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Open Source Wireless – Technique vs Feel

Window-93

Freaklabs – Open Source Wireless – Technique vs Feel.

I recently got into an interesting discussion on Twitter with some other engineers regarding the parallels between dancing and engineering. I often get a surprised look from people when I tell them I used to be a professional dancer. Perhaps its because I look like a nerd, or perhaps its because I am one. In any case, its true and its something that I spent many years and countless hours doing.

The strange thing is really that it’s nothing different from engineering. Engineering is also something that I’ve spent many years and countless hours doing. In both cases, they started out mostly just for fun, and once you get good, you can make money off it. But that’s not what I really want to talk about either.

In dancing, there is “technique” and there is “feel”. To make money from dancing, you need to have technique. That means that you need to understand the basics of body movement, have strong fundamentals in the particular dance genre, and your body must be trained to imitate movements that you see someone else doing, usually quickly. Technique is something that you spend a lot of time in studios, rehearsals, and training to build up. You work with choreographers, work with other dancers, learn choreography, and get everyone synchronized. This is essential for productions such as concerts, recitals, musicals, film, etc. The majority of professional dancers have extremely strong technique and if you’re a choreographer, you generally look for dancers with strong technique because they’re easier to train for choreography.

Love this, read the entire post here.

Filed under: open source hardware — by adafruit, posted February 6, 2012 at 5:38 am

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The democratization of hardware by @margeryc

Light-Sensor-016 Small

The democratization of hardware @ PowerSource | Blog on EDN.

Adafruit got into the parts/kit business with its detailed tutorials that include step-by-step instructions and photographs to lead newbies through the basics of Ohm’s Law and soldering, and on to programming the open-source hardware Arduino platform. Unlike traditional electronic distributors that rely on application engineers, the site effectively crowdsources its application engineering support through its forums and FAQ pages on the kits and parts. This reliance on the knowledge of the site’s fans is part of a well-thought-out business plan: Adafruit’s founder, Limor Fried, detailed the company philosophy in, “15 steps to starting your own electronic-kit business.”

Individual parts offered by Adafruit benefit from its excellent documentation and tutorials. Speaking from personal experience, a couple of years ago I bought a TLS2561 light-to-digital converter from TAOS Semiconductor (now part of austriamicrosystems.) It seemed like a handy component to have in getting a quick, objective measurement of LEDs. However, although documentation existed for the part, its outputs were hard to interpret and it was not easy to hook it up to a computer for datalogging. I quickly gave up and forgot about it.

Then, last summer Adafruit introduced the a new product, aTLS2561 premounted on a small pc board with a couple of chip resistors and some headers, with a tutorial as well as a software library for the open-source Arduino platform. As theAdafruit tutorial says, “To use this sensor and calculate Lux, there’s a lot of very hairy and unpleasant math. You can check out the math in the datasheet but really, it’s not intuitive or educational – it’s just how the sensor works. So we took care of all the math and wrapped it up into a nice Arduino library.”

My sentiments exactly – I just wanted to start using the sensor. It worked great. (See photo, which shows a boarduino, a slimmed-down version of the arduino.) Adafruit was able to take a part that sells competitively for about $2 each, add a couple of passive components, and a well thought-out online tutorial, and sell it for $12. And it was worth every penny of it to me.

Digi-Key had a similar start back in 1972, selling its “Digi-Keyer Kit” to ham radio enthusiasts and today it’s a $1B company. History could repeat itself with a whole new generation of parts and kits providers.

Developer Wanted: Open-Source Motor Control Board at Parallax Inc @ Adafruit Jobs Board

Developer Wanted: Open-Source Motor Control Board at Parallax Inc @ Adafruit Jobs Board.

Parallax Inc. is looking to expand our external developer team by searching for an outside engineer to design a motor control board compatible with current RepRap hardware. The design should feature the P8X32A multicore microcontroller from Parallax, which supports the current trend of RepRap hardware evolving into cheaper, easier to use and higher quality solutions. The design should be completed by early March 2012 and meet the requirements outlined here.

Chomp – the Affordable, Open-Source MIDI Controller by Max Justicz — Kickstarter

Chomp – the Affordable, Open-Source MIDI Controller by Max Justicz.

Hey Phil/Limor, I just posted up my first kickstarter project (I’m a high-school student). It’s open-source, Arduino based, and awesome! I just wanted to let you guys know that you helped me get interested in electronics in the first place. After raising $455 in under 1.5 hours, I think I’ve picked a pretty good hobby.

Here’s the link: http://kck.st/xdnUhp

Thanks so much for everything you guys! By the way — I taught a short term class at my school (which is about 4 weeks long) on the Arduino (we bought all of our kits, sensors, and LCDs from you guys) and it went GREAT!!!! Here’s a project one of my friends made during the second week (having never programmed before): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtwqUQUAPx8. You guys rock! -mjusticz

Filed under: arduino,educators,open source hardware — by adafruit, posted at 2:13 pm

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The IR Shield

The IR Shield. falldeaf writes -

Hi Lady Ada! I designed and built a custom Arduino shield and wrote some firmware and software that turn it into a web-connected universal remote…

Filed under: arduino,open source hardware — by adafruit, posted February 1, 2012 at 3:27 pm

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Interview with ColorHug maker, Richard Hughes

Interview with ColorHug maker, Richard Hughes @ Banu Blog.

For a while now, I’ve wanted Banu to do interviews of makers of things with free and open designs. Being a fan of PingMag MAKE, it was apparent that there was a lot of hard work, learning, fun and satisfaction to be had in making. It’s too bad that PingMag shutdown, but they still inspire. So when the ColorHug comes along—an open hardware product related to graphics—there’s no better time to start interviewing. Solder when the iron’s hot!

The ColorHug is a colorimeter that can be used to calibrate computer displays. It was created by Richard Hughes (hughsie). It is a fully open hardware project, and the design, drivers and firmware are available on the Gitorious code hosting website. From the branches and commit logs it appears that others have taken an interest in its development too, and have begun to contribute to it.

ISS tracking theme clock face – Monochron Clock Kit

ISS tracking theme clock face – Monochron Clock Kit. SPACECHRON, Scott writes -

Some of my christmas money went towards purchasing a Monochron Clock kit from Adafruit.com.

It turned out to be an awesome build and I had lots of fun putting it together. I also chose it because it allows you to program your own clock “faces” for it. I’ve programmed a Space themed face for it that simulates the space station ground track. I’ve also programmed an autodim feature for the backlight because my preferred daylight brightness was too bright at night. The fact that I can customize it to fit my needs is an awesome thing. I wish there were more products like it.

Amazing, and the code is GitHub.

Filed under: clocks,open source hardware — by adafruit, posted January 23, 2012 at 12:05 pm

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Announcing the FLORA, Adafruit’s wearable electronics platform and accessories

Today we’re announcing our new open-source wearable electronics platform and series of accessories. We rarely announce something until it’s shipping to customers, but you’ll see a lot of these out in the world from our testers as they show off some projects – so we wanted to post about this now.

For the last few years Ladyada has been thinking about everything she wanted in a wearable electronics platform for Adafruit’s community of makers, hackers, crafters, artists, designers and engineers. After months of planning, designing and working with partners around the world for the best materials and accessories, we can share what we’re up to. The hardware is now in the hands of our staff and testers!

We call it the FLORA.

Adafruit created the FLORA from scratch after many months of research and we really think we came up with something that will empower some amazing wearable projects.

The FLORA is not the first wearable Arduino / Arduino-compatible. Leah Buechley’s LilyPad was developed in 2007 – we wanted to also make something that’s wearable, but it needed to be a completely new platform for our accessories/modules and goals for the project.

We’ll have updates and more big news soon in the wearable electronics space, so please stay tuned to the Adafruit blog. We have a product page you can sign up for soon, you can sign up to be notified when we have the first round of units ready. As always we’ll have great pricing for educators, resellers and hackerspaces.

We’ve put together a list of features/decisions that we hope will answer many of the questions about the FLORA. Please feel free to post up any questions in the comments. There may be some minor revisions to the hardware since we are in beta and working with our testers in the field. We wanted to share our thought/design process, we hope it helps others when designing hardware.

The FLORA FAQ

The FLORA is small (1.75″ diameter). We wanted the smallest possible board for our wearable platform.

It’s based on our experiences shipping our own, shipping, customer-tested Atmega32u4 Breakout Board.

The FLORA comes with projects at launch, the FLORA addressable and chain-able 4,000 mcd RGB LED pixels and premium stainless steel thread.

Here’s a quick video! (HD version).

The FLORA has built-in USB support. Built in USB means you plug it in to program it, it just shows up. No additional purchases are needed! Works with Mac, Windows, Linux, any USB cable works great. Currently the PCB comes with a mini B connector but future versions may change to microUSB. Either will work great.

The FLORA has USB HID support, so it can act like a mouse, keyboard, MIDI, etc. to attach directly to cellphones. Our iPhone/iPad/Android app coming soon.

The FLORA’s modules include: Bluetooth, GPS, 3-axis accelerometer, compass module, flex sensor, piezo, IR LED, push button, embroidered + capacitive keypad, OLED and more.

The FLORA has a small but easy to use onboard reset button to reboot the system.

The FLORA is fabric friendly. The FLORA does not use FTDI headers (built in USB support) headers of any kind sticking out can grab and tear fabric.

The FLORA has an onboard 3.3v 100mA regulator with protection schottky diode and USB fuse so that power is consistent and can power common 3.3v modules and sensors.

The FLORA has onboard polarized 2 JST battery connector with protection schottky diode for use with external battery packs from 3.5v to 16v DC in. Can be used with LiIon/LiPoly, LiFe, alkaline or rechargeable NiMh/NiCad batteries of any size.

The FLORA does not have a LiPo charger included by design, this allows safe use with multiple battery types and reduces risk of fire as it is not recommended to charge these batteries on fabric.

The FLORA has onboard power switch connected to 2A power FET for safe and efficient battery on/off control. Often FETs are not included in other designs that leads to switch failure as small SMT switches are rated for only 20mA current use.

The FLORA power system is specifically designed to allow easy control and power of a large quantity of digital RGB LED pixels such as the FLORA pixel series of accessories.

The FLORA is extremely beginner-friendly – it is difficult to destroy the FLORA by connecting a battery backwards due to polarized connector and protection diodes. The onboard regulator means that even connecting a 9V battery will not result in damage or tears.

The FLORA has 4 indicator LEDs: power good, digital signal LED for bootloader feedback, data rx/tx.

The FLORA has an ICSP connector for easy reprograming for advanced users.

The FLORA has 14 sewing tap pads for attachment and electrical connections. Data buses are interleaved with power and ground pads for easy module and sensor attachments without worrying about overlapping traces which are not possible with conductive thread.

The FLORA works with the Adafruit-fixed Leonardo bootloader (not released) and will work with any future released Leonardo-compatible bootloader. FLORA is currently using our Adafruit bootloader and Adafruit USB vendor ID.

The FLORA comes with Adafruit’s support, tutorials and projects. Adafruit has dozens of projects that will be released with the FLORA in 2012 and has staff 100% dedicated to creating tutorials and projects for use with the FLORA.

The FLORA is made in NYC at Adafruit, it was designed by Limor Fried (Ladyada) she is an Electrical Engineer with a proven track record of providing over 26 high-quality libraries for Arduino/Arduino IDE, over 100 tutorials, open-source code and contributions to the Arduino project. She was a member of the MIT wearables group and likes to sew.

We hope you’ll be as excited about FLORA as we are. Post any questions in the comments! We’ll stop back throughout the day to answer them!

Filed under: announce,open source hardware — by adafruit, posted January 20, 2012 at 11:00 am

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NEW PRODUCT – Coobro Geo Kit – DIY GPS Geocaching Pendant

NEW PRODUCT – Coobro Geo Kit – DIY GPS Geocaching Pendant. The Coobro Geo is an easy to assemble GPS navigation kit. Upload coordinates, turn it on, and the Coobro Geo will help you navigate to any destination on earth by using LEDs to show you the correct direction and distance remaining. Before you leave on your quest, press and hold the breadcrumbs button and the Coobro Geo will remember your location and help you navigate back. Store up to five pre-entered destination coordinates and five breadcrumbs, or modify the open source code and store as many coordinates as you want.

We met the maker of this project our weekly ASK AN ENGINEER show-and-tell, and liked his product so much we wanted to carry it!

Use the Coobro Geo to help you find geocaches, store and navigate between hot fishing spots, complete a scavenger hunt, or simply help you find your car after a hike.

Features:

High quality Fastrax UP501 GPS module with 66-channel receiver
All through hole kit is easy to solder and requires minimal tools
Completely open source hardware and software
Program the software using the Arduino IDE
Stores breadcrumbs in EEPROM so it remembers locations when turned off

Kit Includes:

1x Fastrax UP501 GPS Module
1x Atmega328 DIP Processor
1x Coobro Geo PCB
14x Bright Blue LEDs
2x 10 Ohm Resistor Networks
4x .1uF Ceramic Capacitors
1x 10uF Electrolytic Capacitor
2x Slide Switches
1x Push button
3x Header pins
1x Atmega328 Socket
1x 8MHz Ceramic Oscillator
1x AAA Enclosed Batter Holder
1x Lanyard
1x Power Supply Jumper

This kit requires assembly by the user. It’s not a difficult kit, and can be put together even by a beginner using a soldering iron, solder, diagonal cutters and other small hand tools. Notice: in order for this kit to work, you’ll need to have an FTDI cable or an FTDI breakout board such as our FTDI Friend they are not included. You may also want to pick up some AAA batteries, 3 are required and are also not included.

Open Source Hardware: This kit is 100% open source hardware. The makers provide the Eagle Cad design files, schematics, and software for your hacking pleasure.

In stock and shipping now!

Filed under: gps,open source hardware — by adafruit, posted January 18, 2012 at 5:46 pm

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littlePiggy

littlePiggy, neat project from littleBits.

Filed under: open source hardware — by adafruit, posted at 12:00 am

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Openpipe breakout

This is a cool project!

Filed under: open source hardware — by adafruit, posted January 17, 2012 at 8:21 am

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ZPM Espresso is making an open source home espresso machine

Espresso

ZPM Espresso is making an open source home espresso machine @ VentureBeat.

Making good home espresso is possible, but the machines tend to cost a small fortune. ZPM Espresso, a startup in Atlanta, is hoping to change that with its open-source espresso machine.

If the company succeeds, it could have a nice market for itself, as the espresso and specialty coffee market have been growing quickly around the world. (Can you tell based on how many Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee places there are?).

The founders like drinking espresso and they took apart a bunch of old machines to see how it’s done. They figured out how to make a machine for less money, but including important features such as PID controls, custom temperature, pressure profiles, and open source hardware and software using Arduino, a kind of microcontroller. The microcontroller governs the behavior of the thermoblock and the pump, rather than relying upon mechanical controls. That allows the data to be analyzed, saved, and shared.

Filed under: open source hardware — by adafruit, posted January 16, 2012 at 7:32 pm

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OpenVSP – NASA Open Source Parametric Geometry

Ds Small

OpenVSP via /.

At the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Nashville, NASA engineers unveiled the newly open sourced OpenVSP, software that allows users to construct full aircraft models from simple parameters such as wing span and fuselage length, under the NASA Open Source Agreement. Says the website, ‘OpenVSP allows the user to create a 3D model of an aircraft defined by common engineering parameters. This model can be processed into formats suitable for engineering analysis.

Filed under: open source hardware — by adafruit, posted at 12:47 pm

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Adafruit data logger, in the freezer

Dibgm

Zchj

Joe writes…

Built the adafruit data logger. Then stuck it in the freezer.

Adafruit Data logging shield for Arduino – v1.0 – Here’s a handy Arduino shield: we’ve had a lot of people looking for a dedicated and well-designed data logging shield. We worked hard to engineer an inexpensive but well-rounded design. Not only is it easy to assemble and customize, it also comes with great documentation and libraries.

You can get going quickly – saving data to files on any FAT16 or FAT32 formatted SD card, to be read by any plotting, spreadsheet or analysis program. We even have a tutorial on how to use two free software programs to plot your data The included Real Time Clock timestamps all your data with the current time, so that you know precisely what happened when!

Please note that this item does not come with an Arduino (you’ll need one to use with the shield), or an SD card. It does come with the RTC battery, however. The kit is un-assembled, You’ll need some basic soldering skills to put it together, but even if you don’t have much experience you can get it done in under 1 hour.

SD card interface works with FAT16 or FAT32 formatted cards. 3.3v level shifter circuitry prevents damage to your SD card
Real time clock (RTC) keeps the time going even when the Arduino is unplugged. The battery backup lasts for years
Included libraries and example code for both SD and RTC mean you can get going quickly
Prototyping area for soldering connectors, circuitry or sensors.
Onboard 3.3v regulator is both a reliable reference voltage and also reliably runs SD cards that require a lot of power to run
An Arduino with a ’328 chip is pretty much required, you can get an upgrade chip from us if you have an older Arduino (such as NG/Diecimila)

For more information, including libraries, schematics and examples see the data logger shield webpage

Filed under: arduino,open source hardware — by adafruit, posted January 12, 2012 at 7:22 am

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RGB LED Ring V2 — sequels don’t have to be bad

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RGB LED Ring V2 — sequels don’t have to be bad @ My 2µF.

This is the successor to my old (and lame) RGB LED Ring project.

Version ’2.0 alpha’ – an intermediate step to true enlightenment – uses one LED driver IC and 3 P-channel MOSFETs cycling through the primary colors. This requires special attention in the code to attempt color balancing (forced dot correction at all times).

As of ’2.0 beta’ (likely to become the final version) it comes with 3 dedicated constant current LED driver chips (MBI5168), which completely avoids multiplexing the LEDs and boosts brightness again. Color balancing is done entirely in hardware using 3 potentiometers. The hardware differences should be taken care of in the core part of the demo code, ‘User-land’ code is mostly the same.

Lovely!

Filed under: open source hardware — by adafruit, posted at 4:59 am

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