and 3D graphics, sound, physical interaction, and electronic circuitry to create all sorts of interesting and compelling experiences — online and off. Programming Interactivity explains programming and electrical engineering basics, and introduces three freely available tools created specifically for artists and designers.

30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius by Simon Monk
This wickedly inventive guide shows you how to program and build a variety of projects with the Arduino microcontroller development system. Covering Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms, 30 Arduino Projects for the Evil Genius gets you up to speed with the simplified C programming you need to know–no prior programming experience necessary. Using easy-to-find components and equipment, this do-it-yourself book explains how to attach an Arduino board to your computer, program it, and connect electronics to it to create fiendishly fun projects. The only limit is your imagination!

Making things talk by Tom Igoe
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.

Did we miss any books? Post up in the comments!

BACK IN STOCK – Practical Arduino (Jon Oxer & Hugh Blemings). This book is best used for people who’ve gone through our tutorials and want more!

Please note that the book does not come with any electronic parts or hardware. You’ll probably want an Arduino starter pack or similar so that you have the Arduino, USB cable, power adapter, wires, and a protoshield.

Create your own Arduino-based designs, gain an in-depth knowledge of the architecture of Arduino, and learn the easy-to-use Arduino language all in the context of practical projects that you can build yourself at home. Get hands-on experience using a variety of projects and recipes for everything from home automation to test equipment.

Arduino has taken off as an incredibly popular building block among ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) enthusiasts, robotics hobbyists, and DIY home automation developers. Practical Arduino provides detailed instructions for building a wide range of both practical and fun Arduino-related projects covering areas such as hobbies, automotive, communications, home automation, and instrumentation.

• Take Arduino beyond “blink” to a wide variety of projects from simple to challenging
• Hands-on recipes for everything from home automation to interfacing with your car engine management system
• Explanations of techniques and references to handy resources for ubiquitous computing projects

Supplementary material includes a circuit schematic reference, introductions to a range of electronic engineering principles and general hits and tips. These combine with the projects themselves to make Practical Arduino: Cool Projects for Open Source Hardware an invaluable reference for Arduino users of all levels. You’ll learn a wide variety of techniques that can be applied to your own projects.

What you’ll learn

• Reading analog and digital input and writing analog and digital output
• Communication with serial devices including RFID readers, temperature sensors, and GPS modules
• Connecting Arduino to Ethernet and WiFi networks
• Interfacing with resistive touch screens
• Adding synthesized speech to Arduino projects
• Linking physical devices to software environments
• Linking Arduino to web services
• Decoding data streams from commercial wireless devices
• Reading input from PS/2 keyboards and mice
• Interfacing with common 16×2 and 20×4 LCD modules
• The Arduino memory architecture
• Mass storage using USB memory sticks
• How to use both regular interrupts and pin-change (port-level) interrupts
• How to make DIY prototyping shields for only a couple of dollars

Featured projects

• Appliance Remote Control
• Time-Lapse Camera Controller
• Virtual USB Keyboard
• PS/2 Keyboard Or Mouse Input
• Security / Automation Sensors
• Online Thermometer
• Touch Control Panel
• Speech Synthesizer
• Water Flow Gauge
• Oscilloscope / Logic Analyzer
• Water Tank Depth Sensor
• Weather Station Receiver
• RFID Access Control System
• Vehicle Telemetry Platform

In stock and shipping!

Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on Where Ideas Come From – Wired Magazine…

Say the word “inventor” and most people think of a solitary genius toiling in a basement. But two ambitious new books on the history of innovation—by Steven Johnson and Kevin Kelly, both longtime wired contributors—argue that great discoveries typically spring not from individual minds but from the hive mind. In Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, Johnson draws on seven centuries of scientific and technological progress, from Gutenberg to GPS, to show what sorts of environments nurture ingenuity. He finds that great creative milieus, whether MIT or Los Alamos, New York City or the World Wide Web, are like coral reefs—teeming, diverse colonies of creators who interact with and influence one another.

We’re trying to post up some of the books we’re reading at the Adafruit shop, some are biz related, some science/physics and others might just be for fun. We heard an interview with Jennifer Ouellette talking with Ira Flatow (Science Friday and was at Maker Faire!) – so we picked up the The Calculus Diaries. We’ll post up afer we finish the book – we’re interested in the history of calculus as well as thinking of new ways to help folks with math as they do electronics…

The Calculus Diaries is the fun and fascinating account of her year spent confronting her math phobia. With wit and verve, Ouellette shows how she learned to apply calculus to everything from gas mileage, diet, and the rides at Disneyland, to surfing in Hawaii, shooting craps in Vegas, and warding off zombies famished for tasty fresh brains. Along the way, she proves that even the mathematically challenged can learn the fundamentals of the universal language.

Hear Jennifer Ouellette chatting with host Ira Flatow about The Calculus Diaries on NPR’s Science Friday

Recent books:
The Rational Optimist – how prosperity evolves
Game of Life in “The Grand Design”

Looking to learn the basics of electricity in a fun way? Manga Guide to Electricity by Kazuhiro Fujitaki. Now in stock in the Adafruit store and shipping immediately!

Rereko is just your average high-school girl from Electopia, the land of electricity, but she’s totally failed her final electricity exam! Now she has to go to summer school on Earth. And this time, she has to pass. Luckily, her ever-patient tutor Hikaru is there to help. Join them in the pages of The Manga Guide to Electricity as Rereko examines everyday electrical devices like flashlights, heaters, and circuit breakers, and learns the meaning of abstract concepts like voltage, potential, current, resistance, conductivity, and electrostatic force.

The real-world examples that you’ll find in The Manga Guide to Electricity will teach you:

• What electricity is, how it works, how it’s created, and how it can be used
• The relationship between voltage, current, and resistance (Ohm’s law)
• Key electrical concepts like inductance and capacitance
• How complicated components like transformers, semiconductors, diodes, and transistors work
• How electricity produces heat and the relationship between current and magnetic fields

If thinking about how electricity works really fries your brain, let The Manga Guide to Electricity teach you all things electrical in a shockingly fun way.

About the Author
Kazuhiro Fujitaki is a lecturer at the Tokyo Metropolitan Vocational Skills Development Center. He has written a number of books on electrical engineering and runs a website offering useful information about Japan’s qualifying examinations for electrical technicians.

Sample pages from The Manga Guide to Electricity

You can check out the reviews of this great book here!

Fathom looks like a great company, founded by Ben Fry, processing co-daddy – via Twitter.

Ben was the Nierenberg Chair of Design for the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. At the end of 2007, he published Visualizing Data with O’Reilly, and in 2010 wrote Getting Started with Processing with Casey Reas. Fry’s work was part of the Whitney Biennial in 2002 and the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial in 2003 and 2006. Other pieces have appeared in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria and in the films Minority Report and The Hulk. His information graphics have also illustrated articles for the journal Nature, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Seed, and Communications of the ACM.

We have Ben’s book in the store (Getting Started with Processing by Casey Reas & Ben Fry) good luck on your new company Ben and team!

Learn computer programming the easy way with Processing, a simple language that lets you use code to create drawings, animation, and interactive graphics. Programming courses usually start with theory, but this book lets you jump right into creative and fun projects. It’s ideal for anyone who wants to learn basic programming, and serves as a simple introduction to graphics for people with some programming skills.

Written by the founders of Processing, this book takes you through the learning process one step at a time to help you grasp core programming concepts. You’ll learn how to sketch with code — creating a program with one a line of code, observing the result, and then adding to it. Join the thousands of hobbyists, students, and professionals who have discovered this free and educational community platform.

• Quickly learn programming basics, from variables to objects
• Understand the fundamentals of computer graphics
• Get acquainted with the Processing software development environment
• Create interactive graphics with easy-to-follow projects
• Use the Arduino open source prototyping platform to control your Processing graphics

Chapter 1 Hello

1. Sketching and Prototyping
2. Flexibility
3. Giants
4. Family Tree
5. Join In

Chapter 2 Starting to Code

1. Your First Program
2. Show
3. Save
4. Share
5. Examples and Reference

Chapter 3 Draw

1. Basic Shapes
2. Drawing Order
3. Shape Properties
4. Color
5. Custom Shapes
6. Comments
7. Robot 1: Draw

Chapter 4 Variables

1. Making Variables
2. Processing Variables
3. A Little Math
4. Repetition
5. Robot 2: Variables

Chapter 5 Response

1. Follow
2. Map
3. Click
4. Location
5. Type
6. Robot 3: Response

Chapter 6 Media

1. Images
2. Fonts
3. Shapes
4. Robot 4: Media

Chapter 7 Motion

1. Speed and Direction
2. Tweening
3. Random
4. Timers
5. Circular
6. Translate, Rotate, Scale
7. Robot 5: Motion

Chapter 8 Functions

1. Function Basics
2. Make a Function
3. Return Values
4. Robot 6: Functions

Chapter 9 Objects

1. Classes and Objects
2. Robot 7: Objects

Chapter 10 Arrays

1. Make an Array
2. Repetition and Arrays
3. Arrays of Objects
4. Robot 8: Arrays

Chapter 11 Extend

1. 3D
2. Image Export
3. Hello Arduino
4. Community

Appendix Coding Tips

1. Functions and Parameters
2. Color Coding
3. Comments
4. Uppercase and Lowercase
5. Style
6. Console
7. One Step at a Time

Appendix Data Types
Appendix Order of Operations
Appendix Variable Scope
Colophon

In stock and shipping!

Getting Started with Arduino By Massimo Banzi – This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open-source electronics prototyping platform that’s taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for Arduino projects and helps you get going on them right away. From getting organized to putting the final touches on your prototype, all the information you need is right in the book. 



Inside, you’ll learn about:

• Interaction design and physical computing
• The Arduino hardware and software development environment
• Basics of electricity and electronics
• Prototyping on a solderless breadboard
• Drawing a schematic diagram

And more. With inexpensive hardware and open-source software components that you can download free, getting started with Arduino is a snap. To use the introductory examples in this book, all you need is a USB Arduino, USB A-B cable, and an LED.

Join the tens of thousands of hobbyists who have discovered this incredible (and educational) platform. Written by the co-founder of the Arduino project, with illustrations by Elisa Canducci, Getting Started with Arduino gets you in on the fun!

Table of Contents

1. Chapter 1 Introduction
2. Intended Audience
3. What Is Physical Computing?

Chapter 2 The Arduino Way

1. Prototyping
2. Tinkering
3. Patching
4. Circuit Bending
5. Keyboard Hacks
6. We Love Junk!
7. Hacking Toys
8. Collaboration

Chapter 3 The Arduino Platform

1. The Arduino Hardware
2. The Software (IDE)
3. Installing Arduino on Your Computer
4. Installing Drivers: Macintosh
5. Installing Drivers: Windows
6. Port Identification: Macintosh
7. Port Identification: Windows

Chapter 4 Really Getting Started with Arduino

1. Anatomy of an Interactive Device
2. Sensors and Actuators
3. Blinking an LED
4. Pass Me the Parmesan
5. Arduino Is Not for Quitters
6. Real Tinkerers Write Comments
7. The Code, Step by Step
8. What We Will Be Building
9. What Is Electricity?
10. Using a Pushbutton to Control the LED
11. How Does This Work?
12. One Circuit, A Thousand Behaviours

Chapter 5 Advanced Input and Output

1. Trying Out Other On/Off Sensors
2. Controlling Light with PWM
3. Use a Light Sensor Instead of the Pushbutton
4. Analogue Input
5. Try Other Analogue Sensors
6. Serial Communication
7. Driving Bigger Loads (Motors, Lamps, and the Like)
8. Complex Sensors

Chapter 6 Talking to the Cloud

1. Digital Output
2. Planning
3. Coding
4. Assembling the Circuit
5. Here’s How to Assemble It:

Chapter 7 Troubleshooting

1. Understanding
2. Testing the Board
3. Testing Your Breadboarded Circuit
4. Isolating Problems
5. Problems with the IDE
6. How to Get Help Online

Appendix The Breadboard
Appendix Reading Resistors and Capacitors

Appendix Arduino Quick Reference

• STRUCTURE
• SPECIAL SYMBOLS
• CONSTANTS
• VARIABLES
• CONTROL STRUCTURES
• ARITHMETIC AND FORMULAS
• COMPARISON OPERATORS
• BOOLEAN OPERATORS
• COMPOUND OPERATORS
• INPUT AND OUTPUT FUNCTIONS
• TIME FUNCTIONS
• MATH FUNCTIONS
• RANDOM NUMBER FUNCTIONS
• SERIAL COMMUNICATION

Appendix Reading Schematic Diagrams

Are you ready? You are! In stock & shipping from the Adafruit store!

From:   Kate Shatzkin
Email:  kshatzkin@summerlearning.org

——————————————————

Your use of our logo in the following blog post is inappropriate. http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/06/21/national-summer-learning-day-10-off-our-practical-arduino-book/

Please cease and desist any use of the National Summer Learning Association logo and remove references to our organization from your site immediately.

Thank you.

Kate Shatzkin
Director of Marketing and Communications
National Summer Learning Association
800 Wyman Park Drive, Suite 110
Baltimore, MD 21211
443-604-3508

So that’s that.

Practical Arduino (Jon Oxer & Hugh Blemings) – 1st print
This book is best used for people who’ve gone through our tutorials and want more! Please note that the book does not come with any electronic parts or hardware. You’ll probably want an Arduino starter pack or similar so that you have the Arduino, USB cable, power adapter, wires, and a protoshield. Read more…

Make: Electronics (Charles Platt) – 1st print
We checked out this book before putting it in the shop, its geared towards ultimate-beginners and teaches electronics starting from basic core of analog to some digital to microcontrollers. You’ll learn tools, prototyping soldering techniques, transistors, 555′s, etc. while completing useful projects. A nice and tidy intro! This book is a good accompaniment to learning microcontrollers/Arduino in that it fills the necessary electronics theory and background. Read more…

Today’s passion-driven hobbyists are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs – otherwise known as hobbypreneurs, who successfully combine their passion for a particular hobby or craft with pragmatic business smarts to create new revenue streams for themselves and their families. Intuit today released the latest findings from the Intuit Future of Small Business Report series, written by Emergent Research, that focus on the “Maker” movement and the reasons that hobbypreneurs mean business. The report includes perspectives and data from a recent Maker Faire, where hobbyists identified their motives and reasons for starting their own small business.

Here’s a direct link to the PDF. Intuit, you should really set up a booth at Maker Faire and/or do a session on book keeping using QuickBooks, folks would love it.

You can post your suggestions in the comments or stop by our weekly “Ask an engineer chat” Saturday night, 10pm ET 10/10/2009 (additional details below).

a – amperes
b – battery / breadboard
c – capacitor
d – diode
e – electronics
f – fpga/frequency/fet
g – ground
h – hertz
i – current/infrared/inductor
j – joule
k – kelvin
l – led
m – motor/microcontroller/multimeter/mos/mosfet the cat
n – noise/npn
o – ohm/oscilloscope/opamp
p – potentiometer/pcb
q – quartz / quantum field effect transistor
r – resistor/relay
s – switch/silcon/soldering iron
t – transistor
u – ultraviolet/usb/uart
v – voltage
w – wire/watt
x – xtal
y – yagi antenna
z – zener

Chat details!

• Visit our new “chat” section on Adafruit at 10pm ET – 9/26/2009
• Or visit our Ustream page
• For old schoolers, you can use IRC, you’ll need a Ustream log/pass, check out the Ustream IRC how-tos here and here
• We are #adafruit-industries6796 on IRC server chat1.ustream.tv
• There will be a trivia question at the end of the night as always!
• Lastly, if anyone can save a log we’d appreciate it

“The Manga Guide to Electricity”, part of “The Manga Guide” series by No Starch Press, is a novel approach to the old problem of getting over the initial mental block when trying to learn electronics.

We decided to compare this book to another introductory text: “Getting Started in Electronics” by [Forrest M. Mims].  [Mims]‘ book is a handwritten masterpiece of electronic literature. The writing style is friendly and concise, the examples are simple, and the drawings are excellent. It also makes sure to keep the learning process as application based as possible. Unlike other books, it doesn’t bog the reader down with math and theory that is only useful to advanced students. Since its original printing in 1983, [Mims]‘ has become the de facto standard for beginner electronic literature.

“The Manga Guide” attempts to walk the beginner through the very basics of electronics using the interactions between [Rereko], a resident of planet Electopia; [Yonosuke], a transdimensional robot cell phone; and [Hikaru Yano Sensei], an electrical engineering researcher at a Japanese university. [Rereko] is apparently very bad at electricity, and is sent to learn the basics from Hikaru over the summer by her professor.

“The Manga Guide” is a lot of fun to read. The interactions between the characters are lighthearted, and the whole setting has a sort of quirkiness about it that makes you keep reading just for the joy of it. It covers most of the basics thoroughly and with excellent examples. The art is a very well drawn, playful style of manga.

Open Softwear is the latest project at 1scale1. It is a free book (CC-NC-SA-2.5) introducing basic concepts about microcontroller programming through Arduino, and using it in when crafting interactive garments. The softwear book project is open and looks for collaborators to help with proofreading, adding new examples, translating it to other languages, or photographing your own projects for the printed version to come.

Our video Citizen Engineer volume 01 is now a comic book/zine! Volume 01 of Citizen Engineer is available as a limited edition full color 32 page comic “SIM CARD HACKING” – the comic also comes with a SIM card reader kit! We print, trim and assemble each one on demand and they look amazing! We are doing a limited run of these, get the first printing at Adafruit Industries.

Visit citizenengineer.com for a web preview or
click here.

You can also visit the 01 section of Citizen Engineer for PDFs including high resolution downloads, or use the QR CODE in the comic!

Citizen Engineer volume 01 – SIM CARD HACKING comic is CC attribution-share alike 3.0. You are encouraged to share it and also print your own, if you’d like to support Citizen Engineer and future videos/comics get a comic/kit!