We’re back in NYC! – “Ask an engineer” is Saturday night 10pm ET – 1/16/2010 and it is META night, the chat is about the chat! We’re going to spend a lot of the evening experimenting with a new multi-camera set up (3 cameras!), picture-in-picture and push pre-recorded video in to the LIVE stream. This is all in preparation for more features, segments and fun with our weekly show! We’ll still answer your questions and we’ll still have a give away, we’ll just be playing “live” with a lot of video stuff. Just keep in mind, it all might not work
Chat details!
Visit our new “chat” section on Adafruit at 10pm ET, Saturday nights
Adafruit had our first offsite meeting of 2010. We’re working on a ton of new features to the site, forums, “ask an engineer”, citizen engineer, kits and more. We’re also creating the roadmap for our 2010 line up of new products in the wonderful world of open source hardware. We has some crazy goals, we’re looking forward to the challenges ahead. Our method of offsite is to climb rocks and between turns jot down what we need to do in the next 12 months to make 2010 an amazing year. If you’re in the NYC and like climbing check out Brooklyn Boulders (pictured above)…
A wood-machinable or printable enclosure for the MintyBoost. Designed to fit the Adafruit kit’s dimensions, with a vacuum formed lid that slides on for access to the batteries.
Adafruit is donating 10 percent of our sales on Thursday 1/14/2010 to the Red Cross for the Haiti earthquake relief. Our thoughts are with the victims, friends and family of the people of Haiti. You can donate directly on redcross.org or just text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross Haiti relief, you’ll see a $10 charge on your next cell phone bill (you can read more about this at redcross.org). The NYTimes has a story how this all works and the google has a good resource page.
Comprising nothing but small sounds recorded from the James Cameron masterpiece ‘Terminator 2: Judgement Day’, ‘Skynet Symphonic’ is my tribute to one of the greatest action features of all time! Each section is composed entirely of sounds from a major scene in the film. For example, the Terminator pounding on the fire escape door is used as a kick drum. Bones breaking play the role of a snare. Electrical disturbance acts as a crash cymbal.
We’re catching up on some news from last week, here come the open source culture = terrifying piracy articles… from CNN.
“With the open-source culture on the Internet, the idea of ownership — of artistic ownership — goes away,” Alexie (novelist and poet Sherman Alexie) added. “It terrifies me.”
It’s more terrifying when someone groups open source with piracy. In our experience as artists and biz owners open source and open source hardware actually gives the maker *more* control and more artistic ownership.
Adafruit-Eagle-Library at master – GitHub – hells yes its my very own mixtape of package footprints. Dont forget you can also grab parts out of any adafruit project’s .brd file by running extract-pkg.ulp (or whatever its called) however, since its nice to be tidy, i’ll be merging everything into ONE FILE called the Ye Olde Adafruit Eagle Librarie, available at github… We’ve got wiki too.
This is interesting, MagicJack, makers of the VoIP dongle that gets your phone calls on the cheap is going to release a version that tricks your cell phone in to calling through the internet. It’s a small “femtocell” that routes cell calls in your home through the web, it pretends to be your carrier, and you can likely make calls in your home… (Thanks Violet!)…
There is a new way to cut down on your cell phone bills. The company that created the MagicJack, the device that lets you make cheap calls over the internet, has a new version for cell phones. The new MagicJack routes calls for free over the web in your home, instead of going through your carrier’s cellular tower and using up your minutes. The device goes on sale in about four months for $40.
The catch? The wireless MagicJack may not be entirely legal, since it’s using wireless spectrum — spectrum that is reserved and owned by the cell carriers — without permission. MagicJack argues that inside your house you can do whatever you want, with any spectrum you’d like, but the government — which hasn’t commented yet — may ultimately feel otherwise.
The new MagicJack won’t be sold for another few months, at which point the situation may be entirely different: Expect legal challenges from the notoriously litigious cell carriers (upset about missing out on their minutes) as well as potential FCC headaches. In other words: Buy one quick, before they’re banned.
This will be a lot of fun to play with. And it will be fun to watch the nationwide carrier freak out, they have their own versions planned, but they’re not going to like this at all.
The Adafruit team is back and recharged. Our team back in NYC took care of all the orders while we were gone and we were able to do support, “Ask an engineer” and most of the day to day tasks remotely. We went kite boarding, snorkeling, ran on the beach, ate animals from the sea, designed some electronics in the sand before the waves washed them away, good times. We’d like to thank our customers, friends and family for understanding we took some time off, we’re looking forward to 2010 and doing some open source hardware! Enjoy some photos!
We are taking a break from our winter break to do an “Ask an engineer” tonight 10pm ET 1/9/2010 – our location is remote, our connection is flakey, but will be broadcasting (or trying to) tonight! Ladyada has made a Wifi amplifier from coconuts, so we think it will be ok.
Chat details!
Visit our new “chat” section on Adafruit at 10pm ET, Saturday nights
There will be a trivia question at the end of the night as always!
Lastly, if anyone can save a text log we’d appreciate it
A reminder:
Orders placed between 1/4/2010 and 1/11/2010 may take 4-5 business days to ship (back orders or in stock items). Adafruit is taking a one week winter break to recharge
We worked straight through the holidays for the last 60 days or so from 6am to 3am shipping kits, making kits, doing live video chats, posting in the forums – we were there, so for the next 5 days we are going to recharge our batteries and do some inventory for tax stuff.
Here is some very important information:
Any order placed from 1/4 to 1/8 may ship 4-5 business days *after* your order. If the item is in stock it may go out sooner.
Customer service emails and forum support will happen each day, likely every 6 hours, please be patient, we will get to all of them.
Phone calls may go to voicemail, we will be checking this every few hours – your best bet is to send an email or post in the forums for technical support as always.
When in doubt, email us – we’ll be around each day, we just will not be around second by second as we usually are
Thank you for a great year, we’re spending the week resting up so we can deliver more open source hardware kits at a great value to more people and make even better resources for your journey towards learning electronics and engineering.
Thanks for coming out and special thanks to guest, Amanda “w0z” – she’s an engineer (bio and analog electronics & engineering). We talked about the clock enclosure she is designing with Adafruit (photos here) and we answered your engineering questions. Mosfet the cat showed up. And lastly, Adafruit is taking a post-holiday rest from 1/4 to 1/8 – orders will take a little longer than usual to ship out that week.
Join us for Ask an engineer 1/2/2010 10pm ET – With special guest, Amanda “w0z” – she’s an engineer (bio and analog electronics & engineering). We’ll talk about the clock enclosure she is designing with Adafruit (photos here) and we’ll answer your questions, have a trivia question, prize, all that. Mosfet the cat will say hi at the end of the chat and we’ll go over important ordering information (Adafruit is taking a post-holiday rest from 1/4 to 1/11).
Chat details!
Visit our new “chat” section on Adafruit at 10pm ET, Saturday nights
There will be a trivia question at the end of the night as always!
Lastly, if anyone can save a text log we’d appreciate it
A reminder:
Orders placed between 1/4/2010 and 1/11/2010 may take 4-5 business days to ship (back orders or in stock items). Adafruit is taking a one week winter break to recharge
Printable catalog (PDF)
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