A lot of readers are likely familiar with Adafruit Industries, supplier and maker of many kits found in the Maker Shed. In addition to my role here at MAKE, as senior editor, I also work with Limor (Ladyada), helping her with the open source hardware kit business. I’ll have a few articles about general things we do around here to keep the ship afloat and charting new waters, but I thought I’d start this “Maker Business” article with an overview of how it all works and how we use many many web tools/services. One of the most asked questions I get from makers is “what shopping cart do you use?” The short answer is Zencart, and while I think it doesn’t actually matter what you use when you start out, this is what we’re using at Adafruit. A recent milestone, we just shipped our 50,000th order. We mostly create and sell open source hardware, most of the tools we use are open source — I’ve never seen an article detailing “everything” a business uses online, so here’s one. I think you’ll enjoy it. Let’s take a look…
“Dali Clock is a digital clock. When a digit changes, it “melts” into its new shape. The date is displayed when the mouse is pressed. The window can be made transparent, and can do funky psychedelic color cycling. ”
The first light-emitting diodes went on sale in 1962, and you could have any kind you wanted as long as it was dim and red. Green, yellow and orange came next, but blue LEDs didn’t debut until 1989. So it may surprise you that the first LEDs, discovered in 1907, included blue—and were made of sandpaper.
You’ve got your components, and your datasheet, and you’re read to start hacking. But which way does the chip go? Pin 23 is where? If you’re lucky, the orientation is clearly marked, or perhaps diagrammed in the datasheet. But if it isn’t, or if you’re simply new at this, it’s helpful to know what to look for.
AdaFruit – Purveyors of fine geek supplies, AdaFruit are offering 10% off any kit on Ada Lovelace Day, if you use the code LADYADA. Our hope is that customers will use the 10% off as an incentive to pick up a kit for their daughter, wife, girlfriend, partner, friend, sister, aunt, mom, cousin (you get the point) or just someone out there who might be inspired to consider electronics, engineers, science and technology as possible careers or hobbies.
The United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) has warned that the software included in the Energizer DUO USB battery charger contains a backdoor that allows unauthorized remote system access. In an advisory, the US-CERT warned that he installer for the Energizer DUO software places the file UsbCharger.dll in the application’s directory and Arucer.dll in the Windows system32 directory. An attacker is able to remotely control a system, including the ability to list directories, send and receive files, and execute programs. The backdoor operates with the privileges of the logged-on user.
Now in the Adafruit store – The Bus Pirate – v3a. Interfacing a new microchip can be a hassle. Breadboarding a circuit, writing code, hauling out the programmer, or maybe even prototyping a PCB. We never seem to get it right on the first try.
The ‘Bus Pirate’ is a universal bus interface that talks to most chips from a PC serial terminal, eliminating a ton of early prototyping effort when working with new or unknown chips. Many serial protocols are supported at 0-5.5volts, more can be added. Adafruit is an official US distributor of Ian Lesnet’s Bus Pirate, each purchase directly supports Dangerous Prototypes! Remember, you are directly supporting the maker when you purchase from Adafruit!
Protocols:
1-Wire, I2C, SPI, JTAG, asynchronous serial (UART), MIDI, PC keyboard, HD44780 LCDs, and generic 2- and 3-wire libraries for custom protocols.
Features:
USB interface, USB powered
0-5.5volt tolerant pins
0-6volt measurement probe
1Hz-40MHz frequency measurement
1kHz – 4MHz pulse-width modulator, frequency generator
On-board multi-voltage pull-up resistors
On-board 3.3volt and 5volt power supplies with software reset
Macros for common operations
Bus traffic sniffers (SPI, I2C)
A bootloader for easy USB firmware updates
Transparent USB->serial bridge mode
10Hz-1MHz low-speed logic analyzer
Custom support in AVRDUDE, Flashrom
AVR STK500 v2 programmer clone
Scriptable from Perl, Python, etc.
Translations (currently Spanish and Italian)
We also have Bus pirate basic probe sets! This is a interface cable designed for Bus Pirate which can makes it easier to connect the Bus Pirate to a circuit and get hacking!
This upcoming Tuesday, 9 March 2010, 8pm at Crash Space in Culver City, we’ll be having some fun quick DIY projects for you to build. Come on over and have fun with us. The project kits are $5 for CrashSpace members or $10 for non-members and you can take them home after you build them.
INCREDIBLE PROJECT! Steampunk Professor Xavier Wheelchair Project – powered with an Adafruit Waveshield!
SMEEON writes…
Finally got around to adding together some video clips I took. I had a lot of people asking about what it does and how, so here is a little walk through.
