Andy Leer’s First Adafruit Blog Post

Andy Leer

Hi all! I’m super excited and honored to get the opportunity to post on the Adafruit.com blog! I’ve been following Adafruit.com for years now. I was one of the founding members of HackPittsburgh in Pittsburgh, PA where I first got my start with Arduino. I am now the Lead Dream Consultant at TechShop Pittsburgh where my responsibilities allow me to oversee the maintenance of the shop and the tasks of the other Dream Consultants. I am very lucky to be a part of the TechShop family and have access to all of the tools and awesome community.

I am an electronics enthusiast and hobbyist at heart. My education/background is from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA where I graduated with degrees in Audio Engineering and Web Development. As many of us in the maker community are, I am a musician. In my spare time I play banjo in Lonesome Lost & Foggy, a traditional bluegrass band in Pittsburgh, PA. A lot of my projects are based around musical instruments, toys, and other things I wish either existed already or things I can make slightly cheaper and learn from. I’ve recently created www.andyprojects.com where I’ll be documenting my projects along with the posts here on Adafruit.com. Below are a few pictures of things I’ve made more recently! TechShop is a really great resource for makers and if you are lucky enough to have one in your town or city, make sure to go and check it out!


Favorite Tool: Leatherman Squirt E4 (Currently Retired now ES4) – Keychain multi-tool with wire strippers and more! I use this tool all of the time from everything to stripping wires to fixing stuff around the house. I was lucky and got these when Radioshack offered them. I bought two and have since had one replaced by Leatherman under warranty! Awesome tool! This was also known as the “Midnight Hacker” (Adafruit) and the “Warranty Voider” (Make).

Favorite Adafruit Product: Trinket Pro – The cost, size, and functionality of this great little microcontroller has made this one of my new favorites. I’ve used it in things like my Lego Train Controller Project, Bluetooth Arduino Android class @ Techshop, and more. Packs a powerful punch for the price!

2014-01-26 17.32.49

Favorite Project: One of my favorites of this past year was the Trinket Rover. This little guy taught me a lot about servos, basic programming and more. With the use of ioBridge’s IO-201 wireless module, I was able to make this guy controllable over the internet. Having to 3D print the body was a great time as well.

Feel free to follow me on any other channels like Facebook and Twitter. I try to post fun stuff there as well! I look forward to sharing with you things I find and things I’m up to!

Flickr Album: Things I’ve Made
Twitter: @andy_leer
Facebook: andyleer
Youtube: My Videos
website: andyleer.com


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2 Comments

  1. Congrats Andy! I can’t wait to see what new things you get into. TechShop is the coolest place I’ve been to in Pittsburgh for anything IT related. I am jealous that you get to go there everyday! 🙂

  2. Congratulations on post #1, appropriately with the background of "Motif #1".
    Great to see the adafruit blogs always expanding with enthusiastic writers.

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