NEW PRODUCT – iNecklace Valentine’s day edition. And by “edition” we mean that we include a special laser cut plastic red gel that make the necklace glow a wonderful pink color. All orders for the iNecklace until 2/14/2012 will include this nice add-on for that special someone. Give the gift of open-source hardware, give the gift of pulsating blinky.
NEW PRODUCT – Ada Lovelace, large, oval black and white – Sticker! Celebrate Lady Ada Lovelace, one of the world’s first computer programmers. Adafruit offers a fun and exciting stickers to celebrate achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share.
Here are some Ada-related facts, events and organizations.
Who was Ada? Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programs for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.
The Ada Initiative is a non-profit organization that seeks to increase women’s participation in the free culture movement, open source technology and culture. Founded in 2011 by Linux kernel developer and open source advocate Valerie Aurora and open source developer and fellow advocate Mary Gardiner, the organization is named for Ada Lovelace, the “world’s first computer programmer.”
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging (videologging, podcasting, comic drawing etc.!) to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.
Art licensed as: This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Perfect for laptops or the workbench.
These gorgeous stickers are glossy, vinyl and made to last a lifetime. Made with printing/vinyl machines that are solar powered and using the most green friendly supplies as possible.
MADE IN THE USA!
Adafruit’s stickers are manufactured in partnership with AMBRO Manufacturing located in NJ, USA. AMBRO is a family owned and operated business since 1990 that celebrates open-source with Adafruit Industries. You can meet their team here. AMBRO uses non-toxic soy based, water soluble and environmentally friendly printing supplies, threads and more when possible. AMBRO has over 250 solar panels that generate 50,000 Kilowatt hours per year. Their equipment runs solar powered, so the wonderful things AMBRO and Adafruit have worked together on are made with the sun! AMBRO Manufacturing was recognized by Impressions Magazine, a leading trade publication in the garment printing and embroidery business, who published an article highlighting AMBRO and their commitment to their environmentally focused manufacturing practices. Adafruit knows you have a lot of choices as to where you spend your money and time, we hope our open-source values, commitment to green technologies and partners helps make the decision easier and fun!
Adafruit got into the parts/kit business with its detailed tutorials that include step-by-step instructions and photographs to lead newbies through the basics of Ohm’s Law and soldering, and on to programming the open-source hardware Arduino platform. Unlike traditional electronic distributors that rely on application engineers, the site effectively crowdsources its application engineering support through its forums and FAQ pages on the kits and parts. This reliance on the knowledge of the site’s fans is part of a well-thought-out business plan: Adafruit’s founder, Limor Fried, detailed the company philosophy in, “15 steps to starting your own electronic-kit business.”
Individual parts offered by Adafruit benefit from its excellent documentation and tutorials. Speaking from personal experience, a couple of years ago I bought a TLS2561 light-to-digital converter from TAOS Semiconductor (now part of austriamicrosystems.) It seemed like a handy component to have in getting a quick, objective measurement of LEDs. However, although documentation existed for the part, its outputs were hard to interpret and it was not easy to hook it up to a computer for datalogging. I quickly gave up and forgot about it.
Then, last summer Adafruit introduced the a new product, aTLS2561 premounted on a small pc board with a couple of chip resistors and some headers, with a tutorial as well as a software library for the open-source Arduino platform. As theAdafruit tutorial says, “To use this sensor and calculate Lux, there’s a lot of very hairy and unpleasant math. You can check out the math in the datasheet but really, it’s not intuitive or educational – it’s just how the sensor works. So we took care of all the math and wrapped it up into a nice Arduino library.”
My sentiments exactly – I just wanted to start using the sensor. It worked great. (See photo, which shows a boarduino, a slimmed-down version of the arduino.) Adafruit was able to take a part that sells competitively for about $2 each, add a couple of passive components, and a well thought-out online tutorial, and sell it for $12. And it was worth every penny of it to me.
Digi-Key had a similar start back in 1972, selling its “Digi-Keyer Kit” to ham radio enthusiasts and today it’s a $1B company. History could repeat itself with a whole new generation of parts and kits providers.
NEW PRODUCT – Arduino Ethernet shield R3 with micro SD connector – Assembled. The Arduino Ethernet Shield R3 (assembled) allows an Arduino board to connect to the internet. It is based on the Wiznet W5100 ethernet chip (datasheet). The Wiznet W5100 provides a network (IP) stack capable of both TCP and UDP. It supports up to four simultaneous socket connections. Use the Ethernet library to write sketches which connect to the internet using the shield.
The new Ethernet shield now includes a micro SD card connector, it is MEGA compatible and an on-board reset controller.
The ethernet shield connects to an Arduino board using long wire-wrap headers which extend through the shield. This keeps the pin layout intact and allows another shield to be stacked on top.
Arduino uses digital pins 10, 11, 12, and 13 (SPI) to communicate with the W5100 on the ethernet shield. These pins cannot be used for general i/o.
The shield provides a standard RJ45 ethernet jack. An Arduino is necessary to use this shield but is not included.
Dimensions: 73mm x 54mm x 17mm (2.8in x 2.1in x 0.7in)
Weight: 26g / 1oz
For more information, check out the Ethernet shield page and Getting started guide. We have a tutorial on how to use this shield as a file webserver!
“I am trying to use IR sensors to detect where someone is sitting in a room. The IR sensor would be placed on a rotating panel where it will send signals to the microprocessor about where it detects people sitting and the microprocessor can then plot in the 360 circle at which angles it received the input.
For this, what do you suggest is the best way to go? I was thinking more about getting IR body heat sensors premade components (~$6-$10) which give out high or low processed signals when they detect heat and sending it off to an arduino board. But it looks a bit on the expensive side. Is there anyway of creating this setup cheap?
Thanks.”
What a fun question!
I spent the past couple of days coming up with what I think would be viable solution to your problem. To start, Adafruit happens to offer a great little PIR that, as you suggested, responds with a high/low signal in correlation to a IR source crossing its path. Adafruit’s PIR also has a 120 degree viewing angle, which is a bit wide if you are trying to pinpoint a person in a room. Because the device relies on the “path” state to change between the two sides of the sensor and you want to pinpoint a heat source, you will have modify the sensor to limit the viewing angle. You can do this by removing the faceted Fresnel lens and attaching a small tube about 1″ long over the sensor or by covering a percentage of it with some non-transparent tape (this certainly would require some experimentation). Ladyada has a wicked tutorial about PIRs work and how to modify/use it.
The next problem is the fact that you want to view in 360 degrees. I came up with three solutions for this. First, which is the most costly, would be to make your circuitry wireless, relaying the data back to a server. This also poses the problem of powering the device. The second would be to keep the sensor tethered and sweep the device clockwise then counter clockwise. Finally, the third, would be to follow the attached diagram. I had the idea that if you used an 1/8″ stereo “headphone” plug & jack you could simulate a slip-ring (commonly found in wind turbines to transfer electrical energy from the generator in the rotating nacelle). This would allow you to isolate the PIR on a rotating platform and transfer signal/power to the device without interruption. You might want to add a little non-conducting grease to the interface to keep it from wearing out.
In order to make the device rotate, I would recommend using a stepper motor attached to a larger gear, which acts as a yaw bearing for the PIR platform. You can easily control the stepper using an H-bridge (for bipolar) or darlington array (for unipolar) to precisely cover your 360 degrees. Now you get to do the math to determine how many steps per rotation, decoding the PIR, etc.
I hope this answers your question! Up next is J.Miraldi with a question about creating a robotics program for their high school!
Don’t forget, everyone is invited to ask a question:
Hi, I made a method to update LPD8806 strips about 5x faster than the current library on GitHub. It’s about the same speed as the hardware SPI implementation, but can be used when those pins are dedicated to other hardware (e.g., Ethernet boards).
It requires that the clock and data pin assignments are known at sketch.
If you’re using LPD8806 LED strips and you can’t use the hardware SPI port (e.g., when using an Ethernet board), there are two other options in the Adafruit library: the default mode and ‘slowmo’ mode. The default mode is decent, but the flexibility of being able to choose the pins at runtime comes with a cost. However, you can still get a decent speedup by defining your pin usage at compile time in a replacement show() function.
This tutorial is interesting because its the first time we’ve seen the use of compile-time templates to set interface pins via a sketch. Traditionally, Arduino users use digitalWrite() or digitalRead() to interface with the pin registers. Hardk0re hackers sometimes like to use pointers to the registers which still allows for flexible pin numbering in the sketch but this technique takes it to the next level!
Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip. These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you
Built in 1.2 MHz high speed 7-bit PWM for each channel – that means it can do 21-bit color per LED (way more than the eye can easily discern). Once you set the brightness level for the LEDs, your microcontroller can go off and do other things, no need to continuously update it, or clock it. The best part is that compared to the WS2801 which can only run one LED at a time, this chip can drive 2 RGB LEDs which means the price stays the same as the older HL1606 strip, nice!
The strip is made of flexible PCB material, and comes with a waterproof sheathing.
You can cut this stuff pretty easily with wire cutters, there are cut-lines every 2.5″/6.2cm (2 LEDs each). Solder to the 0.1″ copper pads and you’re good to go. Of course, you can also connect strips together to make them longer, just watch how much current you need! We have a 5V/2A supply that should be able to drive 1 or more meters (depending on use)
They come in 5 meter reels with a 4-pin JST SM connector on each end, and are sold by the meter! If you buy 5m at a time, you’ll get full reels. If you buy less than 5m, you’ll get a single strip, but it will be a cut piece from a reel which may or may not have a connector on it.
Adafruit SSD1306 running at over 500 hz frame rate. Greg writes -
Final driver tweeks have raised the frame rate to over 500 hz with the same graphic load. Again, a great display! Thanks very much for your products. They are fun to incorporate into our designs.
The display is being updated at over 500 hz as can be determined by the on screen counter (it counts from o through 999 then resets) and by the oscilloscope frequency display (it is reading 553.1 hz). The driver is optimized for the display, however, it is ready to drive the 128 by 64 version of the display when it becomes available. The PIC24FJ64GB002 is running at 16mhz. The spi bit rate is 8mhz. The drivers are written in C. No assembly language was required.
Monochrome 128×32 OLED graphic display. These displays are small, only about 1″ diagonal, but very readable due to the high contrast of an OLED display. This display is made of 128×32 individual white OLED pixels, each one is turned on or off by the controller chip. Because the display makes its own light, no backlight is required. This reduces the power required to run the OLED and is why the display has such high contrast; we really like this miniature display for its crispness!
The driver chip SSD1306, communicates via SPI only. 4 or 5 pins are required to communicate with the chip in the OLED display.
The OLED and driver require a 3.3V power supply and 3.3V logic levels for communication. To make it easier for our customers to use, we’ve added a 3.3v regulator and level shifter on board! This makes it compatible with any 5V microcontroller, such as the Arduino.
The power requirements depend a little on how much of the display is lit but on average the display uses about 20mA from the 3.3V supply. Built into the OLED driver is a simple switch-cap charge pump that turns 3.3v-5v into a high voltage drive for the OLEDs, making it one of the easiest ways to get an OLED into your project!
You can download our SSD1306 OLED display Arduino library from github which comes with example code. The library can print text, bitmaps, pixels, rectangles, circles and lines. It uses 512 bytes of RAM since it needs to buffer the entire display but its very fast! The code is simple to adapt to any other microcontroller.
These are great for doing a little heavy lifting with a microcontroller. Most micros can only source or sink about 20mA of current with each pin. If you’re trying to do something like drive a high-power multi-segment LED display, the current from a microcontroller pin just won’t cut it. You could run the micro outputs in parallel for more current, but then you lose pins for other purposes. Using an external array for the switching lets each pin drive a unique load at higher current, with the added benefit of offloading some of the heat from the microcontroller.
The ULN2003/4 and ULN2803/4 are 7- and 8-element Darlington arrays which can switch up to 500mA (MAX!) per channel at up to 50 volts. Channels can be combined to switch higher current loads (still 50V though). Take note of that “500mA MAX”: while the 2×03′s can switch that much current, they can’t do it forever, because they can’t dissipate the heat. The total amount of switchable current will depend on the number of channels you’re driving at the same time, and the duty cycle of the input signal. See the datasheet (PDF) for more information.
The 2xx3 chips have 2.7k input resistors, so they can be driven from a 5V TTL/CMOS line – if you’re using an Arduino, you should get the ULN2003/2803. The 2xx4 chips have 10.5k resistors for inputs of 6-15 volts.
These are great for driving multiple RGB lines with lots of LEDs, or a bank of relays or motors (they have clamp diodes built in!). The following illustrates how to properly connect the ULN for driving an inductive load like a DC motor.
Purchasing note: these chips were originally (and still are) made by TI. The TI chips are great, but recently I noticed Mouser has begun carrying the Toshiba versions for about 30% less cost. I’ve used both, and they perform equally well.
A friend from work gave me a really nice present this Christmas – Bulbdial Clock Kit made by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. This clock is excellent addition to my collection of Ice Tube Clock and Monochron Clock. I have really enjoyed building it. It looks so cool with all its RGB LEDs. There is an optional component that you can add – a real time clock (RTC) with battery back up. It is called Chronodot RTC. All it does is ensure that clock is still ticking when main power source is removed, that way you don’t have to reset the clock every time power cord is unplugged. A nice feature to have on any externally powered clock. You can buy one, but where is fun in that?!
I bought this awesome RGB LED matrix panel from Adafruit and really wanted to see if I could make it display video from an Android phone.
16×32 RGB LED matrix panel – MASSIVE BLINKY!. Bring a little bit of Times Square into your home with this 16 x 32 RGB LED matrix panel. These panels are normally used to make video walls, here in New York we see them on the sides of busses and bus stops, to display animations or short video clips. We thought they looked really cool so we picked up a few boxes of them from a factory. They have 512 bright RGB LEDs arranged in a 16×32 grid on the front. On the back there is a PCB with two IDC connectors (one input, one output: in theory you can chain these together) and 12 16-bit latches that allow you to drive the display with a 1:8 scan rate.
Keep in mind that these displays are designed to be driven by FPGAs or other high speed processors: they do not have built in PWM control of any kind. Instead, you’re supposed to redraw the screen over and over to ‘manually’ PWM the whole thing. On a 16 MHz arduino, we managed to squeeze 9-bit color (512 colors) with 50% CPU usage but this display would really shine if driven by an FPGA, CPLD, Propeller, XMOS or other high speed multi-core controller. The good news is that the display is pre-white balanced with nice uniformity so if you turn on all the LEDs its not a particularly tinted white.
Are you curious about experimenting with electronics, but the fear of electric shock or soldering iron burns keep you away? Why not try squishy circuits! With a special recipe of food-safe, kitchen-made, pliable dough developed at the University of St. Thomas, kids of all ages can easily use their hands to mold their very own simple circuits right before their eyes! Lets go!
This is something I worked on over the summer last year and its finally out from under wraps. The idea is to create a version of the Mirror Box; effectively copying the real limb onto the Phantom Limb in order to relieve the pain that such people feel. This has been done once before with VR but now we have the kinect and cheaper VR goggles and XBee units from Adafruit, we can build a much cheaper rig and begin to investigate what works and what doesnt.
Dave got fed up not knowing if his Hakko FX-888 iron was left on or not. So hacked the LED to toggle RED/GREEN, so it’s always on.
Genuine Hakko FX-888 (936 upgrade) [FX-888]! Known by engineers for making excellent quality tools & soldering irons! This is a genuine Hakko FX-888. We worked hard to get the best and a great price, these are not knock-offs. This iron is an upgrade to the venerable Hakko 936 – smaller footprint but more powerful for a faster heat up time.
The Hakkos have quality construction, this iron is the last one you’ll need for decades. Heats up in 30 seconds, with a calibrated temperature control knob gives precision heat to minimize cold solder joints. Once you know you’re on the path of electronics, this is the iron you’ll want beside you on your desk.
We got the medium tip on this iron, the most popular size, great for through-hole and some SMT. You can purchase replacement Hakko tips anywhere (we’ll carry some soon)
65 Watts
200-480 degrees C (392°F – 896°F) with +-1 degree C stability
Printable catalog (PDF) or (EPUB)
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