Learn to make a glowing electronic piggy bank in this tutorial video using the Programmable 1 Coin Acceptor. Video on YouTube and Vimeo, code on Github.

Coin Acceptor – Programmable 1 Coin Type.

Your project may be free-as-in-speech, but that doesn’t mean it has to be free-as-in-beer. This handy coin validator/acceptor module is just like the ones you’ve seen in arcades. First, program it with what coin you want it to accept, any coin from 10.8mm to 25.1mm in diameter can be used. When a valid coin is inserted, the output line will pulse for 20-60ms (configurable). The acceptor looks for diameter, thickness, dropping speed, etc to determine if a coin is valid. You can select 3 different “strictness” levels.

Comes with the acceptor itself, mounting hardware, and a cable for power/signal.

To program the validator: power with 12VDC (red wire goes to +12VDC, black wire to common ground). Press and hold the little button on top for 5 seconds and release. The LED will be on. Now insert 30 sample coins of the value you want to detect (say 30 quarters or 30 Euro coins). Once the LED goes out it’s programmed! Connect a 10K (1K to 100K is fine) pullup resistor from the white wire to your microcontroller’s VCC line (for Arduino, this is a +5V). Insert a coin, and verify that the LED line pulses high for about 40 milliseconds.

• Power requirements: 12VDC (+- 20%)
• Quiescent current: ~25mA
• Peak current (for solenoid): 400mA
• Accepts coins from 10.8mm to 15.1mm in diameter, 1.2mm to 3.0mm thick
• Programmable for a single coin

There’s also a 4-coin model: Coin Acceptor – Programmable 4 Coin Type

It’s really easy to change the output of the Internet of Things Printer– the Twitter query is just one line of code you modify in the Arduino sketch. In this video I show you how to reprogram the IoTP to print Jenny Holzer aphorisms directly on my desk (although yes, I realize the twitter account isn’t run by Holzer herself).

The Internet of Things Printer is open source: you can read the tutorial, download the code and enclosure laser files, and please share your own versions with us in the Adafruit Flickr pool!

NEW PRODUCT – Adafruit IoT Printer Project Pack “Internet of Things” printer. Build an “Internet of Things” connected mini printer that will do your bidding! This is a fun weekend project that comes with a beautiful laser cut case. Once assembled, the little printer connects to Ethernet to get Internet data for printing onto 2 1/4″ wide receipt paper. The example sketch we’ve written will connect to Twitter’s search API and retrieve and print tweets according to your requests: you can have it print out tweets from a person, a hashtag, mentioning a word, etc! Once you’ve gotten that working, you can of course easily adapt our sketch to customize the printer.

The project is not very difficult but does require some light soldering, so you’ll want to have a little experience with a soldering iron. You’ll also need a small flathead screwdriver to assemble the box. It’s also best if you’ve had a little Arduino experience so you can feel comfortable downloading the IDE and uploading our example sketch.

Contains:

• Mini Receipt Printer. BPA-Free
• 50 foot long receipt paper
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm Panel Jack
• Waterproof metal On/Off button
• Extra long header piece
• Ribbon cable
• 1/8″ heat shrink
• Laser cut enclosure + hardware

This pack does not contain an Arduino+Arduino Ethernet Shield, Arduino Ethernet or Ethernet cable To complete the project you will need to add either an Arduino + Ethernet Shield or an Arduino UNO Ethernet. If you’re using an Arduino UNO Ethernet you will also need an FTDI friend or FTDI cable to upload the sketch. A plain straight-thru Ethernet cable is also required (any length)

Before purchasing, please check out the full tutorial with images, code, etc!

In stock and tweeting now!

Here’s a video of our new slip ring in action, which rotates freely while maintaining six wire connections.

NEW PRODUCT – Slip Ring with Flange – 22mm diameter, 6 wires, max 240V @ 2A. With a slip ring assembly, your electronics can now twist and turn safely. Add wheel encoders, 360 degree sensors, rotating LEDs, rotors and more! We’ve seen a lot of people DIY slip ring’s out of desperation but no longer, simply pick up one of these to solve any rotation needs you have.

Inside the plastic tube is a gold plated slip ring for 6 wires. There are six color coded wire sets made of 26 AWG and no matter how you twist the assembly, they will remain in continuity. Each of the wire sets can carry up to 2A at up to 240VAC or 240VDC. There’s a 44mm (1.7″) diameter flange with mounting holes to make it easy to attach or you can cut it off with a hacksaw and drill/machine as you wish it seems to just be ABS plastic. Rated to rotate up to 300 RPM (but you can probably go faster if you don’t mind a reduced life and/or noise).

• Rated voltage: 240VAC/240VDC
• Rated current: 2 Amp
• 6 x 6″ long 26 AWG wires

In stock and twirling!

NEW PRODUCT – 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 waterproof 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!

The pixels are connected by a 4-conductor cable. +5V (Red), Ground (Blue), Data (Yellow) and Clock (Green). Data is shifted down from one pixel to the next so that you can easily cut the strand or attach more onto the end.

Each dot is digitally controlled, with an internal 8-bit PWM LED driver (24-bit color for 16 million different shades). The pixels must be clocked by a microcontroller, we have an example code linked below that works on an Arduino, it should be simple to adapt it to any other microcontroller.

The pixels use 8mm diffused RGB LEDs, with a 120 degree beam width. The total max brightness of all LEDs is about 1600mcd but with the light more evenly distributed & mixed than a clear LED. (Please note: mcd ratings of LEDs are notoriously inflated by most LED sellers, so be extra-skeptical when reviewing LED ratings!)

Sold by the strand, each strand has 25 pixels in series! Each strand has two JST SM 4-pin connectors so you can connect multiple strands in a row, as many as you wish, just watch for how much current they want. We now have LED pixel strands with the power wires (red & blue) spliced out so its really easy to connect 5VDC in using a 2.1mm jack terminal adapter. We have a 5V/2A supply that should be able to drive 2 or more strands and a 5V/10A supply that can drive up to 160 LEDs all lit up at once

If you want to connect to the input of a strand (to wire it to power and a microcontroller) please get a plug connector. If you want to connect to the output, get a receptacle cable.

You can drive these with an Arduino using any two microcontroller digital pins, check this library which also has example code to demonstrate the strands and be sure to read our very detailed tutorial on usage!

• 12mm diameter (0.45″) 23mm deep (0.9″) from the top of the LED to the back of the rubber
• 88mm / 3.5″ apart on the strand
• 25 pieces per strand
• These pixels use a WS2801 chip for full 24 bit color
• 5V power, 60mA maximum per pixel (LED on full white)
• 2-pin SPI-like protocol
• WS2801 Datasheet for the chip inside each pixel
• Brightness: Red = 3.3 Lumens/300 mcd, Green = 10 Lumens/1000 mcd, Blue = 2.7 Lumens/300 mcd (mcd calculation based on full 120 degree beam)

In stock and blinking!

GO, GO GADGETS @ THEDAILY. This is that new iPad magazine, and it’s also online – Adafruit makes an appearance!

Meet the real-life MacGyvers. Engineers and garage tinkerers across the country are building their own MP3 players, 3D printers and, yes, even light guns. And they say you can too. The Daily talked to some of the leaders of this gadget revolution and found that you don’t have to be a genius to make something. You just have to be curious.

END OF REEL – Mazel tov! (video)

This video is a companion to the Arduino FAQ here.

USB, serial and you (photos & iTunes video link, m4v)…

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’ve updated our open source charger, the MintyBoost as well, today is its official release.

Want more details? See our article on Apple Charging with more technical info and schematics

Slides from HOPE and the PDF article of getting started with a kit biz. We’ll try and get a video posted later!

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).

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?

Grab the PDF here.

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. ”

Firmware is on github, have fun! Another great clock for the MONOCHRON – (m4v video).

Here’s INTRUDERCHRON by dataman – photos and video – just one of the many projects you can do with the open source hackable MONOCHRON clock kit! The time (1:30, date 03/05)… (m4v).

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)
• Laser cut enclosure in black acrylic
• Beeping/blinking alarm with 10 minute snooze
• Battery backed-up real time clock (DS1307) keeps time even when power is lost for years
• European/US 12 or 24 hour time display as well as date
• Completely open source hardware, all firmware, layout and CAD files are yours to mess with
• 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…

• 1 Analog-side PCB
• 1 Digital-side PCB
• 2 sets of 6-pin stacky female header pins
• 2 sets of 8-pin stacky female header pins
• ETerminal blocks to fill 32 holes on the board

Get’em now in the Adafruit store!

Check it out!

• Source code, Schematics, PCB files
• Design
• Downloads

Update: We’ve included a transcript of the video for the hearing impaired and well, we think all videos should have transcripts. For transcripts we used 3Play Media. We uploaded the video, they transcribed it, we paid via paypal, all under a week and under $30 for two videos total.

LADY ADA: Hi. I’m Lady Ada from Adafruit Industries, and I’m going to share with you some information about my latest project. But before I get into the technical details, I’d like you to watch this video. It’s from a conference I attended two years ago.

MALE SPEAKER: And I’m from Washington, and I’m here to help. You probably saw on YouTube, there’s a video going around, and it says don’t tase me, bro. Well, and non-lethal weapons are really pretty critically important. And so, what I have with me is a dazzler. So, the dazzler is a seasickness machine. And what it does, it uses LEDs, and it’s a random generator and it affects your equilibrium.

I’m not going to point it at you, I was with a group of GE executives yesterday and I held it up like this, and just the reflection made them nauseous. We’re trying to change from don’t tase me, bro, to daz me, bro. And that’s it. Let me know when you’re feeling bad. Anyway, thank you so much.

LADY ADA: So we decided to look online to find out more information. And we ended up finding some news stories.

REPORTER: And tonight Homeland Security has spent close to a million dollars on a flashlight that can stop you in your tracks. Even law enforcement says it is going to be controversial. We wanted to see just how effective the light is.

OK, that’s a lot brighter. Those blotches in my vision stayed with me for about a half hour after the test. And then a strong headache kicked in. It’s still a little blinding.

LADY ADA: Like most government projects, the Dazzler was actually invented and developed by an outside consulting firm. So we looked up some information about this firm. Found the patent, and looked up exactly what it is that they did. The portable flashlight flashes green LEDs about ten hertz. This causes flash blindness, startling, disorientation, vertigo, and occasional vomiting. We thought, we could probably do that for under a million dollars. So we put together this project for about $250 and are publishing all the information. So that you can build one of these at home.

SECOND FEMALE: Here is the project enclosure. So I re-used a flashlight that I got from Sears. So this is the head, which holds the LEDs, the electronics inside. This push-button is how we activate it. It’s not turned on right now. And here is a lead-acid battery that provides power. Up here, we have 36 LEDs. Each one has a lens that focuses the optics. So I’m going to remove just the lens, and you can see that there’s a basic heat sink with the fan on the back, to help with a little heat sinking.

Here we have the circuit board. We have six driver frets, two for each color, red, green and blue. We have a Arduino clone here, which I use to basically do the pulse with modulation, the randomization and mode selection. And there’s a wire that travels down the body to the battery. Then behind here, you can remove this plate. There’s a 9-volt battery that powers just the Arduino, it’s a separate power supply to avoid noise that comes from the pulse with modulation. Reprogramming header for updating the firmware, and a mode button which lets me change what kind of display it is.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Want to make one yourself? Well, we’ve got the schematics, source code and circuit board layouts all available online at ladyada.net/make/bedazzler. You may be wondering, does it really work?

SECOND FEMALE: Bedazzler human subject test. Ready in 3, 2, 1.

MALE:: My eyes. The goggles.They do nothing.

LADY ADA: Well, turns out it doesn’t work that well. But it is great for raves.

This pack has only the basics to get you started. That allows us to keep the price low while giving you the choice of what shields, sensors and accessories to add in.

Once you have the pack, check out our free online Arduino tutorials…they’re designed for everyone, even non-programmers!

Includes:

• Arduino Duemilanove w/Atmega328 – The latest and greatest Arduino revision, assembled and ready to go, including 4 rubber feet to protect the board from the worktable
• 3′ USB cable – Perfect for connecting your Arduino to a computer
• Half-sized Breadboard – 400 connection points, plenty of room for beginner projects, with 2 power rails on the side. Can be rubber-banded to an Arduino to make a 1-penny devboard
• 75 flexible breadboard wires in 8 colors, perfect for use with the solderless breadboard.
• 1K & 10K potentiometer - these pots have 0.1″ spacing and fit very nicely into a breadboard without modification
• 2 small pushbuttons – Snap into the breadboard for button inputs
• 5 bright red diffused LEDs (250mcd) – indicators, blinkies, bright enough to see in the day, but diffused so that they are visible from all angles.
• Red, green and blue ultra-bright LED – Can be used on their own, or color-mixed to make nearly any color in the rainbow!
• 5 100 ohm resistors - They can be used to protect pin outputs when starting out
• 5 1K resistors – Good for use as LED limiting resistors
• 5 10K resistors – Great for pullups & pulldowns
• CdS photocell - A light sensor!

Get one in the store today!

To cut your own cards out, grab the files at Thingiverse

Short video (m4v) of a piezo, photoresistor and Arduino….

Here’s the breadboard view to wire this up yourself…

And.. here’s the code we used from TodBot!

 
 
int photosensorPin = 0;
int piezoPin = 9;

int val = 0;

void setup() {
  pinMode(piezoPin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  digitalWrite(piezoPin, LOW);
  val = analogRead(photosensorPin);
  val = val/2;

  for( int i=0; i<500; i++ ) {  // play it for 50 cycles
    digitalWrite(piezoPin, HIGH);
    delayMicroseconds(val);
    digitalWrite(piezoPin, LOW);
    delayMicroseconds(val);
  }
}


 

If you want to see how we got here, check out part one first (reverse engineering a pager)… As always, you can get all the videos on Adafruit as we post them through iTunes too… and HD versions on Vimeo.

NOTE: Oops, I was tired. There’s a mistake in the video! The chip is a TA31149 4-FSK (not 31142 2-FSK), and I printed out the wrong datasheet. Still, its pretty much the same idea/chip, just follow the ’31149 datasheet for the correct pinouts, there are -two- serial lines for 2 bits of serial data. Sorry about that!

Here is the manual for the pager (I couldn’t figure out how to turn the damn thing on), the datasheet for the TA31142 (2-FSK decoder used in other pagers, note the front page pinout is completely wrong) and TA31149 (4-FSK decoder used in the pager) a nifty little text file and a thesis with details of the FLEX protocols

To mod your YBox2 for VGA and stereo audio support, see this page. To program in the Turbulence demo, you’ll need a Propeller progammer (I just use a FTDI cable but a propplug or DIY version will do!). Unfortunately due to quirks in the demo, it must be programmed into the EEPROM and cant use the built in bootloader that comes with the YBox2

Edit: the fellow is Swedish, not Dutch. I should have looked it up first!

Props to Ohararp for the idea of using kapton film instead of mylar. If you need stencils cut, because, say you don’t own a laser cutter, you should contact him!
The 2mil kapton/polyamide film was purchased from McMaster-Carr part #2271K2 for about $12/sqft. For a 35W Epilog laser, I used 100 speed, 15 power, 500 frequency to get a reasonably clean cut. The PCB holder is cut from everyday 1/16″ acrylic. Solder paste is from digikey, part# KE1507, you’ll want the nice rounded plunger from McMaster, part #66045A13 and ~22AWG needles such as #75165A682. While you’re at it, you’ll probably want to pick up a bottle of de-leading soap from Mcmaster, part # 7724T24

Click here to see the photos (larger versions)…

And here’s a video of the entire process! You can check it out on YouTube, vimeo, blip.tv and direct download (MP4).

Tired of all those LCD TVs everywhere? Want a break from advertisements while you’re trying to eat? Want to zap screens from across the street? The TV-B-Gone kit is what you need! This ultra-high-power, open source kit version of the popular TV-B-Gone is fun to make and even more fun to use. This version is best used in countries with NTSC: North America & Asia. This kit comes unassembled with all parts necessary. Tools and batteries are not included. This is a very simple kit and great for people who have never soldered anything before.