From hacker spaces to profitable businesses, tinkering is experiencing a renaissance. WSJ’s Andy Jordan explores some of the “stuff” people are making with new devices that encourage hacking and creativity.
If you’re doing any surface mount work, you should look into these resistor kits from Digikey. You can get them in any package (these are the 0805) and for ~$60 they’re a great deal. The compact box has strips of 50 each of 1 ohm to 1 Mohm 5% resistors. I’ve used them extensively when prototyping designs and reworking boards – and have the 0805, 0603 and 1206 sets.
We have just updated and launched our new tutorials and project section at Adafruit.com! This section can be your first stop on your journey to learning electronics, a great page to bookmark and share! Here’s a list of what’s up there now!
Arduino – Learn all about Arduino with our tutorials!
A guide to the proper use and appreciation of sensors
AVR Tutorial – An easy tutorial for starting out with basic AVR programming!
Multimeters – how to use em!
Soldering – Soldering is really easy, if you can write then you can easily solder.
Bedazzler – DIY non-lethal weaponry
Breadboard supply – A very low dropout adjustable power supply
Boarduino – Solderless Breadboard Arduino Clone
DIGG it! – The ultimate diggbait
Drawdio: A pencil that lets you draw with music!
Fuzebox – Open source 8-bit game console
Game Grrl – A portable Nintendo game
Game of Life – Blinky fun cellular automata
Ice Tube Clock – Vacuum fluorescent display clock
MIDIsense – A real-world MIDI interface platform
MiniPOV v2 – An Inexpensive Persistance of Vision Toy
Veterans day is 11/11/2009 – Adafruit will be open and taking orders, free shipping to any military base as always… Postal orders will ship out on the 12th. UPS orders will still ship on the 11th.
Just completed. Worked first time, no issues, and I’m quite a novice at soldering. Fantastic kit! Everything fit together beautifully, and the instructions were clear. I especially appreciate the mid-build tests.
We are thrilled to release our new forum updates. Better navigation, a lot of back end improvements, RSS feeds and flexible areas for us to do contests / promote great projects from Adafruit customers. We’ve spent a long time trying to make the Adafruit customer forums one of the best places to share information about our kits, electronics, open source hardware and each of journeys in to the world world of engineering.
So now is a good time to reiterate the “rules”. They’re not really rules, just a handy list of things you can expect when you participate here. Our goal is to support everyone from all skill levels to hang out here and have fun.
Adafruit, its customers and community of electronics enthusiasts want to encourage the kind of discussions that we all want. A positive, helpful tone that maximizes the sharing of information.
Posts and comments in the Adafruit forums should be:
Adding information, asking researched questions, sharing cool stuff or
A well-reasoned critique / criticism
Comments and posts should not be:
Spam, attacks on people, projects, or
Mean spirited, not courteous to others or the Adafruit team
That’s it! Same “rules” as our comments on the blog. If you’ve been a “lurker” – the Adafruit forums are a safe place where you ask your questions and get help with your electronics project, come on down! We’ll do our best to make your time here well spent. Please post any comments or suggestions, we’re still tweaking some stuff too!
We’ve spent most of the weekend so far getting out more Ice Tube clocks – Any Ice Tube clock order placed before 11/01/2009 was shipped, we are now working on all orders past the 1st and expect to ship them in the next 5-10 business days. If you’ve been waiting to an Ice Tube clock now is the time to order to get one in time for the holidays. Pick one up at the Adafruit store!
Tonight is our weekly “Ask an engineer chat” 10pm ET. We will answer questions and also (hopefully) be making some electronics LIVE using our pick and place machine…
Chat details!
Visit our new “chat” section on Adafruit at 10pm ET – 11/7/2009
The Ice Tube clock has surpassed all of our expectations – we are working around the clock to ship them! Any Ice Tube clock order placed before 10/19/2009 was shipped, we are now working on all orders past the 19th and expect to ship them in the next 5-10 business days. If you’ve been waiting to an Ice Tube clock now is the time to order to get one in time for the holidays. Pick one up at the Adafruit store! Time is running out!
We’ve received so many questions about our pick and place setup and general SMT tronix’ assembly that we have a place to chat about it! Stop by our new forum AND check our wiki!
In our continual effort to provide text transcripts for our videos at Adafruit we’re pleased to release the text transcript for Citizen Engineer volume 01 – SIM Card and Payphone hacking. Learn how a SIM card works (the small card inside GSM cell phones), make a SIM card reader, view deleted messages, phone book entries and clone/crack a SIM card. Then, modify a retired payphone so it can be used as a home telephone and for VoIP (Skype). Then learn how to modify the hacked payphone so it accepts quarters – and lastly, use a Redbox to make “free” phone calls from the modified coin-accepting payphone. Length: 30 minutes. The text transcript and video can be viewed here.
…And an update for Citizen Engineer fans, our “Open source DIY non-lethal LED weaponry” was what we were calling Citizen Engineer volume 02, but – we decided to release it without that title. Why? Late this year (2009) a book by David Douglas, Greg Papadopoulos and John Boutelle called “Citizen Engineer, A handbook for socially responsible engineering” was released. It’s a good book and you should check it out. We figured those guys would be promoting their book and this was our way of helping them out, so we just made our video non-Citizen Engineery. In 2010 we’ll resume our video series, comic book and coloring book.
Printable catalog (PDF)
to ship them! Any Ice Tube clock order placed before 10/19/2009 was shipped, we are now working on all orders past the 19th and expect to ship them in the next 5-10 business days. If you’ve been waiting to an Ice Tube clock now is the time to order to get one in time for the holidays. 
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