We have a new alpha release of the Rapsberry Pi WebIDE ready to go. This latest version includes a few bug fixes as well as some new settings that allow you to customize the editor. The biggest new setting is one that allows you to manually git commit and push to Bitbucket when you’re ready. You can also add a comment when doing so, to make it easier to track your changes.
The new changes for the 0.3.3 version of the WebIDE are as follows:
Add four new settings to the Settings Page
Use Soft Tabs (on or off)
Tab Size (2, 4, 6, or 8)
Show Invisibles (on or off) (shows whitespaces, tabs and spaces, etc)
Manual Git Commits and Pushes
Add ability to manually commit and push file changes. This includes adding comments.
Do a git status on the file to check if it is in need of a commit and push, and populate editor bar.
Set editor defaults to use soft tabs with a setting of 4 tab size, and show invisibles off
Add a default .gitignore file to reduce chance of .pyc files getting pushed out to bitbucket.
Fix for the terminal getting out of sync with the editor
Prevent overwriting of Adafruit project files
Update manual installation instructions
Install node.js as part of installation again.
Upgrading from 0.2.0 and higher
You can upgrade from 0.2.0 and higher from within the editor. If you’d like the increased speed using the new node binaries, you’ll want to uninstall/install again.
Ensure that your code is safely saved in your repository at bitbucket.org.
Login to the editor.
Click Update in the upper right.
Update should take about a minute.
Upgrading From 0.1.9 and lower
To install this new editor, you’ll want to completely remove your old editor, and run the installation script again.
Ensure that your code is safely saved in your repository at bitbucket.org.
Uninstall using the following script
curl https://raw.github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-WebIDE/release/scripts/uninstall.sh | sh
Either make sure there are no rogue node processes running, or restart your Pi.
Install the new and improved WebIDE
curl https://raw.github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-WebIDE/alpha/scripts/install.sh | sudo sh
Add light-reactive sensing to your wearable Flora project with this high precision Lux sensor. The TSL2561 luminosity sensor is an advanced digital light sensor, ideal for use in a wide range of light situations. Compared to low cost CdS cells, this sensor is more precise, allowing for exact lux calculations and can be configured for different gain/timing ranges to detect light ranges from up to 0.1 – 40,000+ Lux on the fly. The best part of this sensor is that it contains both infrared and full spectrum diodes! That means you can separately measure infrared, full-spectrum or human-visible light. Most sensors can only detect one or the other, which does not accurately represent what human eyes see (since we cannot perceive the IR light that is detected by most photo diodes).
The sensor has a digital (I2C) interface. Attaching it to the flora is simple: line up the sensor so its adjacent to the SDA/SCL pins and sew conductive thread from the 3V, SDA, SCL and GND pins. They line up perfectly so you will not have any crossed lines. You can only connect one lux sensor to your Flora, but you can connect other I2C sensors/outputs by using the set of SCL/SDA pins on the opposite side. The current draw is extremely low, about 0.5mA when actively sensing, and less than 15 uA when in powerdown mode.
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!
The Raspberry Pi can make a great home automation controller. But to be really useful, it needs to be able to turn electrical appliances and lights on and off. That means it needs to be able to control 110V safely. In this lesson, you will combine the PIR sensor from [Lesson 12] with the Powerswitch Tail 2 module from Adafruit, to automatically switch something on when movement is detected.
This tutorial is about batteries (if you couldn’t tell) – and how to decide which batteries will run your project best! I’ll cover both rechargeable and “one shot” batteries, trying to cover everything I’ve learned about these surprisingly-complex electronic components!
One of our favorite tools in the Adafruit factory is our laser cutter. A laser cutter is a tool made of an XY plotter with a bed about 12″x24″ in size. Instead of a plotting pen, a laser beam is fired so that any shape can be cut out of a flat piece of plastic, wood, fabric, leather, etc. Even though laser cutters can only cut out of flat materials they are surprisingly versatile. By snapping together pieces and gluing or screwing parts together a full enclosure can be made.
In this lesson, you will learn how to use the digital inputs on the GPIO connector with a door sensor and a PIR motion detector. In this lesson, we will concentrate on sensing movement and activation of the door switch. In Lesson 13 we will build on this security sensing to have the Pi use a digital output to control the power to an electrical appliance when movement is detected.
This tutorial will cover those wonderful blinky things, LEDs. We’re going to cover how to calculate the current going through an LED and in the mean time introduce two important laws of electronics, Kirchhoff’s Voltage Law and Ohm’s Law. We’ll begin by performing experiments that will demonstrate how voltage and resistance affects current and then prove those results with a little math.
We’ve updated the Adafruit Learning System with a new feature that should make it easier to gather all of the components needed to complete any particular guide.
Each guide contains a list of products that are used in order to complete the given steps. Previously, you would need to go to each product page, and add individual items to your cart. Now, as seen in the screenshot above, we’ve added the ability to add products directly to your cart from the guide you’re viewing.
We’ve also added the ability to add all of the products with a single button click! A few of the benefits are to ensure that you’re getting everything needed to complete the guide.
Also, we’ve added the ability to be notified of products that are out of stock, even if you’re adding all of the products to your cart using the one button at the bottom of the list.
And finally, there is an easy link to get to the shopping cart from right within the Learning System. This link is displayed anytime you have anything in your Adafruit shopping cart.
We hope these latest changes will make gathering the components to complete each each guide as easy as possible for you!
Adding a character display to your project or computer has never been easier with the new Adafruit USB or TTL serial backpack! This custom-designed PCB sits on the back of any ‘standard’ character LCD (16×2 or 20×4 sized) and does everything you could want: printing text, automatic scrolling, setting the backlight, adjusting contrast, making custom characters, turning on and off the cursor, etc. It can even handle our RGB backlight LCDs with full 8-bit PWM control of the backlight. That means you can change the background color to anything you want – red, green, blue, pink, white, purple yellow, teal, salmon, chartreuse, or just leave it off for a neutral background.
Long gone are the days of parallel ports and serial ports. Now the USB port reigns supreme! But USB is hard, and you just want to transfer your every-day serial data from a microcontroller to computer. What now? Enter the FTDI Friend! Learn how to use the FTDI Friend with a Mac, PC, or Linux machine and much more!
The Occidentalis Linux distribution for Raspberry Pi (and Raspbian as of Dec 2012) includes support for the DS18B20 1-wire temperature sensor. These sensors come in a small three pin package like a transistor and are accurate digital devices.
In this lesson, you will learn how to use a DS18B20 with the Raspberry Pi to take temperature readings.
Since the Raspberry Pi has no ADC (Analog to Digital Converter), it cannot directly use an analog temperature sensor like the TMP36, making the DS18B20 a good choice for temperature sensing.
This incredibly small stereo amplifier is surprisingly powerful – able to deliver 2 x 3.7W channels into 3 ohm impedance speakers. Inside the miniature chip is a class D controller, able to run from 2.7V-5.5VDC. Since the amp is a class D, its incredibly efficient (over 90% efficient when driving an 8Ω speaker at over a Watt).
This amplifier is perfect for portable and battery-powered projects. It has built in thermal and over-current protection, but you really have to drive it hard before it even gets warm! This board is a welcome upgrade to basic “LM386″ amps!
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