adafruit industries blog » site updates

New Wearables Section in the Adafruit Forums!

Becky Stern — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:04:13 +0000

The Adafruit forums are a great place to get help with your projects– and we just added a wearables board! Folks are building so many FLORA projects that we decided customers needed a special place to post (and ask questions about) wearables projects and techniques! Post your queries about any of the tutorials in our FLORA section on the Adafruit Learning System, and build the wearable electronics project of your dreams! Then post pictures of it. See you in the forums!

Adafruit on YouTube – 3 Million Views and Counting!

Becky Stern — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:31:07 +0000

On Sunday at 3:47am ET, the Adafruit YouTube channel passed 3 million views! Thanks to all you viewers for motivating us to keep making Wearable Wednesdays, Circuit Playground, hosting the Google+ Show and Tell, and all the other fun videos that support our tutorials and electronics learning online. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the Adafruit channel on YouTube so you never miss a video.

Adafruit’s new YouTube One Channel layout

Becky Stern — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:09:06 +0000

We’ve just given the Adafruit YouTube channel a facelift! Not only have we adopted the new One Channel design, but we made a new channel trailer enticing new viewers to stick around and make something.

Adafruit Video Page Update!

Becky Stern — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 21:19:10 +0000

Check out our freshly-updated video page to see all the great shows and videos Adafruit has to offer! It’s easier than ever to find exactly what you’re looking for, or discover something you never knew would interest you.

2 Million YouTube Views on the Adafruit Channel!

Becky Stern — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:29:30 +0000

Adafruit’s YouTube channel is growing rapidly! Back in October we hit 1 million video views, and this week we reached the 2 million mark! Subscribe to our channel to be the first to know when we upload a new video– catch our wearable tutorials, clips from around the factory, episodes of Ask an Engineer, product demos, and join our live hangouts via Google+!

Creating an Account at Adafruit.com (Video)

Matt — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:30:00 +0000

Learn to create an account on the Adafruit site! I’ve been enjoying Becky’s videos that share some of the capabilities of Adafruit’s online resources with the community, so I rounded up a bunch of the frequent questions we have been receiving about user accounts and created a video! Watch the video on YouTube (please subscribe!) and Vimeo.

New site category– Young Engineers!

Becky Stern — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:00:00 +0000

The aptitude of young electronics enthusiasts seems to be soaring– what a fun time it is to discover engineering!. 10-year olds are building quadcopters, teenagers are releasing kits, toddlers are using littleBits, and kids show us the coolest projects on our weekly Show-and-Tell. We collected some of our favorite products for inclusion in a new category in the catalog: Young Engineers. Expect coloring books, educational robot kits, stickers, plush toys, and other fun things to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.

Skill Badge Requirements Sheet – “hello, world”

akemp — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:22:55 +0000

All of my requirements sheets are geared toward high school environments. If you require either easier or harder requirements feel free to make a request! My objective on the requirements sheet is to have the students familiar enough with the component that they can use it effectively in their designs and troubleshoot problems when they arise. Please feel free to modify the sheet to fit your needs.

Enjoy!

“”hello, world” – Requirements Sheet

The new Adafruit 404 page…

adafruit — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 16:59:19 +0000

The new Adafruit 404 page… enjoy We have some more site updates & features to announce soon, this one is just the cutest looking one

Site upgrades today! Update: We’re back!

adafruit — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 15:16:01 +0000

The Adafruit site will be down for a few moments today (again) we’re upgrading our servers in preparation for some AWESOME new features on the site we think you’re going to love. We’ll post updates as the site upgrade happens on Twitter and Google+

Update: We’re back!

Site upgrades today!

adafruit — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 13:39:11 +0000

The Adafruit site will be down for a few moments today, we’re upgrading our servers in preparation for some AWESOME new features on the site we think you’re going to love. We’ll post updates as the site upgrade happens on Twitter and Google+

Adafruit Customer Support Forums (video)

Becky Stern — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:05:25 +0000

Learn how to get support for your Adafruit purchases on the Adafruit customer support forums. Video on YouTube and Vimeo.

Adafruit hits 500K YouTube views!

Becky Stern — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:42:25 +0000

Half a million views and growing– thanks for your support and heres to the next half million! Subscribe to Adafruit on YouTube and never miss a video. Watch past episodes of Ask an Engineer, the Electronics Show-and-Tell, product demos and more!

New blog category: Internet of Things!

Becky Stern — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:38:43 +0000

There’s a new category on the blog for Internet of Things projects! (RSS too) Recent posts:

Adafruit enclosures on Thingiverse

Becky Stern — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 08:00:12 +0000

We’ve uploaded our enclosures to Thingiverse! Adafruit, proud member of the Universe of Things.

New blog categories: UAVs, science, biohacking

Becky Stern — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:55:17 +0000

We’ve added three more categories to the blog, you can subscribe to these feeds individually if you like:

New blog category: Educational mini UAVs

Becky Stern — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:00:22 +0000

There’s a new category on the blog for educational mini UAVs!

New blog categories: Kinect hacking and 3D printing

Becky Stern — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:37:56 +0000

We created two new long-overdue blog categories, now you can track these subjects on their own!

Kinect hacking – 159 posts (RSS feed)
3D printing – 109 posts (RSS feed)

Adafruit YouTube Page Update!

Becky Stern — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:48:21 +0000

We updated the Adafruit YouTube page using the new YouTube homepage layout, and beefed up our playlist offerings for your viewing pleasure. If you like our videos, please subscribe to our YouTube channel so you never miss a single one. Got an idea for a video or playlist? Leave a note in the comments.

New playlists:

SERVER UPGRADE!

adafruit — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:32:15 +0000

We’re going to double our processor speed, RAM and a whole lot of other stuff. Site might be down for 15 minutes. We’ll update this post when we’re back up.

EDIT: WE ARE UPGRADED, THAT WAS FAST!

New “Distributors” tab on Adafruit product pages

adafruit — Fri, 13 May 2011 18:02:18 +0000

New “Distributors” tab on Adafruit product pages, video explains it all.

We have new blog nav at the bottom of the blog pages…

adafruit — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:09:45 +0000

You asked for it, and here it is! We have new blog nav at the bottom of the blog pages… enjoy!

Arduino Tutorial #5 – build a flashy bike light

ladyada — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 04:14:39 +0000

Will the blinky ever stop? No! Not while I have tutorials to write.

This tutorial will teach you about switches and buttons, inputs, pull up and pull down resistors, debouncing, if and if-else statements and in the end you will build your own LED bike light, just like the ones you see in stores retailing for $25.

Click To Play

Click here to read this fun fun fun tutorial!

Arduino tutorial, lesson 4!

ladyada — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 02:15:04 +0000

Ready for more Arduino tutorials? I’ve crawled out from under a pile of kits and finished up #4! This lesson will teach you all about sending data from the Arduino to the computer. You’ll also learn how to crunch numbers and juggle data. You can also watch as I make awful diagrams using Visio! Check it out here!

Haven’t checked out the tutorials? They are waiting patiently for you!

Electronics tutorials using Arduino

ladyada — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 21:28:46 +0000

One of the nice things about the Arduino boards & software is they let people get started hacking electronics fast. However, I was looking for a good step-by-step tutorial that helped people with almost no experience through the first few steps of microcontroller programming and basic electronics design. At the same time, I’d been flipping through Parallax’s excellent “What is a Microcontroller” workbook and decided to start writing something similar.

So check out my Arduino Tutorial page and give me feedback! Right now I’ve got 3 lessons up, and will try to get a another 3 out in the next week and a half.

Lesson 0
Pre-flight check…Is your Arduino and computer ready?
Lesson 1
The “Hello World!” of electronics, a simple blinking light
Lesson 2
Sketches, variables, procedures and hacking code
Lesson 3
Breadboards, resistors and LEDs, schematics, and basic RGB color-mixing

At the end of lesson three, you build a mood lamp!

Click To Play

Multimeter Tutorial, Part 2: Resistance!

ladyada — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:17:29 +0000

Get your ohmmeters out, kids. It’s time for part 2 of how to use a multimeter, this time for all of your resistor-measuring needs.

You will Learn:

How to measure resistors (duh)
The difference between auto-ranging and ranged meters and what to watch out for
How to characterize and test potentiometers and certain sensors.

I also attempt to uncover the reason why all meter ranges start with the number 2.

Click here to read the tutorial!

There’s lots of video clips, many of which are extremely boring compared to YouTube. Like check this one out of me shading an LDR

I strongly recommend adding it to your myspace!@

PCB Cost Calculator

ladyada — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:17:40 +0000

If you design and hack electronics for fun or work, then you know that PCB costs can be a big part of your budget. There’s a lot of manufacturers there, and they all use different pricing schemes.
Argh! So hard to compare!
So I wrote a javascript PCB cost calculator. Just punch in your PCB size and the minimum number you need and it’ll give you an idea of how much it will cost to make (shipping is approximated)

See the screenshot below, then go and visit the Real Deal

Kits for Kool Kats

ladyada — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 05:42:29 +0000

This is the year of the kit!

Thanks to the ease of going into business, and the increasing demand for DIY kits, this is a great time for people to get involved in kit making. I’m starting to collect resources for kit-makers, including a list of existing kit-makers as well as hints and tricks I’ve learned from running Adafruit Industries

These two articles (Kitmakers and Kitmaking) cover things from how to deal with shipping & handling, to designing PCBs, to documentation and customer support. Check them out and make suggestions!

S3 makes website hosting reasonable again

ladyada — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 03:09:33 +0000

Amazon’s S3 (Simple Storage Service) isn’t new, but its certainly gaining traction. Its a wonderful product for people who have a lot of content on their site (images, video, downloads, pdfs) but not a lot of money. Data storage costs $0.15 per GB-Month (prorated), and $0.20 per GB. No minimums, rounded up to the nearest cent.

There are a lot of great providers out there (I use Laughing Squid and highly recommend it) but even LS’s ‘largest’ package is too small for ladyada.net… What to do? Easy: Host all that bulky content at S3, then use mod_rewrite to reroute it over to S3. (You could also do it with php, asp or similar for higher ’security’ but mod_rewrite is lighter and good enough for me)

For example, this image has the url reference “http://www.ladyada.net/images/mintyboost/assemblyv12/inductorusbplace_t.jpg” but if you access that url in your browser, it is automatically rewritten by apache to http://s3.amazonaws.com/ladyadanet_mintyboost/assemblyv12/inductorusbplace_t.jpg

(same with my research pdf, a big pdf that easily accounted for 500M a day of traffic at its peak! http://www.ladyada.net/media/common/thesis.pdf -> http://s3.amazonaws.com/ladyadanet_common/thesis.pdf , S3 doesn’t care what the data is or how its encoded)

Of course mod_rewrite is not necessary, you can always just directly reference s3.amazonaws.com but that makes it harder to move the content around if you decide to eventually go with another service (or if s3 goes away one day!)

OK so, what’s the point and what does this have to do with electronics, eh? Well one of the killer apps of open source and public domain electronics is documentation. That means media. And media storage, backup and transfer is extremely expensive for the everyday person. It becomes increasingly difficult to host a project when one digg-storm or slashdotting makes that ‘free’ webpage account go down.

Edit: I use the Firefox S3 plugin to upload and set the access control on my files.

Are you using S3 or something similar for your projects, kits or documentation? Leave a comment or email! Its always interesting to see what other people are doing in this space.

The tool-kit for kits (how meta!)

ladyada — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 02:24:41 +0000

So now that you have a fun kit from one of the many reputable electronic kit makers, you are wondering “what soldering iron should I get?”

A fine question, grasshopper! And one that I can easily answer…I have researched three “kits” of tools for amateur electronics hobbyists: The $60 basic kit, $115 better kit, and the $275 best kit.

Mix & Match soldering irons, multimeters and wire cutters to get the set that fits you best.

Click “Read the rest…” to see the full “basic kit” as of this moment (it won’t be updated so be sure to bookmark http://www.ladyada.net/library/equipt-kits.html instead )

Here is the “basic” kit, a $60 investment in tools that you can use no matter how good you get (the soldering iron is the only tool that you will eventually replace if you want to get serious about tinkering with electronics.

	"25W adjustable" soldering iron (marginal quality)	Xyltronics SUPERPASE 258VL Jameco 116572 $16.95	Datasheet Do not get "cold heat" or other butane irons: they are not suitable!
	Combination "3rd hand" and soldering iron holder	Jameco 681002 8.75	You can either get a third hand tool and, seperately, a sponge/iron holder but this device is pretty functional and is a bit cheaper.
	60/40 Lead Solder, rosin core .031” 1/2 lb	Jameco 141794 $5.95	This is a good general purpose solder. Also look into getting 63/37 solder. Getting a 1 lb roll is only $0.75 more so consider it if you plan on doing a bunch of soldering! Don’t buy silver solder (yet) or lead-free solder. You will have a lot of difficulty using it and its not ‘less dangerous’
	Solder sucker / Desolder pump	Jameco 19166 $4.95	Extremely useful for when you make mistakes or bridge pins!
	Shear cutters	Cooper Tools "Xcelite" 170M Jameco 146712 $5.75	Essential, these are fairly inexpensive and high quality. Don’t ever use these to cut anything but copper wire (electronic leads). Steel wire, or aluminum will basically destroy them instantaneously!
	Basic Multimeter	MASTECH M300 Jameco 220812 $9.79	This is the cheapest meter that Jameco carries that has continuity testing, a necessary function. However, it’s a very limited meter.
	Wire strippers	Jameco 78992 $3.95	This is the defacto standard issued to all students. But hey, they work!
Total		$56

Do not stick hand or eyeball under laser

ladyada — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:45:38 +0000

Information is power.

In this case, exactly 35 Watts of power!

Check out the new Laser Information pages for all of your $20K laser cutter setup needs!

Its another Wiki embedded page: it looks like a normal web page but if you click the link at the top it will take you to the Wiki where the data is kept. That way, the 99% of people who just want the info don’t have to deal with the strange look of a wiki.

Embedded wiki for finding parts

ladyada — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:29:42 +0000

I’ve decided to experiment with the Wiki architecture for dynamic/collaborative documentation. For my kits and projects, wiki’s make less sense than forums, but a lot of people email me with resources so the “parts procurement” page that has been so popular that I’ve turned it into embedded content.

Now when you have a suggestion for a company to sample from, you can just edit the wiki yourself!

(apply google ‘(ladyada.net adafruit.com))

ladyada — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 21:53:03 +0000

I spent a little time and added ‘Google custom search’ to the top right corner of nearly everything on ladyada.net, it will search both sites for everything you want to find here!

It seems to search the store, blog, forums and all content: hooray!