The BeagleBone Black includes a 2GB on-board eMMC flash memory chip. It comes with the Angstrom distribution factory pre-installed. You can flash new operating systems including Debian, Ubuntu, Android, and others. The following pages will illustrate the steps to getting the latest of each type of supported distribution onto the on-board eMMC.
In addition to the eMMC, you can also boot directly from a microSD card similarly to the original BeagleBone.
We’re starting out with instructions for Angstrom, but hope to add to it in the future! If you don’t have a BeagleBone Black yet, you can add your name to the list to be notified for when we get them back in stock.
Scientists in the US have developed a calculator from living cells, using old-fashioned analog programming. Their hope is that the technology could be used in the future to program cells to kill cancer.
Researchers have previously built electronic circuits using living cells. They achieved this by forcing living cells to behave in binary (digital) systems. But this is not energy efficient.
And many cells are required to implement simple functions that transistors, the basic units of electronic circuits which are ten times smaller than a cell and more reliable, can perform.
Instead analog technology, which uses not just two states like digital but many, could be used to make cells do more complex tasks. Rahul Sarpeshkar, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, realised that chemical reactions inside a living cell are also analog in nature.
We’re happy to announce the release of a new version of the Arduino software, version 1.0.5. Barring any unexpected bugfixes, this is the final planned release of the 1.0 series of the IDE. Future releases will be from the 1.5 branch that has been in beta since last summer.
With that excitement out of the way, let’s get to the new features :
New library import functionality to install libraries directly from a .zip file in the IDE. You can see more information about this on the installing 3rd party libraries page.
A Windows installer, which will hopefully streamline the process of setting up the IDE and drivers.
Windows signed drivers. This means Windows 8 will no longer prevent you from installing Arduino drivers.
The application is signed for OSX 10.8 (this was part of 1.0.4, but we thought it was so nice it deserved another mention).
Various bugfixes and optimizations, look at the release notes for a complete description.
Special thanks to everyone who contributed on this release. You rock.
Future releases of the IDE will support multiple architectures (like the ARM used in the Due). There is also a new library and 3rd party board implementation being introduced. You can read more about these on the 1.5 library specification and 3rd party hardware support pages
We’ve updated the Adafruit Learning System with a new feature that may be useful to those of you that don’t like clicking! Single page view is the newest addition to the learning system. We think the best default is still the guided navigation, as each page in the tutorials are specifically designed as a step in the process, but not everyone learns in the same way.
We hope this latest update to the Learning System will be another useful tool for you to learn all about electronics, wearables, and more. If you have any suggestions for features, feel free to leave them in the comments below!
Whoa! Check the new look for that Adafruit G+ Community “Makers, hackers, artists & engineers“! There are people making amazing things around the world, are you one of them? Join the 51,229 strong! And check out scores of projects they shared this week after the jump!
Don’t miss the chance to catch up with great pieces from the community from this past week! Click the link below!
We’re proud to announce that some 3D-printed pieces from the MakerBot Design Team have been chosen for a special collection at the MoMA Design Store called Destination: NYC — Made in the USA. For those who don’t know, MoMA is the Museum of Modern Art here in New York. The organization has been shining a light on local designers in cities around the world in its Destination: Design series.
Sometimes pieces in the series become top selling items at MoMA Design Stores. At MakerBot, we hope the innovative artists and designers who see our items will be inspired to use 3D printing in their own work. Here’s the set of items all together, including a customized MakerBot Mix Tape and MakerBot Watch designed just for MoMA, along with a bunch of pieces reflecting iconic places and objects in NYC.
Get your hands on these now! The whole Destination: NYC series, including pieces from other amazing local designers, is available from now through August only at MoMA Store locations in New York and Tokyo, as well as online at MoMAstore.org, MoMAonlinestore.co.kr, and MoMAstore.jp.
Check out this post from Pete Prodoehl’s RasterWeb that explores some of the food safety concerns for 3D printing + food. This is an area that I have been exploring extensively — and will be sharing some great techniques in the Adafruit Learning System in the near future — so I was happy to see other people covering this.
As a secret preview, I’ll let you know now that I am finding that rolling up your sleeves and learning mold making techniques from those who work in design kitchens is the best place to start to eliminate some of the difficult-to-guarrantee questions about using your 3D printer for making food.
You loved Printing Violations, and you tolerated Printing Violations (Part II), so we’re back again with another episode of Printing Violations, this time looking more closely at the health issues surrounding 3D printed cookie cutters.
Licensing issues are one thing, but there is a safety concern with 3D printed cookie cutters. Here’s a look at some of the issues. (All assume you are using a home 3D printer like a MakerBot, RepRap, Printrbot, etc.)
Is ABS or PLA plastic filament food-safe?
The answers range from “probably not” to “maybe” in most cases. If you use natural filament it will be free of coloring agents, which is a step in the right direction, but unless you are specifically buying “food-safe filament” don’t expect it to be food-safe. (Keep in mind that “food-safe” is something that will be determined by local health departments, and will vary depending on where you live.)
Then there’s the printer itself, and the environment it runs in. My printer lives in a basement where I do other crazy things like run a drill press, spray glue and paint, and generally make a mess. Would you want your cookie cutter manufactured in such an environment? What has the filament come into contact with before it goes into the machine, and what else has been introduced into the extruder as far as foreign materials? If you’ve ever read up on what it takes to make food in your home and sell it commercially, you’ll have some idea of the restrictions involved. (Wait, we aren’t selling food, right? We’ll get to that, be patient!)
Can 3D printed items be treated to be safe(er?)
If you’ve ever looked at a 3D printed object, you may notice the ridges. Since it’s built up layer upon layer, there are spaces into which food could get stuck. Of course you can try to clean your 3D printed cookie cutter, but don’t put it in the dishwasher! For PLA prints, the heat will either melt it, or deform it, or do some other nasty thing to it. ABS may be better, but you will still need to heat it enough to sterilize it, and hope you can get the crevices clean. It’s been suggested that acetone vapor finishing might be helpful. Helpful enough? Not sure.
Of course you could use your printer to make a mold and then make a food-safe cutter out of another material, but that’s not really a 3D printed cookie cutter. You could also try to coat your printed piece with a food-safe coating, but that’s a lot more work.
So why does all this matter? Because right now, there are people printing cookie cutters and selling them, and there are also people 3D printing cookie cutters, making cookies with them, and selling the cookies.
The Seattle International Film Festival has launched a new initiative called “SIFFcurious” with ads agency Wong, Doody, Crandall and Wiener (WDCW) that features a festival trailer that recreates scenes from cinema history with hand-painted 3D printed models.
Ad agency Wong, Doody, Crandall and Wiener (WDCW) created and executed the “SIFFcurious” campaign, this is the ninth year that WDCW has collaborated with SIFF. The campaign features a 1-minute trailer produced by Seattle production company World Famous. The trailer follows a young woman who peers into the the knotty hole of a mossy tree. Her curiosity takes her on a fantastic journey through scenes of some of the memorable movies screened at SIFF over the years: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Dr. Strangelove, The Exorcist, Alien, etc.
Each scene was beautifully recreated with 3D miniatures. Some of them are designed in the computer and then made into physical models using a Makerbot 3D printer. And some are sculpted and painted by hand, and others are made using silicone molds and resin.
“There was a bit of a learning curve on how to properly prepare models and, most important, how long it would take to make models on the Makerbot. The higher-quality models required more time and in order to save some time, we had to get creative and hand-sculpt some of the intricate models,” says Anea Klix, account executive at WDCW. “When we had multiples of a character (like the eggs in Alien or the side panels in 2001: A Space Odyssey), we would make silicone molds and cast resin copies. We had quite the assembly line, 3-D modeling, a 3D printer going nonstop for a month, sculpting and painting all at the same time.” In all there were 20 sets, some of the larger ones were 4 feet by 6 feet, which were shot over two days.”
The spot required over 900 hours of modeling, creating and building before a single frame was captured. The theme of curiosity is about how curiosity can pay off in big ways, leading you to new and magical, incredible things.
“It’s based on the thought of a person letting their curiosity run wild and getting transported into a pint-size world of film, in the same way that SIFF hopes to inspire filmgoers to be more curious and adventurous in their cinematic experiences.” says Klix.
20 films from SIFF history are referenced, can you name all of them?
On the first weekend in June, civic activists, technology experts, and entrepreneurs around the country will gather together for the National Day of Civic Hacking. By combining their expertise with new technologies and publicly released data, participants hope to build tools that help others in their own neighborhoods and across the United States.
It’s a great cause and we’re excited to take part. On June 1, we’ll welcome developers and tech experts to the White House for our second hackathon.
The Adafruit Google+ Community sailed past the 50k mark this week!
There are people making amazing things around the world, are you one of them? Join the 50466 strong! And check out scores of projects they shared this week after the jump!
Don’t miss the chance to catch up with great pieces from the community from this past week! Click the link below!
Across the partition from the roboticist who was making coffee tables with magnetized cubes, an artist was boxing up woodcuts that, when held to the ear, sounded like a forest. Beyond him, just past the software designer on the treadmill, a muscular man in a T-shirt tinkered with his design for a motorcycle.
In a smaller space that is to be unveiled on Thursday, Jessica Banks worked on a chandelier that expands and contracts in response to ambient sound.
This eclectic mix of entrepreneurs, among the first tenants of a communal space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, did not in any way resemble workers in a traditional factory, but their landlords and city officials hope they represent the seedlings of a rebirth of manufacturing in New York City.
Dennis Brylow extolls the virtue of low-cost computing via wuwm.com:
What Raspberry Pi does, according to Brylow, is removes the intimidation factor for students. He hopes the low-cost gadget enables schools to turn out more qualified computer science graduates
While the match-up of “3D printing” + “weapons” continues to be a disproportionate hot topic in the media in the wake of the video of Defense Distributed’s Cody Wilson firing the first “entirely” (mostly) 3D printed handgun model, Michael Weinberg of Public Knowledge has been making efforts to educate policy makers and advocate for intelligent debate and consideration for the highly vulnerable developing field of desktop 3D printing. (Though skip below Weinberg’s update below for the “steps back” portion of this update, pretty much the precise thing Weinberg and others are attempting to avoid.)
Friday may well go down as a turning point in the debate around 3D printed guns, and 3D printing policy in general. Two important sides seemed to step away from confrontation and instead focus on what is important to them. Defense Distributed included metal parts in their otherwise fully 3D printed handgun. And Rep. Steve Israel used Defense Distributed’s announcement to raise concerns about undetectable firearms, not 3D printing. Both should be praised for these decisions.
But first, some background
Conversations about firearms have been bubbling around the edges of 3D printing for some time now. Things really started heating up when an organization called Defense Distributed announced its intention to help design a fully 3D printed firearm. This raised some policy concerns (some novel, some not) about home manufacture of firearms.
Perhaps the highest profile critic of Defense Distributed was Rep. Steve Israel. Although his primary concern was with undetectable firearms, much of his framing seemed to single out one way to make undetectable firearms – 3D printing. This 3D printing focus came to a head when Rep. Israel sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter to other Members of Congress raising fears about 3D printed firearms.
What Defense Distributed did
On Friday, Forbes reported that Defense Distributed released photos of what it claims to be a fully 3D printed handgun. But the handgun had an important feature – it included six ounces of steel, thus making it a detectable firearm.
This was a savvy decision on Defense Distributed’s part. The organization has a substantial list of intriguing goals but making a gun that can be smuggled into an airport does not seem to be one of them. By including metal in the design, Defense Distributed stepped away from what may have been a distracting side conversation. This should allow it to focus on the things it really cares about without unnecessarily reaching into other policy areas.
What Rep. Israel did
We were quite critical of Rep. Israel’s previous Dear Colleague letter. As we wrote then, the letter seemed to muddle his concerns and be overly-focused on one way to make undetectable firearms, not on undetectable firearms themselves. Friday’s announcement could have been an opportunity to return to that argument.
But instead, to his credit, Rep. Israel focused on the real concerns that Friday’s announcement raised for him. In a new Dear Colleague letter, Rep. Israel points to Defense Distributed’s design as a high profile reminder that undetectable firearms are a real possibility. Rep. Israel’s letter focuses on his real concern – undetectable firearms – without singling out one way to manufacture them.
None of this will be the last word
While these are both encouraging steps, they certainly do not represent the end of the line. Including metal in a gun design does not mean that it cannot be modified to be undetectable. And removing 3D printing references from a Dear Colleague letter does not mean that no Member of Congress will ever unnecessarily vilify 3D printing.
But both sides appear to have shifted their focus back to what they really care about. This type of evolution is positive for policy conversations surrounding 3D printing. Hopefully they are signs of positive things to come. And you can rest assured that we here at Public Knowledge are working to make sure that this momentum keeps moving in the right direction.
Hopefully, the efforts of Weinberg and others will help stave off the confusing, polarizing, and ultimately both superficial and destructive public outcries by lawmakers and citizen action groups that have in the past hindered other innovator technologies such as video games and online music.
However, as may have been inevitable from the outset — and what many had felt to be an explicit goal by Defense Distributed’s Cody Wilson as a provocateur — the first wave of rather vague attempts by lawmakers to stop the “3D printed weapon” problem runs the risk of impacting the development of desktop 3D printing itself in unhelpful ways. Details of California Senator Leland Yee’s declaration that he will propose laws to band the technology used to create 3D printed weapons here in this article from CNET :
With gun control battles raging among federal and state legislators, it was inevitable that the issue of 3D-printed handguns would come up, especially with such a gun now available.
California Senator Leland Yee announced Tuesday his plan to propose a law that would ban the technology used to create 3D-printed guns.
“While I am as impressed as anyone with 3-D printing technology and I believe it has amazing possibilities, we must ensure that it is not used for the wrong purpose with potentially deadly consequences,” Yee said in a statement. “I plan to introduce legislation that will ensure public safety and stop the manufacturing of guns that are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check.”
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
Check out this moving video from MakerBot’s Annelise Jeske that captures the story of Johannesburg, South Africa master carpenter Richard Van As, whose project to design and execute a 3D printed mechanical hand for himself ultimately launched an initiative to create and share models for those in need of Robohands all over the world. (You can find the Thingiverse models here!)
When Richard Van As, a master carpenter in Johannesburg, South Africa, decided to make a set of mechanical fingers, it wasn’t just for fun. He’d lost four of the fingers on his right hand in an unfortunate work accident. For a tradesman like Rich, having a disabled hand is a big professional detriment, so Richard decided on the day of his the incident that he would use the tools available to him to remedy his situation…
MakerBot heard about the Robohand project in January 2013. Richard had been trading ideas with Ivan Owen, a collaborator in Washington State, for several months. Ivan used his prior experience with mechanical prop hands to make design suggestions, while Richard attempted to replicate the designs in his workshop. The process was taking weeks and months per cycle… We saw their collaboration and the work they were doing as groundbreaking, and we asked Ivan and Richard to accept a donation from us: a MakerBot Replicator 2 for each of them, one in Washington, and another in South Africa.
If the tool was useful to them, we hoped they would share their work on Thingiverse.com for the world to download. It turns out the MakerBots were incredibly useful, and the guys have followed through on their promise. Just hours after they received their packages from us here in Brooklyn, the two collaborators were sharing files back and forth, testing the design in one place and doing another iteration on the other side of the world. Richard says it took the prototyping process down from weeks to just 20 minutes…
The condition Amniotic Band Syndrome (ABS) is poorly understood, but the effects of it are pretty clear. Children are often born without extremities, especially fingers and toes, when fibrous bands in the womb prevent these parts from developing normally. It’s this condition that caused Liam to be born with no fingers on his right hand. The cost of purchasing a traditional prosthesis was far too much for the family, especially since Liam is a young and fast growing boy who would outgrow a prosthesis in a few months.
Liam was given a Robohand just days after Richard and Ivan received their MakerBots in January, 2013, and he has already been fitted for his second. The word spread, and other kids in the Johannesburg area like Liam with ABS have received their own Robohands, sized just for them. The files, including the assembly instructions, have been posted online at Thingiverse, and they have been downloaded over 3,800 times by people around the globe.
What Is A Robohand?
A Robohand is a set of mechanical fingers that open and close to grasp things based on the motion of the wrist. When the wrist folds and contracts, the cables attaching the fingers to the base structure cause the fingers to curl. Nearly all the parts of a Robohand are 3D printed on MakerBot Replicator 2 Desktop 3D printers.
Ivan, who played a big part in the initial design stages of Robohand, says he studied the anatomy of crab legs and human fingers to get the basic muscle and tendon structure. The result is a simple assembly that Richard believes anyone can make themselves. While a full set of prosthetic fingers may cost thousands of dollars, all of the Robohand parts that are made on the MakerBot Replicator 2 add up to roughly a few dollars in material cost, with the total mechanical hand costing around $150 (USD).
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
Major shifts in hardware design and production have allowed the “maker movement” to mature rapidly. The next generation of fantastic hardware could very well come from the startup up the block.
Just a few years ago, it would have taken a corporate empire to design, build, and market a hardware game-changer like Apple’s iPhone. Today, there’s far more hope — and excitement — surrounding the little guy, and for good reason.
Many people have noted a shift in the hardware landscape and the emergence of new, smaller companies. In his book Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, Chris Anderson writes extensively about the rise of the “Maker Movement.” Paul Graham’s recent essay “The Hardware Renaissance” mentions the recent uptick (7 out of the latest class of 84) in hardware startups at Y Combinator. In his blog, Erick Schonfeld wrote that “Hardware is the New Software,” and that VCs are pursuing hardware startups more aggressively as well.
Here’s an interesting experiment into turning your 3D printer into an injection molder — while the results are a bit primitive to date, the idea is fascinating. Hope he continues with the experimentation! From LeftAngle on Thingiverse:
This is one of those “I wonder if it can be done” exercises you can do in about an hour. This is only a proof-of-concept experiment that opens up the possibility of further development if anyone is interested.
The part I made is a true molded piece having no deposited layers.
The vent sprue I drilled in the front of the upper mold half didn’t work as PLA was too thick to move through (you can see the tiny nub in the photos). When the die was filled, the plastic simply began to pile up around the extruder head, outside the die,.
The other issue I had was the extruder head was hot enough to deform the upper ABS die half. This didn’t effect the part, but it made removing it from the mold difficult. The heat allowed the ABS mold material and the PLA part material to be mixed, making extraction impossible without wrecking the upper half of the mold.
Here’s how I made this:
Print the stl file in ABS. When the print is complete, break off the upper half (the one with the opening) and place it on top of the lower half, which should still be adhered to the build plate.
Disengage the driver motors and move the PLA print head (or the same print head you used to built the die on a single extruder machine) Load PLA material into the extruder and raise the plate until the extruder head couples with the hollow on the top of the die. Turn the load function on. The PLA will flow, filling the cavity. When its full, the PLA will begin to squeeze out from around the extruder nozzle. That’s when you should shut the extruder off.
Let the plastic cool completely before cracking the die open with a screw driver. If all went well, the part will be sitting inside the die, looking like a pearl.
Have fun, experiment and let us know if you make something really cool.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
It’s been an interesting few months for the commercialization of space.
The festivities kicked off last March, when the 3D modeling platform Sunglass and space company DIYRockets announced an incentive competition aimed at creating an “open-source 3D-printed rocket engine” capable of sending nano-satellites into orbit.
The challenge marks the first time an open source methodology has been applied to the commercial space industry. The hope is that these next wave rockets will democratize the growing low-Earth orbit small-payload delivery market and, ultimately, disrupt the entire space transportation space.
The idea that this will happen sooner rather than later is not even a stretch. Remember it took Chris Anderson and his cohorts at DIY Drones about a year’s worth of open source work to create an autonomous quadcopter that duplicated 90 percent of the military’s $250,000 Raven, except that they cost about $300 dollars.
Meanwhile, the 3D rocket contest announcement was followed a few weeks later by the next bit of space news: the April 19 launch of SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket…
The world’s first web page, created 20 years ago by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has returned to it’s birthplace at CERN.
This is part of a project by CERN to recreate the earliest days of the Web. From the BBC:
According to Dan Noyes, the web manager for Cern’s communication group, re-creation of the world’s first website will enable future generations to explore, examine and think about how the web is changing modern life.
“I want my children to be able to understand the significance of this point in time: the web is already so ubiquitous – so, well, normal – that one risks failing to see how fundamentally it has changed,” he told BBC News
“We are in a unique moment where we can still switch on the first web server and experience it. We want to document and preserve that”.
The hope is that the restoration of the first web page and web site will serve as a reminder and inspiration of the web’s fundamental values.
At the heart of the original web is technology to decentralise control and make access to information freely available to all. It is this architecture that seems to imbue those that work with the web with a culture of free expression, a belief in universal access and a tendency toward decentralising information.
I’m working on a little timekeeper project that works similarly to those word clocks, but it will be wrist-mounted. I have to make this little guy tiny, so I’m going with all SMD and to light the 21 LEDs, I’m using a 5-pin Charlieplexing scheme. To give back to the community (and FWIW), I am writing up my understanding of and methods for implementing Charlieplexing on an Atmel ATmega328 AVR (or Arduino). This first part of the 2-part series goes over the concept of Charlieplexing. The second article will show my homemade quality control methods and Arduino and AVR C code. I hope someone finds the write-up useful!
For many children, it’s the ultimate fantasy. For a few, it’s about to become a reality. In August a newly refurbished building in Billund, Denmark, will open its doors to become the first ever “Lego school”.
The fee-paying establishment is the brainchild of the toy manufacturer’s billionaire owner, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, who hopes the school will help put the town in rural Jutland – a place Copenhageners refer to as Hicksville – on the map as the Capital of Children.
The International School of Billund will combine the international baccalaureate (IB) with the Danish school system and Lego’s emphasis on creativity and play. Centred around “inquiry-based learning”, the idea is that children are more motivated when they generate their own questions. As one prospective parent of the new school put it: “In the UK you’re taught how to pass exams. In Scandinavia you’re taught how to think.”
The school’s champions hope that by combining this free and easy approach to learning with Lego’s research into child development and the international baccalaureate, pupils will have the tools to both “think” and “do” in their chosen careers.
The headteacher is British physicist-turned-international-school-tsar Richard Matthews, a seasoned head, having led schools all over the world from Botswana to Grimsby. As one of the few men in Denmark to wear a tie, he is referred to by some prospective parents as “Tie Man”.
“Allowing time for creativity, play and getting into a state of flow is at the centre of Lego’s philosophy and we’ll be experimenting with this and other ideas in the timetabling,” he said. “But we also have a responsibility — the children’s education comes first and sometimes the old methods will be the best.”
The UK debate about child-centred learning was revived on Monday when Liz Truss, the early years minister, complained to the Daily Mail that in nurseries she had “seen too many chaotic settings, where children are running around” in an environment with “no sense of purpose”.
Exciting new developments from Zach Hoeken Smith’s BotQueue.com project: “Webcams, Pausing, and More!”
Coming quickly on the heels of the last release, the latest v0.3 release of BotQueue adds some really exciting new features that make it much nicer to use. I hope you enjoy this new version as much as I do. Be careful though, the new webcam feature is addictive – you can watch your machine from anywhere you have an internet connection and a display.
If you want to take advantages of the new BotQueue, you’ll need to upgrade the BotQueue client, bumblebee. See instructions at the end of the article for how to do that.
Webcam Support
This is the biggest new feature for BotQueue, and the one that I’m most excited about. The BotQueue client, Bumblebee, can now grab webcam images and upload them to the BotQueue site. This allows you to be able to see whats happening on your bot through the BotQueue.com website. That’s right, you can see how your bot is printing from any device (computer, phone, tablet, etc) from anywhere in the world.
I’ve also modified the dashboard and various pages throughout the website to support showing the webcams. The default dashboard view is now large thumbnail images, although you can switch to medium, small, and the old list-style view of your bots. BotQueue will also save the final image of each job so you can have a historical view of how each print turned out. In the future, we’ll even be able to automatically create timelapse videos of each job.
In order to add webcam support, please see the help page with information on how to configure bumblebee to start capturing and uploading webcam images….
Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present Nano-Nonobjective-Oriented Ontographs and Qubit-Built Quilts,our third solo exhibition by New York artist Shane Hope.Featuring two series of new work, the exhibition runs March 29 through May 4, 2013. In the gallery project space, we will also present a selection of Hope’s “Folk-Computronium Laptops.”
Accelerating progress in nanometer-scale science and technology continues to expand the toolkit with which we can eventually assemble things from the atom up. This will potentially give rise to nearly costless systems for controlling the structure of matter itself. In the interim, the 3D printing revolution is said to have already arrived, promising content-to-print solutions and on-demand means of increasingly customizable production. But molecular manufacturing and 3D printing won’t merely make for an end to material scarcity as we know it. These so-called “abundance” technologies will make for objecthoods the likes of which we’ve not known and maybe can’t know this side of some sort of technological singularity (i.e, the theoretical emergence of superintelligence through technological means beyond which events cannot be predicted). It’s in anticipation of that reality race that Shane Hope’s work starts.
Check out this excellent Plywood RasPi (or “PlyPi”) shared with us by Stephen:
So small, and yet so full of potential. Certainly doesn’t come with any instruction manual but there’s plenty of opinion floating about online (and in forums a lot less scary than Mumsnet). This is my baby. And I’m already so so proud…
So here we have it – 3mm plywood layers cut carefully on my rusting, aged scroll saw. Honestly, it shook so much I expected it to fall apart. I will hopefully upgrade the machine at some point which would make the whole thing easier (poor cutting depth meant I could only cut one layer at a time). The eight layers were split 3/5 and glued to form the top and bottom. I ‘temporarily’ glued the two layers together with Tesco own brand pritt stick, only to find afterwards that it was the strongest glue in the world! With the case in one block I was able to sand it down to even up my poor cutting and, after drilling the four bolt holes, finish to 400grit. It was then (eventually) split into the two halves and coated with sanding sealer and wax to keep it looking as natural as possible. In the original design I’d been thinking about a flower press and had intended to use wing nuts on top. However when I fitted some temporary (too short at 25mm) machine screws, I was rather taken with the look. So the case was finished with 30mm M4 stainless button head bolts with stainless washers and dome head bolts (which then acted as feet). It’s easy to undo the dome heads with your fingers and then gain access to the Pi.
Close-ups of nuts and bolts and an image showing the split PlyPi and fixings. I had thought about leaving a hole to view the LEDs, but as my initial use will be less experimental (globally speaking – it’s pretty experimental to me!) I don’t see this as a great problem. As it is, I like the simplicity. Frankly I think it’s prettier than anything Apple could do.
Golden, Colo. (April 15, 2013) Epilog Laser is excited to announce the Epilog Challenge contest is back for round five, and will be hosted on Instructables.com. “Epilog Challenge V” opens today and runs through July 15, 2013. The lucky grand prize winner will receive a 30-watt Zing 16 Laser from Epilog.
“We’ve always appreciated the tremendous support we’ve received from the DIY community, and no matter who wins this challenge I have no doubt that he or she will make great use of the Zing 16,” said Mike Dean, vice president of sales and marketing for Epilog Laser. “We’re excited to partner with the folks at Instructables.com once again and anticipate seeing some very unique and creative entries.”
“I’m always amazed by the fantastic projects the Epilog Challenge inspires,” said Eric Wilhelm, founder of Instructables.com and director of communities at Autodesk. ”I hope to see even more mind-blowing projects this year!”
If there’s something that drives us crazy, it’s when patents get in the way of innovation. Unfortunately, we often don’t find out about the most dangerous patents until it’s too late—once they’ve been used to assert infringement. That’s why we were encouraged by the new provision of the patent law that allows third parties to easily challenge patent applications while those applications are still pending.
But, here’s the rub: it’s hard to identify those dangerous applications. And, once you do, it’s even harder to find the right information to challenge those applications during the window that the law allows. So we partnered with the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Ask Patents and—most importantly—you.
As of today, we’ve now challenged six pending patent applications that you helped us identify as applications that, if granted, would particularly threaten the growing field of 3D printing technology. Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic hand delivered the first two submissions to the Patent Office earlier this year, and we’ve since sent in four more.
The prior art we’ve submitted so far thanks to your submissions ranges from patents and blog posts to research papers and symposium proceedings. Each prior art document gives the Patent Office tools to reject patent claims for obviousness. That in turn helps protect the diverse, exciting uses of 3D printing that are gaining in popularity each day, from small hobbyist printers to large-scale, high-quality commercial fabrication using materials ranging from titanium to chocolate.
Here are copies of what we submitted to the Patent Office. The good news is that so far, the Patent Office has accepted our submissions (because of that, if you’re thinking of making your own preissuance submissions, you might want to use these as a model). Now we wait to see whether our input influences the examiners…..
And, just because I couldn’t resist, here is a piece of the write up about this annoucement from The Verge:
Since Julie Samuels joined the EFF as the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents, she’s spearheaded the movement to keep 3D printing free by challenging new applications with crowdsourced prior art. Today, the EFF is announcing that it and its partners including Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic and Ask Patents have now submitted documents on six pending applications, including one for a “Ribbon Filament and Assembly for Use in Extrusion-based Digital Manufacturing Systems” — i.e., using a filament that’s fettucine-shaped instead of spaghetti-shaped because it melts more quickly.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
One of the consequences of these graph is that if the real name of the sender of a single transaction belonging to the entity is identified, then Satoshi mystery identity will be revealed. I bet that this will happen in the days following this post.
This is a really interesting post, while Bitcoin is a fun thing to think about, the mystery of the creator has the makings of an epic story. It sounds like, very soon we’ll know. Satoshi Nakamoto is like the Banksy of currency, we hope Bitcoin is a giant art project.
Here’s a brief book report from the Adafruit forums covering the recently published Ham Radio for Arduino and PICAXE edited by Leigh L. Klotz, Jr, WA5ZNU, a book featuring a number of projects, and in many places pointing back to resources at Adafruit.
“Ham Radio for Arduino and Picaxe” Edited by Leigh Klotz WA5ZNU ISBN: 978-0-87259-324-4. Available from http://www.arrl.org.
Frankly I did not have high hopes for this book as the ARRL seems to mostly favour projects using PIC processors and I am an Arduino person. But received my copy in the mail today and my first browse through has left me very impressed. There are four PicAXE projects, two ATTiny projects, and 14 Arduino projects, serious, useable, real world projects. Anyone who thinks microcontrollers are toys should be made to read this.
The book opens with letters from Dave Sumner, K1ZZ, the head of the ARRL, Dave Dougherty from MAKE magazine, and the editor. That’s followed by a discussion of Amateur radio, and the history of Hams and microcontrollers. Each project is then presented in separate chapters. Theory, Construction, and source code are all discussed in great detail. I only wish we had software this well documented at my job. Each chapter ends with a long list of related URLs, (many of which point to Adafruit) and links to appropriate source code.
Enterprising members of the hooligan Free Art and Technology group (myself included) created a knock-off Google Driverless Car and toured it around the streets of New York recently, as part of our five year retrospective show called F.A.T. GOLD, on view at Eyebeam through April 20. On the surface it appears as just a prank, but we hoped to bring awareness to the pervasive influence of giant tech companies in our everyday lives, all while having a little fun. The LIDAR rig is 3D printed!
Check out this fascinating Raspberry Pi Magic Mirror project created by Pierre Raufest at “Think RP”i — and this lovely story from Liz at RaspberryPi.Org of Pierre documenting his project:
Here’s a somewhat creepy mirror with a disembodied (French) voice, which recognises the person looking into it and responds accordingly. This lovely hack from Pierre Raufast is the sort of OpenCV application that we hope to see much more of when the camera board goes up for sale (and the Pi camera would be a great solution here, with a much higher framerate).
Snow White’s Mum has nothing on Pierre.
I mailed Pierre, the man in front of the mirror, as soon as I spotted this on YouTube last week, asking if he had any documentation. He didn’t, but he sat down immediately and spent the weekend putting some together – in English. Thank you very much, Pierre! Head over to at Think RPi, where you’ll find easy-to-follow steps which make up a tutorial, including a hardware list; software; instructions; tips on successfully using OpenCV (the face-recognition software); a picture of Han Solo, my all-time favourite space pirate; and a picture of a couple of Brits holding boxes full of tiny computers last April.
Here’s an interesting 2.0 update from the architectural project Protohouse that received a lot of attention at London 3D Print Show. Fascinating if anything because of where it sits between conceptual model and actual executable construction plans: yes, they are going to actually execute a design like this, it isn’t just an idea!
What’s more, the thinking going into how these new build materials and construction methods function — and what it might mean to break out of the 2D floor plan — are persuasive enough that strategies here might reach traditional homebuilding within the decade. If you squint you might feel you see the “Space Age” contours and ambitions of the unrealized “Homes of the Future” from 1950s/60s era conceptual architecture as were once on display in Epcot Center, but these projects are quite a different beast.
With a number of building-scale 3D printers coming on line such as the D-Shape printer being use to panel other printed architectural efforts, we are going to see what happens when truly out-of-the-box approaches to materials and design are actually made physical in the very near future. Will we, like Dezeen’s readers, experience this as “a dinosaur head made of spaghetti” or “a giant spider cave” when faced with an actual 1:1 Protohome 2.0?
London architecture collective Softkill Design has joined the race to build the world’s first 3D printed house, announcing plans for a plastic dwelling that could be built off-site in three weeks and assembled in a single day.
“It will hopefully be the first actual 3D printed house on site,” said Gilles Retsin of Softkill Design. “We are hoping to have the first prototype out in the summer.”
The single-storey Protohouse 2.0 will be eight metres wide and four metres long and will be printed in sections in a factory. The parts will be small enough to be transported in vans and then snapped together on site.
“It would take up to three weeks to have all the pieces fabricated,” said Retsin. “Assembly on site is a one-day job, if the site is prepared before hand.”
“You don’t need any bolting, screwing, or welding on site,” he added. “Imagine a Velcro or button-like connection. The pieces are extremely light, and they just kind of click together so you don’t need any other material.”
A rival 3D printed house project by Dutch studio Universe Architecture was announced earlier this year, but Gilles dismissed its claims. “We actually don’t even consider that a 3D printed building because he is 3D printing formwork and then pouring concrete into the form,” Retsin said. “So it’s not that the actual building is 3D printed.”
Softkill Design’s proposal is a development of Protohouse 1.0 (shown here), an earlier prototype printed house unveiled at the 3D Print Show in London last October. Instead of solid walls, the original Protohouse featured a fibrous nylon structure based on bone growth.
Protohouse 2.0 takes the same approach, with plastic material deposited only where it is needed. “You’re aiming to use the smallest amount of material to achieve the strongest structure,” Retsin explained. And if you push that through to the extreme you get something that is extremely fibrous and extremely thin.” …
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
This is a vacuum forming machine that you can print. Which allows you to make a mold of your 3d printed object. I hope you like this and make one, you’ll be able to pour chocolate in your mold or other things like urethane.
Instructions
Print-description
(1) “stand-holds plastic”-holder
(1) “shop-vac-mount”-attaches to hose
or
(1) “shop-vac-mount-53.5mm-outer”-attaches to hose
(1) “gasket”-lets all the holes in the stand to be used
(2) “plastic-holder”-holds the plastic
optional
(1) “plastic-cut-out”-template to cut the plastic
or
(1) “plastic-cut-out-less-plastic”-template to cut the plastic
The three main pieces are the “stand”, the “gasket”, and the “shop-vac-mount”. Those three pieces are glued together the “gasket” being in between, you can glue them with acetone and abs paste/glue or regular glue. The “shop-vac-mount” hole (inner diameter) is 59mm and fits securely for my shop vac I’m not sure if it will work for you, if you tell me the diameter of your shop vac hose I can made another stl if you want. There is a mounting piece on the “shop-vac-mount” that I just have a piece of wood in between that and the hose mount to mount it, you can drill a hole through it too and mount it. The next main piece is the “plastic-holder” you need to print two of them and use 4 screw (m3 screws do fit but you might have to drill out the hole some though) and 4 nuts to secure them. When you put the holders together the plastic will be clamped in between them and they will mirror each other so the bottom one will be upside down. Also wrap a rubber band around the posts on the “stand” so you have good suction. Then the “plastic-cut-out” is 1mm thick and is a reference piece to cut the plastic you will be using to make a mold (I used plastic plates) you need to cut one the inside of the line you draw around the piece for a good fit. When drawing the line you need to keep the pieces still so I use magnets, you might want to use tape or clips they should work too. Then the “plastic-cut-out-less-plastic” is the same thing as “plastic-cut-out” but with a 85mm hole in the center for saving plastic and money. Once you have this all done and are ready to make a mold you can use a lighter or a heat gun (both work but a heat gun is better) to make the plastic soft and partially melted. Then as fast as you can put the holders with the plastic on your piece on the stand and turn on the vacuum, then you have a mold.
The fun files are for cubify invent by the way that’s the modeler I use, it’s really easy to make things but it’s $50 on Cubify.com.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
The Makery is a pop-up Makerspace – part shop & part workshop. A movable and temporary venue where youth and adults are encouraged to be curious, to tinker, to experiment, and to make with technology. The Makery is a portable digital playground, a place where communities can gather to play with the creative power of digital design and fabrication, physical computing, and computer programming.
While the Makery has no permanent space…yet, we aim through a series of pop-up makerspaces, to experiment and design new experiences and workshops that explore the joy and power of making with technology. Someday soon, we hope to have our own homebase from which we can grow and share. But until we do, look for us to pop up in your community soon.
Great news from GitHub! Taking a look at this new option, and considering projects like Gary Hodgson’s Githubiverse templates, it is reasonable to expect that GitHub might well be on its way to being the place where many of us develop and share our 3D printing works-in-progress, particularly for procedural and parametric design files that benefit more from Git versioning than massive meshes.
Having seen how successfully Sketchfab has been integrated into Kickstarter, this new development over at GitHub speaks to how we expect to experience our design files online.
Will this prove a benefit for the existing social/repository model sites such as GrabCAD, 3D Warehouse, and Thingiverse as code-savvy designers develop and iterate their designs within their accounts on Github before publishing more share-worthy documents to their repository of choice?
Here at GitHub, we’re always excited to see people using GitHub to collaborate on all sorts of things, code or non-code. Today, we’re adding a third dimension by making it easier to view some 3D models, specifically STL files, on GitHub.
You’re able to spin the model by clicking & dragging, zoom in/out by scrolling, and change the view modes with the links at the bottom. This viewer is powered by Three.js and uses WebGL when available, but will fall back to the slower canvas renderer. If you have further questions, check out the help article.
There are a bunch of awesome 3D projects on GitHub, and more every day. We hope you enjoy a new way of viewing these complex files!
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
In the spirit of a nice afternoon project, I’d encourage you to use what’s laying around if it’s close to the specs here. But if you’re going to buy all these parts ahead of time like I do, hopefully it will help to use the product links below. While I love Amazon, please try and support great suppliers like Adafruit, who have a great forum community, customer service and tutorial section!
Raspberry Pi Model B (Although a Model A might work, it wasn’t used for this build.) Get it from Adafruit or Amazon.
5VDC USB Power Supply (For some reason, I had 2 of these in the bottom of a box, but this one would work great too.)
16GB SDHC Memory Card (I used this one, but feel free to use whatever you have laying around- this tutorial might not work with smaller density cards, so beware.)
HDMI Monitor and HDMI Cable (I happen to have this one, but anyone should do.)
Check out this new approach for how to create a smooth surface on your 3D printed parts using a solvent bath. And while this method doesn’t look like a great option for your desktop (unless it has a ventihood!), the results are promising! From 3ders.org:
To make the process easier for 3D print enthusiasts, two masters of engineering students at UC Berkeley, Ross Yeager (Electrical Engineer) and David (Industrial Engineer) designed and created 3D Refiner, “a machine that rotates a 3D printed part in from of a pressurized and constant flow of solvent, allowing for a symmetric smoothing of the print.” In other words, it will transform any of your 3D prints into a high quality beautifully finished part in a short time. You can print an object in very low resolution, and 3D Refiner will give it an appealing finish.
After 4 months of research, development, and prototyping Ross and David launched the 3D Refiner on Kickstarter. They discovered the most reliable and quick method to achieve a fine finishing of a 3D printed part is through a pressure applying liquid bath. The high pressure water pump is waterproof and made of a high grade and durable plastic which allows the pump to not be affected by the solvent. The two circuits with micro-processor, power adapter, and servos are separated by a shielded platform from the solvent tank. A waterproof housing for the DC motor rotating the platform is made for avoiding water/solvent damage to the motor.
The system relies on the use of a diluted solvent-water mix which can give off fumes, so it is recommended to operate the machine in a large open room with plenty of ventilation. With the funding the team hope to add extra added-on and features for an higher-quality 3D Refiner, and to research and develop the second generation product which will be “much smaller, lighter, using less solvent, and completely air tight before, during, and after operation.” …
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
This is a Theremin being played badly by the little robot arm on the left… (above)
…and this is the Raspberry Pi driving the robot that’s “playing” the theremin! (below)
Here are more details of Gordon’s visit, which I enjoyed reading:
M-Shed is a pretty interesting place in its own right – a nice little museum exploring some of the history of Bristol, and as someone who lived in Bristol for a few years it was nice to have a look at some of the exhibits. It does warrant another trip too, it’s quite a nice little gem of a place. I left Bristol just over 10 years ago and all that area was just in the process of being re-developed at that time and the whole area looks quite good now too. (On both sides of the floating harbour!)
So the Maker Faire is basically just a bunch of folks showing off and hopefully trying to get others enthused into their projects – there are some commercial companies sponsoring the event and it was good to see Pimoroni – makers of the Pibow case for the Raspberry Pi there and chat to the chaps, as well as a few other small companies selling components and embedded processor boards (e.g. Phoenoptix, Soldersplash) as well as Element 14 and many others. (Sponsor list here)
There were also lots of enterprising individuals, and of-course lots of non-computer/electronics makers too! Bronze casting, knitting/weaving, pottery/clay work, soft-drink making – something for absolutely everyone.
The Bristol Hackspace took up a lot of space in the middle and were demonstrating many varied and different projects – from old pen plotters to their BBC Micro connected to a Raspberry Pi sending & receiving tweets!
Unveiled this week on The Mall in London, The White Horse is a scaled-down version of a 50-metre-high sculpture Wallinger eventually hopes to build in Ebbsfleet, Kent.
Technicians at Sample and Hold helped create the sculpture by using a white light scanner to produce a 3D image of a racehorse named Riviera Red.
By projecting a grid of white light onto the horse’s body and recording the resulting distortions, the technicians built up a three-dimensional map of the animal’s shape. The 3D image was then used to make a mould to cast the sculpture from a mixture of marble dust and resin.
The horse was unveiled this week outside the headquarters of the British Council, the cultural institution that commissioned the artwork, where it will remain for two years before going on an international tour.
Wallinger hopes the life-size sculpture will re-ignite interest in his larger project in Ebbsfleet, which was commissioned in 2009 but stalled when the UK went into recession. The costs of the project are believed to be between £12 million and £15 million.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
Will from FriedCircuits.us has been working on a new daisy-chainable LED Matrix Link prototype which makes use of a Maxim MAX7219 (which he will feature in his upcoming May wedding — fascinating!), so he has been investigating cheap sources for the IC suggested by friends and colleagues. His conclusion? Buyer beware when buying under market value on eBay. Learn more how to spot the fakes from his MobileWill blog:
I have been receiving feedback that I can use eBay suppliers to lower my price on the MAX7219. I had previously considered that option, but after some research I have found that a lot of people are receiving counterfeits on eBay. While some counterfeits may work, their reliability is questionable and that would make my product unreliable. I do not believe that it is “good business” to support businesses and companies which pirate technology and sell it as if it were legitimate. I sincerely hope everyone understands why I am skeptical about using an unknown supplier for parts. Here is a good forum post about coming across the fake variety: http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/showthread.php?22481-Real-or-fake The more units I can sell initially will increase my per-part discount, which will allow me to lower my selling price.
For example if you look at the picture above, the line across the top is inline with pin 2. f you do a search on eBay or even Google image search you can see that they line up with pin 3. Also mine has a notch and the eBay ones all have a dimple. Not to mention there is no way someone can go to Maxim and get a price much lower then their lowest price they have.
Each week on the Adafruit blog we post up about amazing companies, people and articles about being a MAKER and a business. Over the years we’ve shared how we run Adafruit, published code from our shopping cart system and given presentations on running an open-source hardware company. Every Monday we’re going to try to collect some of these resources and tag them #makerbusinessmonday & #makerbusiness. They’re in our popular Maker Business category as well, enjoy!
We shared a Raspberry Pi care package with the Milwaukee Makerspace and they decided to ask their members to propose a cool project for the space to create out of the Pi booty. Here are the details about the project that the selected member has been working on — and the photos are the latest update to his progress. Great project!
Eric joined Milwaukee Makerspace last summer, and rumor has it he’s a pretty skilled software guy, so hopefully the challenge of writing code for the Raspberry Pi won’t be too difficult for him. He’s also done a bit of metalwork, woodworking, and a few electronics projects. But wait, we should explain what he plans to do!
Here’s the project that Eric proposed:
As an outgrowth of the Traveling Gnome Prank, many groups have adopted their own traveling mascot, where a statue, doll, gnome, or action figure voluntarily travels with various group members to far off places. The group documenting the travels of the mascot collects photos and travel reports
I propose that a Milwaukee Makerspace traveling mascot be equipped to report on its own travels. Built around a Raspberry Pi, with the addition of a battery, GPS unit, and a camera sensor, the traveling mascot could take its own photos and report its own location.
I believe that with this kit, a few additions, and the tools at the Milwaukee Makerspace, I could pull off making a working self-reporting traveling mascot. With the help and input of artists, designers, developers, and makers of any kind, we could make this thing great.
This project can help build the Milwaukee Makerspace community by keeping the space in our member’s minds as they travel, sharing with our community. Also, the traveling mascot will encourage frequent additions to our website.
I live in south London, which means that the everywhere I look the Shard stands over me. Now its reported that a flat in this tower of Babel will cost north of £30 million quid. Lets hope the lifts work.
This wonderful splash of cash got me thinking, basically you buy this flat for the view. Now living in Britain as I do, I know that the weather is not really design for long distant views. This got me thinking; if its grey and raining for a day, how much does it cost? Quite a lot as it turns out:
£30,000000 / (365 *10) = £8230 a day.
That’s right, rain costs Eight grand a day
Lets just go over those figures a little. We assume a flat costs £30 million, The Telegraph claims its up to £50M, however the estate agents seem to differ and peg it at around £20M. I’ll do what economists do and guess a number and swear its based on an accurate model. Like wise I assume that the average nouveau riche nonce will keep the flat for about ten years (I assume they’ll either die in a car crash, coke overdose, or have to sell it to fund an expensive vice of some sort)
If we plug those numbers into my proprietary financial model algorithm, we see that £30M spread over ten years equates to £8230 a day (with rounding). I also assume that you buy this type of flat for the view. Dividing it further, each rainy hour costs around £342. Its even higher if you don’t count the night time.
So why do I need a webcam? Well I want to find out how often the shard is obscured by rain, and therefore how much money has been eaten by the British weather and then laugh at the knobs who splashed so much cash.
I just have a few positive comments about your site.
I am a 25-yr Intel programmer (C/C++/C#/Delphi), but new to Arduino/Netduino and new to OpenSource. My experiences with OpenSource in the past (for the most part) have been frustrating. My view is that I must make a living not play all day – althouhh we all like to play. I am very impressed with your site! It is so organized and thoughtfully done.
As a C# .NET developer in a large well-known IT supplier, I am so spoiled with Visual Studio and C# (those who do it, get what I am saying).
Because I now want to tinker in the world of Arduino/Netduino, for the last two weeks I have had to endure the minefield and mess found in the scattered world of Arduino. Your site is such a welcomed change to what I have seen so far. I am not sure if this because of the female roots of Adafruit (it may very-well be) but no matter the reason, I am very impressed. I have been around long enough to see the usual race-to-the-bottom-mindset, and it is refreshing in this day and age to see something done right! It is rare to find such a site these days (but there are a few).
I will be preparing some (work and user group) presentations in the next few months to expose other .NET developers (30 on my team, 30 in the user group) to Arduino and Netduino and I will gladly mention your company as a great place for buying products for learning and development.
Based on what I have seen so far, I have to say thanks for having the drive or conviction to build your business right!
Please feel free to share my comments with anyone, even online, but please do not include my email address.
I hope to start purchasing from you soon. It won’t be very much as I am just a hobbyist in this new world of Arduino, Netduino, but every customer counts developing or maintaining a brand.
Welcome to the golden age of wearable electronics. Every day I imagine new ways to augment flesh and bone with flashing light and bits & byte. As Adafruit’s Director of Wearables, I realize I may be on the extreme end of the spectrum here. As a kid I was very into Star Trek, from the badge-style communicators to the Borg and coveted my LA Lights LED-soled. I frequently joke about needing Dr. Octopus-style robot legs to accommodate for my bad knees, and look forward to the day I can have a custom-made replacement joint that takes advantage of 3D modeling and printing. If there are any orthopedic surgeons reading, I have all my MRI dicom files ready to go.
Ladyada and Phil Torrone have been experimenting with wearables for over a decade. At Adafruit we’ve been thinking how we can provide the best resources to learn how to make wearables fun and useful.
So while I’m not averse to the appearance and quirks of cyborgish wearable technology à la Steve Mann, I yearn for a more seamless, delightful, and lovely experience. A sign of the times is Google Glass, reaching far in the heads-up display category. A truly good idea, no matter how clunkily executed it is at first, will be refined until it eventually catches on. In this article I’m going to share the current state of the world of wearable electronics, from DIY projects in my own catalog to mass market products and couture designs. Phil Torrone wrote a similar article in 2011 called “Is the Rise of Wearable Electronics Finally Here?”
Pop prevails – Wearables are really taking off in celebrity performance wear and red carpet fashion. Couture price tags accompany these custom designs seen on Katy Perry, U2, Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Rihanna, OK Go, & more.
USB drive jewelry– An updated take on storing data discreetly on the person, like dog tattoos–these are 4GB cufflinks
Phones are the ultimate wearable electronic device. We carry them with us everywhere, and their development fuels many technological developments, not the least of which is the miniaturization of batteries. Hackers won’t be satisfied with off-the-shelf hardware, we seek to mod for both flair and function, as seen in this iPhone light mod and RFID iPhone. Phones can also connect to other hardware you carry via Bluetooth– we expect to see a lot more development of wearables communicating with phones via Bluetooth in the next few years.
Navigation - Wearables like my LED bike helmet and the early North Paw prototypes looked and felt like they were court-ordered, but DIY navigation accessories are starting to look sleeker and more natural than ever before. Fashion accessories like these chic Guide Me Home wingtips or our GPS Jacket have lost the bulk and are much lighter and subtler than just one or two years ago.
Visibility – Bike projects have a special allure for wearables makers since they (arguably) improve safety while looking fly at the same time. Inspired by Leah Buechley’s turn signal bike jacket, I made my first bike lights in 2009, and just recently published the Flora Brake Light Backpack.
My experience constructing electronics is deeply rooted in crafts. It is my passion to combine the two. I proselytize by making tutorials using craft techniques with electronic materials. It’s amazing how expressive you can get with two LEDs and a coin cell battery! These LED shoe clips, hair bow, and baby booties all have the same circuit diagram.
I love the idea that our clothes could give us super powers, and turning off TVs is as practical as electronic superpowers get. I made a TV-B-Gone hoodie, then doubled up with a TV-B-Gone Jacket, and then a Flora TV-B-Gone brooch that can go on any garment. When Flora’s little sister Gemma is available, we plan to make a TV-B-Gone hair bow.
The dream of a video jacket, a gown dripping with pixels, and other garments-as-displays - We are getting closer to a DIY video jacket. Cute Circuit’s over the top galaxy dress impresses on a mannequin; they also build performance garments like the U2 special jackets. We hope that Flora and the Flora NeoPixels get us closer to building this look at home without the $20,000 price tag.
TIMESQUARE DIY Watch Kit – Tangerine Display Matrix: Show up stylish AND on time to any event with this awesome looking DIY watch. We have a few watch kits here at Adafruit but we finally have one that looks good and fits well, even for ladies and kids and others with smaller wrists and hands. Its got a 8×8 bit matrix display and a repurposed silicone watch band for a professional look. (read more)
Thanks to hacker/maker Drew Fustini from Pumping Station: One for this great tip from SXSW this year:
Jeff McAlvay is showing off an Open Source Hardware Pick and Place machine at SXSW that he and other Pumping Station: One members have built. It uses a Raspberry Pi for computer vision and node.js web interface. He was interviewed by Slashdot yesterday!
I find this project really exciting, especially after Ladyada spent time investigating a tremendous range of Pick and Place machines out west a few weeks ago.
SXSW Create is one of a handful of sub-shows at SXSW which don’t require an expensive badge — it’s maker-oriented and small, and a few blocks from the slicker parts of the convention. (The local ATX Hackerspace was there showing off robots and giving out soldering lessons and blinkies, without a single corporate pitch.) Under the same tent, I met with Jeff McAlvay, creator of Board Forge, which Jeff hopes will make small-run circuit board creation as easy and accessible as small-scale 3-D printing has become in the last few years. (“Think MakerBot for electronics.”) The prototype hardware McAlvay had on hand looks — in fact, is a 3-D printer, albeit one lower-slung than the ones that make plastic doo-dads. That’s because the Board Forge’s specialized task of assembling circuit boards requires only limited vertical movement. It’s using the open-source OpenCV computer vision software and a tiny camera mounted on a movable head to accomplish the specialized task of selecting and placing components onto the boards. The tiny electronic components are lined up in strips on one side of the device, where that smart head can grab them for placement. The brains of the operation include an Arduino-family processor for basic controls, and a Raspberry Pi for the higher-level functions like computer vision. The projected cost for one of these machines — about $2000 — should put instant-gratification machine-aided circuit creation in reach of schools and serious hobbyists, but there’s plenty of work before it’s set for sale to the public; look for a Kickstarter project in the next few months.
With a Japanese television news crew keeping close watch Monday, Buford Middle School science students crafted their own sound speakers from plastic and paper.
They did it using three-dimensional printers and computer design software to produce plastic supports, paper cones and other pieces.
“I think it’s interesting that they’re including 3-D computerization and printing into the education program at this level and what it means for the future of job training in the U.S.,” said Takashi Yanagisawa, a correspondent with Japan’s Nippon Television. “This is what President [Barack] Obama talked of in his State of the Union address, about bringing technology into schools for job training.”
Yanagisawa and his cohorts are producing a segment for Japanese television that will feature the Buford Middle School class as an example of U.S. efforts to bring more technology into schools.
“We’re in on the ground floor of bringing manufacturing and technology into the classrooms,” said Jim Henderson, assistant superintendent for Charlottesville schools. “We’re participating with Piedmont Virginia Community College and the University of Virginia and we hope to make this a seventh- through 12th-grade program. This is the start.”
The start is the result of a $300,000 state grant to create a “laboratory school for advanced manufacturing technologies.” …
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
No Starch Press and I have decided to release this free ebook version of Hacking the Xbox in honor of Aaron Swartz. As you read this book, I hope that you’ll be reminded of how important freedom is to the hacking community and that you’ll be inclined to support the causes that Aaron believed in.
I agreed to release this book for free in part because Aaron’s treatment by MIT is not unfamiliar to me. In this book, you will find the story of when I was an MIT graduate student, extracting security keys from the original Microsoft Xbox. You’ll also read about the crushing disappointment of receiving a letter from MIT legal repudiating any association with my work, effectively leaving me on my own to face Microsoft.
The difference was that the faculty of my lab, the AI laboratory, were outraged by this treatment. They openly defied MIT legal and vowed to publish my work as an official “AI Lab Memo,” thereby granting me greater negotiating leverage with Microsoft. Microsoft, mindful of the potential backlash from the court of public opinion over suing a legitimate academic researcher, came to a civil understanding with me over the issue.
I had the idea to make some kind of alarm that would go off if anyone but me removed the wallet from my pocket. A quick google search revealed tons of wallet alarms, but I noticed that they all had a credit card form factor(that’s good) and would make noise when exposed to light(that’s bad). This represents a problem since the pickpockets in the videos tended not to open the wallets till later at another location. I needed something that would make noise as it was removed from my pocket. Most importantly, I needed the alarm to be locatedinside the wallet. This immediately makes the wallet undesirable and will hopefully make someone drop it like hot coals.
Here’s the wrap up of this Raspberry Pi version of very expensive NASA Style circadian lighting — featuring our Flat Digital RGB LED Pixel strands at Rasathus’ Raspberry Ramblings:
Well, it took a little longer than I had hoped; and took a couple more re-writes than I would have liked before I was happy with it. But its finally here.
For those of you that didn’t manage to catch the first part of this article, including the building of the hardware; it can be found over here…
But picking up where we left off. As a bit of a fan of minimalist white rooms, I’ve always loved the Phillips Living Colours system, as a way of applying a mood to a room. So from the moment I bought a set of Adafruit RGB Leds several months back, I always had the intention of putting them to use in this way.
Having always been interested in the process and psychology of sleep, and anything capable of making its way into space; the article by the BBC discussing Nasa’s commissioning of a new lighting system for the ISS had piqued my interest. So here we go, back to our attempt to replace incredibly expensive space hardware with cheap off the shelf components; although I’m sure Nasa’s approach would be somewhat more subtle….
12mm Diffused Flat Digital RGB LED Pixels (Strand of 25) – WS2801: RGB Pixels are digitally-controllable lights you can set to any color, or animate. Each RGB LED and controller chip is molded into a ‘dot’ of silicone. The dots are weatherproof and rugged. There are four flanges molded in so that you can ‘push’ them into a 12mm drill hole in any material up to 1.5mm/0.06″ thick. They’re typically used to make outdoor signs. These pixels have a flat square back, we also have pixels that are long and thin, both are the same electronics, just different shapes! (read more)
The problem is supply, not demand – Though in hindsight it seems hopelessly naïve, I thought that taking preorders was the perfect business model: it removes the need for any sort of external investment, while simultaneously demonstrating that demand exists for your product at your price point. My faith in preorders reflected a belief that selling things would be the hard part of starting a business, but in my experience that wasn’t the case: selling was easy, it was actually making things that was hard.
NEW PRODUCT – Scratch – Skill badge, iron-on patch – You are learning Scratch! Adafruit offers a fun and exciting “badges” of achievement for electronics, science and engineering. We believe everyone should be able to be rewarded for learning a useful skill, a badge is just one of the many ways to show and share.
This is the “I made something using Scratch!” badge for use with educators, classrooms, workshops, Maker Faires, TechShops, Hackerspaces, Makerspaces and around the world to reward beginners on their skill building journey!
This beautiful badge is made in the USA.
The badge is skillfully designed and sturdily made to last a life time, the backing is iron-on but the badge can also be sewn on.
Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web. As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively. Vist the Scratch page.
Adafruit’s badges are manufactured in partnership with AMBRO Manufacturing located in NJ, USA. AMBRO is a family owned and operated business since 1990 that celebrates open-source with Adafruit Industries. You can meet their team here. AMBRO uses non-toxic soy based, water soluble and environmentally friendly printing supplies, threads and more when possible. AMBRO has over 250 solar panels that generate 50,000 Kilowatt hours per year. Their equipment runs solar powered, so the wonderful things AMBRO and Adafruit have worked together on are made with the sun! AMBRO Manufacturing was recognized by Impressions Magazine, a leading trade publication in the garment printing and embroidery business, who published an article highlighting AMBRO and their commitment to their environmentally focused manufacturing practices. Adafruit knows you have a lot of choices as to where you spend your money and time, we hope our open-source values, commitment to green technologies and partners helps make the decision easier and fun!
Printable catalog (PDF)
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