A fun, whimsical project by the folks at Smart Design’s Interaction Lab, Apron Alert is a wearable that tweets when a meal is being prepared and when it’s ready. The project was an experiment around “improving the communal kitchen experience.”
Prototyped using a Lilypad Arduino and an X-Bee, the “Smart” Apron uses a magnetic clasp as the input when the apron is being worn and taken off. The design of the project is nicely illustrated in the graphic below.
Today we’re releasing a major update to Alpha Clock Five, our alphanumeric LED desk clock, alarm clock, and data display device.
Alpha Clock Five still has five remarkably bright, remarkably huge 2.3″ alphanumeric LED displays. But for version 2.0, we’ve rewritten the firmware from scratch. It’s packed with new features and it is simply a joy to use.
The firmware is upgradable and we’ve still got some Alpha Clocks Five in stock!
The Adafruit LED Matrix Backpack is meant to have its LED matrix soldered right to the board, but instead I soldered on female headers that would permit me to plug in either the mini LED matrix for code testing or the large matrix for deployment. Someone will probably be along to tell me I need a resistor here or there or I’m going to blow some chip up—and they’re likely right—but it seems to have worked so far as-is.
To connect my own matrix to the I2C Backpack, I cut down a piece of prototyping board and soldered in the male headers, then connected the 8″ wires from the last row and last column of the matrix to the board.
Adafruit LED Matrix Backpacks -What’s better than a single LED? Lots of LEDs! A fun way to make a small display is to use an 8×8 matrix or a 4-digit 7-segment display. Matrices like these are ‘multiplexed’ – so to control 64 LEDs you need 16 pins. That’s a lot of pins, and there are driver chips like the MAX7219 that can control a matrix for you but there’s a lot of wiring to set up and they take up a ton of space. Here at Adafruit we feel your pain! After all, wouldn’t it be awesome if you could control a matrix without tons of wiring? That’s where these adorable LED matrix backpacks come in.
Thanks to Brian Howland for this great video of his PumpkinHead Animatronic project that he had hoped to share during the Halloween Show & Tell!
It uses: Boarduino, Audio Shield, 16 ch servo board, RGB LED Strip and some preliminary software based on your examples.
Show & Tell is great stuff! Great to see so many folks building stuff. I am mostly by myself here in Iowa as a Maker. I will try to get on the show another time.
We look forward to having you on next time!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.
I don’t remember how I originally stumbled across this, but looking through my ‘Embedded’ bookmarks I was reminded of this interesting and relatively accessible introduction to basic sensors. Rather than focusing on sensors, though (temperature, humidity, etc.), it focuses on something much more interesting … the ways that many sensors actually measure things (via resistance, capacitance, inductance, etc.). If you’re looking for a basic primer of the advantage and disadvantages of different ways of measuring the physical world around us (visible or not), this is as good a starting point as any! Head over to Introduction to Sensors by the University of Exeter for more information.
PIR (motion) sensor: PIR sensors are used to detect motion from pets/humanoids from about 20 feet away (possibly works on zombies, not guaranteed). This one has an adjustable delay before firing (approx 0.3-18 seconds), adjustable sensitivity and we include a 1 foot (30 cm) cable with a socket so you can easily reposition the sensor or mount it using the two drills on either side
Runs on 5V-16V power (if you need to run it off of 3V you can do that by bypassing the regulator, but that means doing a bit of soldering). Digital signal output is 3.3V high/low. Sensing range is about 7 meters (120 degree cone)
For a full tutorial with wiring diagrams, code examples and project ideas, PIR sensor tutorial page!
This is a great story, and one that makes you appreciate the internet a bit more. Patton Oswalt’s daughter really wanted her dad to be Doc Ock (Doctor Octopus) to go with her own Spider Man costume this year for Halloween. Patton did some digging and couldn’t find a good costume on the internet, so he posted a tweet asking for help.
Adam Savage from Mythbusters happened to read the tweet, and decided to help out.
Using some inexpensive components, and only 4 hours of his time, he created the Doc Ock costume for Patton. Here is a video of Adam explaining how he made it:
Adafruit Pi Cobbler Breakout Kit for Raspberry Pi – Now that you’ve finally got your hands on a Raspberry Pi® , you’re probably itching to make some fun embedded computer projects with it. What you need is an add on prototyping Pi Cobbler from Adafruit, which can break out all those tasty power, GPIO, I2C and SPI pins from the 26 pin header onto a solderless breadboard. This mini kit will make “cobbling together” prototypes with the Pi super easy. Designed for Raspberry Pi Model B Revision 1.0.
The Adafruit Pi Cobbler is compatible with both versions 1 and 2 of the Raspberry Pi Computer – for version 2 computers, note that the GPIO #21 has been replaced with GPIO #27 and that the I2C pins are now I2C port #1 instead of #0. All other pins are the same.
Pictured above, Ladyada packed up and heading out.
Dear community and customers,
Power is out at both Adafruit locations in New York City (10038 & 10013). The buildings are secure and locked down, but without power, there’s no net, no elevators, no access, no lights, no nothing. UPS and USPS have contacted us, they are not doing pickups or deliveries in our area. We expect shipping to resume this weekend or early next week.
This is a disaster, they were not kidding. Like millions others, we are dealing with the aftermath of Sandy.
I live in the area affected so we’re heading uptown to find power and internet to keep customers updated. The Adafruit staff is staying home until our factory location has power.
We will work overtime and around the clock once the power is back on to fulfill your orders.
Check out this great DIY CMoy Freeform Headphone Amplifier cast in crystal resin! Thanks to Jack Orman over at the AMZ-FX Guitar Effects Blog for the lead.
Halloween has been postponed in NYC but probably not for most of you reading this! Here are some highlights from our #electronichalloween series this month. Have a safe and fun night and please send us pictures of your amazing costumes and decor! Add them to the Adafruit Flickr pool, post them up on our Facebook page, or drop us a line on Twitter. And remember, through the end of the day today 10/31, get 10% off anything in our “EL Wire/Tape/Panel” category with code HALLOWEEN2012. Above is Phil Burgess aka Paint Your Dragon’s Electronic Demon costume using Adafruit gear, all finished (looking’ great!).
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Each day this month (Monday-Friday) we’re going to have a special “Electronic Halloween” post here on Adafruit. It will be a hack, mod, project or something we’ve found that combines all the best things about electronics and Halloween.
Cambridge students will be loading human screams onto a smartphone that will be blasted into outer space later this year. The public are invited to submit their screams, which will be emitted while in orbit at the same time as the phone records – to test if it’s possible to capture the sound of screaming in space.
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