In this 7 minute video we explore “The mysteries of Apple device charging“. Usually device makers need to sign a confidentially agreement with Apple who want to say “works with iPhone / iPod” and never talk about how the insides work. If you don’t put these secret resistors on the data lines to you get the dreaded “CHARGING IS NOT SUPPORTED WITH THIS ACCESSORY”. We demonstrate how anyone can do this and make their own chargers that work with iPhone 4, 3Gs, etc. Video above, HD and (m4v).
We now include a product ID on each product in the listing pages as well as the product page for every item now. For example the Arduino is prodect ID: 50. These product IDs make it easier for purchasing managers to confirm that they’re ordering the right stuff, these product IDs are also in our downloadable PDF.
By popular request – Adafruit now has a catalog – a printable PDF. We automagically generate it each time we have new products and also each month. It’s linked on every single page at the bottom of the left side navigation & product list – download / view it / print it / share it – Printable catalog (PDF).
At O’Reilly’s foo camp east 2010 at Microsoft’s NERD center (MIT campus) we presented “Million dollar baby – Businesses designing and selling open source hardware, making millions” at the Ignite hour. 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide – we tried to capture the excitement and great work from just a few of the dozens of open source hardware companies & resellers. Above, slides, photos & video (m4v). Special thanks to all the companies who helped with some data points and to the OSHW workshop group. There are additional videos/posts/tweet from other attendees, this is our quick video we were able to put together on the train ride back from MA to NYC.
I really love cheat sheets. In a lot of cases they can take the place of an entire manual. So I was surprised, given its popularity that I couldn’t find a single-page reference for the arduino online. I tried to make a sheet that captured all the things I hit the reference for while programming. What data type does the millis() function return? How long till that overflows again? How large can a long get? What baud rates can the serial handle?
A lot of readers are likely familiar with Adafruit Industries, supplier and maker of many kits found in the Maker Shed. In addition to my role here at MAKE, as senior editor, I also work with Limor (Ladyada), helping her with the open source hardware kit business. I’ll have a few articles about general things we do around here to keep the ship afloat and charting new waters, but I thought I’d start this “Maker Business” article with an overview of how it all works and how we use many many web tools/services. One of the most asked questions I get from makers is “what shopping cart do you use?” The short answer is Zencart, and while I think it doesn’t actually matter what you use when you start out, this is what we’re using at Adafruit. A recent milestone, we just shipped our 50,000th order. We mostly create and sell open source hardware, most of the tools we use are open source — I’ve never seen an article detailing “everything” a business uses online, so here’s one. I think you’ll enjoy it. Let’s take a look…
“Dali Clock is a digital clock. When a digit changes, it “melts” into its new shape. The date is displayed when the mouse is pressed. The window can be made transparent, and can do funky psychedelic color cycling. ”
Here’s a quick video of our new kit, the MONOCHRON – we’ll be posting more videos soon – here’s a taste! (HD version on Vimeo, m4v here!)…
This easy kit has an default animated display, but is easily hackable to do whatever you wish – pictured above, retro arcade style table tennis for two.
128×64 LCD (KS0108) – we special-ordered the black and white display
ATmega328 processor (we even stuck an ‘arduino’ stk500 bootloader on there too)
Plenty of space for mods, a prototyping area for soldering stuff in
Soothing animation of retro arcade style table-tennis for two
Comes with: clock kit (includes all parts, programmed chips and LCD), coin battery, enclosure, 9VDC power supply for 220V or 110V. You’ll need some basic soldering & hand tools that are necessary to assemble it! The good news is that this is a pretty basic kit and even if its your first soldering project, it shouldn’t take more than 2 or 3 hours to put together For much more information including parts list, instructions, videos, etc. check out the MONOCHRON website and you can order one here!
We started shipping and we’ve already had customers making them, the first customer has said “Assembly was a snap and it works great.” – thanks SSquire!
The Fairytale Fashion Collection uses technology to create magical clothing in real life. Electronics, mechanical engineering, and mathematics are used to create clothing with blooming flowers, changing colors and transforming shapes. Research and development for the Fairytale Fashion collection are shared online at FairytaleFashion.org as an educational tool that teaches about science, math, and technology through fashion. Fairytale Fashion was created with the support of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center nonprofit. Diana Eng is a fashion designer who specializes in technology, math, and science. Her designs range from inflatable clothing to fashions inspired by mechanical engineering. She is a designer from Bravo’s Emmy nominated TV show, Project Runway season 2 and author of Fashion Geek: Clothes, Accessories, Tech. Diana is cofounder of NYC Resistor hacker group. Diana is currently a resident artist at Eyebeam.
Great show, nice to see everyone from the maker scene in NYC at the show too!
Adafruit site update! We now have blog posts and flickr photos on our product pages! here’s a video (m4v) showing you what we’ve added! We’re really proud of these features, each product page will have posts from our blog right there to check out *and* projects from the Adafruit Flickr pool, our photos, your photos, anyone who has added them to the Adafruit Flickr pool and tagged them with the product name “arduino” for example. We’ll have a contest soon to get more folks adding their photos too!
If you’ll recall, some months ago we held a little competition for readers to submit artwork destined for laser-etching on the backsides of Amazon’s Kindle. After everyone voted on the top five out of the mountain of selections, we took the gaggle of readers down to our friends at Adafruit Industries (headed up by the lovely and delightful Limor Fried and Phil Torrone) for some time under the laser. While we were there getting our etch on with their massive laser, we convinced Limor and Phil to show off some of the other crazy kit they’ve got in the labs — and we’ve captured it all on film… er, video. Take a look at our excursion into the world of dynamic DIY’ing — we think you’ll like what you see.
We posted some additional photos of the etched Kindles here – and you can also view the Engadget show M4V here…
Printable catalog (PDF)
