"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from; furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's model"
James Lovelock is best known as the father of Gaia theory: the idea that the planet acts like a single organism. His latest book is The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning. In an interview with Nature, he defends his forthcoming trip into space, and suggests that the technology for reversing climate change may be within our grasp
Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change from radically impacting on our lives over the coming decades. This is the stark conclusion of James Lovelock, the globally respected environmental thinker and independent scientist who developed the Gaia theory. “I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change,” said Lovelock in his first in-depth interview since the theft of the UEA emails last November. “The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
We here at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center think Earth is a pretty special place and hope you love the Big Blue Marble as much as we do. Here are a few of our favorite Earth images from over the years to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day. Today we celebrate Earth, so enjoy! NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation’s largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
Instructables has plenty of great Green projects to share, just in time for Earth Day! Help save the earth this year by planting a tree, starting a garden, organizing your community, and saving some energy around your house. We’ve only got one earth to live on, so learn to take care of it.
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
iFixit: The free repair manual kicks off Earth day with opening up their repair guides to the public & going for the e-cause…
Today iFixit is changing repair forever. Today — Earth Day, 2010 — we are launching a global repair community. Our goal? To teach every person on Earth how to fix every thing they own. You know us as the folks who take apart new hardware and show people how to fix Apple products. We’re not going to stop doing any of that, but starting today we are going to massively expand our scope: We are relaunching iFixit as the free repair manual that anyone can edit.
Repair is stuck in the 20th century. Service manuals are almost never available online, and the few troubleshooting forums that exist are rife with spam and ad-baiting. Reliable parts suppliers that understand e-commerce are few and far between.
Making repair accessible to everyone is the best shot we’ve got at reducing e-waste and starting to make our high-tech lives sustainable. We can’t keep throwing away cell phones every 18 months! We need to get every last bit of functionality from the things we own before we toss them aside. What if everyone had free access to a repair manual for everything they owned? How much longer would our things last? Our mission is to give people the information, parts, and tools they need to make their things work as long as possible.
We showed our vision to officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, and they were ecstatic. Andrew Fanara, Product Development Team Leader for the ENERGY STAR Program, commented that “the EPA would like to see more done about the growing e-waste problem, and iFixit has a novel, community-driven approach to make electronics work longer. We are encouraged by their solution, and are looking forward to observing the environmental impact of iFixit’s platform.” Join us, and together we’ll fix the world!
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
Yes, it’s that time of year when corporations of all sizes and shapes paint themselves green and brag about their environmental friendliness. On April 22, thousands of press releases will spread like vines across the internet – touting everything from the latest non-toxic pure-as-water cleaners, to big checks to plant forests in faraway lands, to feel-good tips for saving the planet.
As a proponent of all things sustainable here at UPS, I should be grateful for the rising chorus of environmental advocates. But I’m not. I resent them – every single one.
The reason is that some people sincerely do live a green lifestyle; some companies take environmental stewardship seriously enough to make it part of their operations every single day, not just on April 22.
Yet dozens of market-savvy companies will grab the headlines this month and get labeled as a green company – stories that will last on the internet forever. So here’s my Earth Day Challenge to all of you. Take a visit to those companies’ websites in July or August or December. Check it out: Are their environmental efforts really embedded in their products and operations? Do they transparently report on their environmental impact? Do they have a sustainability report that comes out EVERY year, not just every once in a while?
And once you are convinced that they are sincere about sustainability, buy their products. Reward them for their commitment to the environment. Every Day. Not Just Earth Day.
Show them you care.
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
We test-charged an iPad with our solar backpack and it worked, but with two caveats: 1) The iPad charges from a USB port like a phone, but its battery is 25 Watt hours (about 5x that of an iPhone), so charging the iPad will take about 5x as long. 2) You’ll need to put the iPad into sleep mode for it to charge.
This is not a bug in our charger, it is due to the size of the battery and the charge circuitry within the iPad. Since the iPad has such a large battery, it is designed to charge best off a wall charger or high-powered USB port found on a Mac and some other computers. If you plug it into a normal USB port on a PC, you’ll get 2.5 Watts instead of the 10 Watts or more you get from a high-powered USB port.
If you want to solar charge your iPad from one of our Backpacks, you should plan on plugging it into a full Voltaic battery at night or at a time time when you’re not planning to use the device. We are going to do more testing, but it took us an hour to get from 77% to 83% charge.
You might also want to carry a spare battery as it will take about 3 full Battery Pack V11s to fully charge the iPad.
The other option is to use our Generator battery, which outputs 2Amps / 10 Watts and will appear more like a wall outlet to the iPad, although we currently out of stock.
Update: A customer using our earlier Silver JetPack battery (14.4 Watt hours capacity) reports going from 38% full to 81% in three hours. He did put the iPad into sleep mode before charging.
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
NASA’s recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun’s dynamic processes. These solar activities affect everything on Earth.
Some of the images from the spacecraft show never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.
Check out this image!What does Solaris want from us? … There are no answers, only choices.
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” – Carl Sagan.
The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by Voyager 1 from a record distance, showing it against the vastness of space. By request of Carl Sagan, NASA commanded the Voyager 1 spacecraft, having completed its primary mission and now leaving the Solar System, to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth. It was subsequently used by Sagan as the title of his 1994 book of the same name. In 2001, it was selected by Space.com as one of the top ten space science photos.
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
For my third blog entry on the Intel® Energy Checker SDK, I will take on a two-part DIY and super fun project. I always wanted to extend the use of the SDK into my home and be able to monitor my personal energy consumption. As an engineer, I live by the motto: “you cannot manage what you cannot measure”. Isn’t the electric bill all about that, one may ask? Sure, it is a good year-to-year and month-to-month trend indicator and it will likely fit the needs of most of us for a while. However, using my bill, I cannot break down my energy consumption per function. What is the cost of running my lab equipment in the garage? How much does the entertainment system cost us per month? Etc. To be honest, I do not know if this information will trigger some good changes in the way I run my electric equipments – I sincerely wish so –, but at least I will have the knowledge.
I was aware of the existence of a cool little device called Kill A Watt produced by P3 International (P4400). This power analyzer actually fit requirements #1, #2 and #4 out of the box. Unfortunately it is a closed device and it cannot share its readings with the outside world. Luckily, there is also a cool DIY kit from Adafruit Industries – called Tweet-a-Watt – which precisely allows you to turn a P4400 into a wireless power analyzer using Digi’s XBee® 802.15.4 RF modules. With this kit, requirement #3 can be met. Sure, there are many other devices and kits available in the market, but for my project, this was the best pick. If you decide to take on similar project using different device(s), please share your experience with us!
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels! Get a 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out for $20, today only!
We are having an ADAFRUIT EARTH DAY SOLAR SALE! For today only we’re going to sell our solar cells for $20, 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out – they will never be this price ever again. It’s today only, sale ends 11:59pm ET 4/22/2010 – the price is usually $25 each. We have 400 of these ready to go immediately.
These panels come to us from Voltaic Systems, makers of fine solar-powered bags and packs. These are waterproof, scratch resistant, and UV resistant. They use a high efficiency monocrystalline cell. They output 2W solar panel 6V, 330mA out via a 3.5mm x 1.3mm DC jack connector. The substrate is an aluminum / plastic composite, specifically designed to be strong and lightweight. They can easily stand up to typical outdoor use including being dropped and leaned on.
Get them today only for $20 each – in the Adafruit store.
Celebrate Earth Day 2010 with Adafruit – we’ll have posts all day and night with fun power/earth/green related projects and we’re having a one-time only sale on solar panels!
Open source hardware may not sound like something that would produce a huge musical hit – unless you’ve met the x0xb0x. A clone of Roland’s legendary TB-303 bassline generator, the open version offered not only greater afford-ability than the now-rare antique, but expanded possibilities for hacking the hardware into a musical device you could love as your own, all with the backing of an impassioned community… Read more -
We are thrilled to release a solve-the-resistor CAPTCHA plugin for WordPress! This plugin will draw a random 5% or 10% resistor and four color band sliders beneath it. The commenter needs to match the colors on the sliders to the colors on the resistor. Commenters don’t actually need to know how to read resistors, but this will help them as they post comments on site that use this plugin. Random resistors are generated from E12 and E24 decade values (so there’s never something like a 4.6K Ohm resistor. Plugin created by: Adafruit Industries – Daigo Kawasaki, Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone. It’s open source, so please feel free to use it and improve upon it!
Our goal is to teach a little about electronics as people participate online. We’ll see how it goes! You can try it out in the comments on our site right now!
Adafruit is thrilled to be working with Willzyx Music, the x0xb0x is back. In our previous post & announcement we let everyone know that we would unable to support the project in the best way possible and we would be figuring out what we can do to help people get kits again. So, big news – we were very lucky enough to find someone who can devote the time, resources and support to x0xb0x – Meet James of Willzyx Music, he writes -
I just spent the last 10 years working in a San Francisco music shop and I really liked my job. I loved that I was helping people make music and that’s something that I still want to be a part of. Me and my wife have been making plans on moving to Taiwan for a number years and in 2009 we took the plunge. During 2009 I was selling completed x0xb0x’s on eBay under the name of bitcrusher76, it was a success and I am continuing on with the opening of my new web store willzyx.com.
My goal with Willzyx Music is to keep supplying the x0xb0x community with Parts and Kits. I have spent the last year building up a stock pile of parts and will bring the Kits back at an affordable price. Any new projects that are produced from Willzyx will have the same MIT open source license, so you can hack, modify and commercialize any of Willzyx’s original designs.
We want to thank James for being part of this with us and we’d like to thank all of customers, fans and everyone who has made the x0xb0x one of the best open source synth projects – LONG LIVE x0xb0X.
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