adafruit industries blog

Olfactory Sensors from Frogs

johngineer — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:21:00 +0000

How do you give a robot a sharper sense of smell? By using genetically modified frog cells, according to Shoji Takeuchi, a bioengineer at the University of Tokyo in Japan.

Today’s electronic noses are not up to the job, he says. Although e-noses have been around for a while – and are used to sniff out rotten food in production lines – they lack accuracy.

Tools everyone should own

adafruit — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:00:01 +0000

Interesting list for homeowner types – Tools Everyone Should Own @ Yahoo / Popular Mechanics – post up your suggestions and tools in the comments!

Man is “weak in himself, and of small stature,” wrote 19th-century essayist Thomas Carlyle. Yet, with tools, “the granite mountain melts into light dust before him, seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds.” And this from a guy who never felt a 5800-rpm circular saw scream to life in his hand.

While much has changed since Carlyle’s day, one thing hasn’t: We need tools to build, repair and maintain the mechanical world in which we live. With these tools, you’ll be ready for just about any project–whether it’s melting mountains or swapping out the kitchen sink.

Power laces!

adafruit — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:47:04 +0000

Power laces! With an Adafruit shout out at the end (we’re guessing they’re using some OSHW gear from us). On a related note, we’re at an interesting intersection of retro/pop-culture and electronics. From costuming to making “future shoes” – learning electronics allows participation in modern mythology.

From the mailbag

adafruit — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:28:43 +0000

It’s Thursday, time to reach in to the mailbag…

Hi guys,

Just wanted to thank you and commend your efficiency in getting things around the other side of the world in record time. I ordered some gear late on a Friday afternoon, and it was on my desk in Australia by Wednesday morning. Impressive!

Thanks again,
Scott

TV-B-Gone and some fruit

adafruit — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:03:57 +0000

John took this great photo of a TV-B-Gone and some fruit!

PRODUCT UPDATE – Adafruit ARDX – v1.0 Experimentation Kit for Arduino (v1.3)

adafruit — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:29:57 +0000

This is an update to our popular Adafruit ARDX – v1.0 Experimentation Kit for Arduino. What’s new? Let’s take a look!

New! 5mm diffused tri-color (RGB) LED (x1)
New! Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) for detecting touch and squeezing
New! Manual with new project, FSR!
New! New breadboard overlay!
New! Now comes in a handy, sturdy cardboard box (previous version had a plastic box)

All at the same price as always!

Interested in making neat stuff with an Arduino but not sure where to start? This kit includes all the pieces needed to complete 11 different circuits, along with a experimenter’s guide booklet & breadboard layout sheets. Basically everything you need to be playing within minutes of its arrival. No soldering required!

Features:

11 circuits to explore microcontroller basics. Covering LEDs, transistors, motors, integrated circuits, pushbuttons, variable resistors, photo resistors, temperature sensors & relays.
Comes with an Arduino Duemilanove prototyping bundle to make constructing your circuits and future projects easy.
Printed copy of the Arduino Experimenter’s Guide means no need to flip between on-screen windows.
Each circuit includes a layout sheet, eliminating guesswork when it comes to component placement.
Fully open source, meaning you can download and print additional circuit sheets, or download the component files and make your own circuits.
Help is only an e-mail away ( help@oomlout.com )
NEW – Cardboard box for storing! A plastic box is no longer included!

Includes:

Arduino Prototyping Bundle (the latest Arduino Duemilanove ‘328 board, breadboard & acrylic holder)
75 Piece Jumper Wire Bundle
Full color printed 32 page Experimenter’s Guide
13 color Breadboard Layout Sheets
USB Cable
9V battery clip
Loads of components
- New! 5mm diffused tri-color (RGB) LED (x1)
- New! Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) for detecting touch and squeezing.
- 5mm Red LEDs (x10)
- 5mm Green LEDs (x10)
- 10mm Blue LED (x1)
- Toy DC Motor (x1)
- Mini Servo Motor (x1)
- 8-Bit Shift Register (74HC595) (x1)
- Piezo Element (x1)
- Pushbuttons (x2)
- Potentiometer (10k) (x1)
- Photo Resistor (x1)
- Temperature Sensor (TMP36) (x1)
- Relay (5v DPDT) (x1)
- Transistors (P2N222A) (x2)
- Resistors (560 Ohm x25, 2.2k Ohm x3, 10k Ohm x3)
- Diodes (1N4001) (x2)

Resources:

In stock and shipping now!

Top Ten Lost Technologies

johngineer — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:47:27 +0000

Interesting Top 10 list over at toptenz.net about lost technologies, including my personal favorite, the Antikythera Mechanism. On a potentially sadder and more controversial note, what up the Apollo/Gemini thing?

Internet Explorer 6 is no longer supported on the adafruit sites…

adafruit — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:16:11 +0000

Less than 10% percent of the visitors here who use Internet Explorer, use Internet Explorer 6, while we’re not going to purposely add features that break anything in IE6 it is no longer supported on the adafruit sites… Here’s a bit of history to this famous browser -

Internet Explorer 6 (abbreviated as IE6) was the sixth major revision of Internet Explorer, a web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems. It was released on August 27, 2001, shortly after the completion of Windows XP.

It is the default browser shipped with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and was also made available for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, and Windows 2000. IE6 SP1 is the last version of Internet Explorer available for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, and Windows 2000. Although IE6 has now been superseded by newer versions of Internet Explorer, Microsoft still supports it in Windows XP SP3.

This version of Internet Explorer is widely derided for its security issues and lack of support for modern web standards, making frequent appearances in “worst tech products of all time” lists, with some publications labeling it as the “least secure software on the planet.” Because a substantial percentage of the web audience still uses the outdated browser, campaigns have been established to encourage users to upgrade to newer versions of Internet Explorer or switch to different browsers. Some websites have dropped support for IE6 entirely, most notable of which is Google dropping support in some of its services…

Google’s Earth

adafruit — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:05:48 +0000

Interesting op-ed from William Gibson..

Science fiction never imagined Google, but it certainly imagined computers that would advise us what to do. HAL 9000, in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” will forever come to mind, his advice, we assume, eminently reliable — before his malfunction. But HAL was a discrete entity, a genie in a bottle, something we imagined owning or being assigned. Google is a distributed entity, a two-way membrane, a game-changing tool on the order of the equally handy flint hand ax, with which we chop our way through the very densest thickets of information. Google is all of those things, and a very large and powerful corporation to boot.

AVR programming trick: Sharing target boards

adafruit — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:54:38 +0000

AVR programming trick: Sharing target boards @ Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories…

This week, Brad wrote in with an interesting question: Can you program the ATtiny25 on one of our ‘tiny2313 target boards? And the answer is yes: you can, with just a trivial modification.

Okay, back up– a little context here. The ATtiny25 and the ATtiny2313 are examples of AVR microcontrollers, the little brains that power many of our projects.

To program these chips, we use a usbtinyisp programmer, hooked up to a minimalist target board

Smart Energy: How to Measure It, How to Manage It

adafruit — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:00:43 +0000

Tweet-a-watt got some slide action on EDN’s “Smart Energy: How to Measure It, How to Manage It”… – via Twitter.

Smart Energy: How to Measure It, How to Manage It. Smart energy meters for the smart grid are just one example of how important it will be to measure power usage at the application. Alternative energy sources like solar and wind require power metering, and so do car charging ports for tomorrow electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. In addition, server farms will need to be able power usage at the server rack level to accurately charge their customers for server power costs. All of these come back to smart energy ICs that can measure and communicate power usage. EDN technical editor Margery Conner will host a webinar panel discussion on August 24th featuring senior industry experts in key aspects of Smart Energy. PDF slides here.

Super Simple Arduino – Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show: Episode 03

adafruit — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:00:31 +0000

This is how it’s done folks -

Sylvia builds two different super simple Arduino Projects: The “Randomly Influenced Finger Flute”, or R.I.F.F., and an Adjustable Strobe! For these easy projects, all you need are a computer, an arduino, and one or two other common parts. Super simple at it’s best.

Project 1: Super Simple Adjustable Strobe
http://tn42.com/strobe

Direct code link on github:
http://github.com/techninja/adjustabl…

Nate True’s Time Fountain:
http://cre.ations.net/creation/the-ti…

Video of the Time Fountain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvY7NG…

Project 2: The R.I.F.F.
http://tn42.com/riff

Direct code link on github:
http://github.com/techninja/riff-lear…

Tinker.it’s soft-synth, Auduino:
http://code.google.com/p/tinkerit/wik…

Auduino – The Arduino synthesiser:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LKmtJ…

Music by The Wavers – Three Minutes to Escape [CC Sharealike v2.5]

State of the fruit’ – AUGUST

adafruit — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:00:01 +0000

About 5 months ago we hit 1 million page views on adafruit.com (see post State of the ‘fruit 1m page views in February 2010 and our 50,000th order!). And this last month (August) we crept up to 1.27M. If we add ladyada.net we’re over 2.5 million page views a month now – we passed our 63,000th order and released a ton of new products. We had the most viewers ever on “Ask an Engineer” with Amanda “w0z” – August was a great month for us all around.

We don’t take advertising on our site (and never will) but we do like to measure what’s happening and we don’t mind sharing some of this information – thank you to everyone out there who reads our blog each day, supports us with their orders of open source hardware and contributes the great comments/forum posts here.

Pull Requests 2.0 – GitHub

adafruit — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:56:11 +0000

Pull Requests 2.0 – GitHub….

GitHub launched with a simple pull request system on day one. You’ve used it to send 200 thousand pull requests in just over two years. Now we’re taking it to the next level with a re-imagined design and a slew of new tools that streamline the process of discussing, reviewing, and managing changes.

NEW PRODUCT – Midnight hacker, Leatherman Squirt ES4 (black)

adafruit — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:52:03 +0000

The Adafruit “midnight hacker” is a Leatherman Squirt ES4 and a very handy, unique key-chain size multi-tool. The E4 sets you up with 20GA, 18GA, 16GA, 14GA and 12GA wire strippers and electrical wire cutters to handle all kinds of precise jobs. The gripping edges on the ES4’s spring-action pliers help you get a firm grasp on fuses, small cables, and many hard-to-reach items.

Tools:

420HC Clip Point Knife
Spring-action Needlenose Pliers
Medium Screwdriver
Flat/Phillips Screwdriver
Wood/Metal File
Wire Cutters
Wire Strippers: 20GA, 18GA, 16GA, 14GA, and 12GA
Scissors
Bottle Opener

Features:

Etched with our laser, says “midnight hacker”
Stainless Steel with Anodized Aluminum Handle Scales
Stainless Steel Body
Outside-accessible Tools
Key Ring Attachment
Available color: Black, dark, cold – like our heart
25-year Warranty

Measurements:

2.25 in | 5.72 cm (closed)
1.9 oz | 56.4 g
1.6 in | 4.06 cm (blade length)

In stock and shipping immediately!

Copyrighting Fashion…

adafruit — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 18:32:28 +0000

Copyrighting Fashion: Who Gains? @ NYTimes.com…

A new bill Schumer introduced would subject fashion to copyright for the first time. The bill would protect only “unique” designs — those that are truly new and distinguishable. And only “substantially identical” copies would be illegal.

…But in the real world, the law will almost surely expand in a way that harms many designers and consumers. Expensive disputes will ensue over what is unique and who got there first. Lawyers (and those designers who could afford them) will be among the biggest beneficiaries. We like lawyers, but we don’t think this is good policy.

Which brings up an interesting question: why would Congress change intellectual property law in a way unlikely to help designers very much, but almost certain to hurt consumers? There are, after all, hundreds of millions of people who buy clothes, compared to a relative few who design them.

Fashion can’t be copyrighted, we’ll see how much longer it lasts… here’s what you can’t copyright now -

1. Ideas, Methods, or Systems
2. Commonly Known Information
3. Choreographic Works
4. Names, Titles, Short Phrases, or Expressions
5. Fashion

Asteroids from 1980 to 2010

johngineer — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:17:07 +0000

A neat video showing the location of asteroids as they are discovered, from 1980 – 2010. It’s really cool to see the newly discovered ‘roids follow the Earth around the sun.

Watch it fullscreen @1080 if you can.

Minor site updates / features today…

adafruit — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:14:01 +0000

We are performing some minor site updates / new features today – images may not appear on the site for a few moments – please stand by

Autodesk – AutoCAD for Mac is coming

adafruit — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:56:24 +0000

Autodesk – AutoCAD for Mac is coming out this fall – interesting!

AutoCAD® for Mac® software—it’s AutoCAD, for the Mac, bringing robust 3D free-form design tools and powerful drafting capabilities to your platform of choice. It takes full advantage of the Mac OS® X platform, with an intuitive, graphical user interface that makes it easy to bring your ideas to life. And because it’s AutoCAD, you’re working natively in DWG™ format, so you can easily share files with clients, suppliers, and partners around the world, regardless of platform.

Homebrew Cray-1A – FGAcray

adafruit — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:24:14 +0000

Homebrew Cray-1A via jwz.

As part two (see previous attempt) of my ongoing series in `computational necromancy,’ I’ve spent the last year and a half or so constructing my own 1/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. [...] The Cray-1 is one of those iconic machines that just makes you say “Now that’s a super computer!” Sure, your iPhone is 10X faster, and it’s completely useless to own one, but admit it . . you really want one, don’t you? [...]

When I started building this, I thought “Oh, I’ll just swing by the ol’ Internet and find some groovy 70’s-era software to run on it.” It turns out I was wrong. One of the sad things about pre-internet machines (especially ones that were primarily purchased by 3-letter Government agencies) is that practically no software exists for them.

After searching the internet exhaustively, I contacted the Computer History Museum and they didn’t have any either. They also informed me that apparently SGI destroyed Cray’s old software archives before spinning them off again in the late 90’s. I filed a couple of FOIA requests with scary government agencies that also came up dry.

Saw bot – Robot with a saw

adafruit — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:12:45 +0000

We love this equal zero’s blog and we love this bot…

Arduino based thermal printer

adafruit — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 04:00:55 +0000

Manuel Rábade’s Arduino based thermal printer via HaD.

Mads Peitersen makes paintings of “gadget anatomy”

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:55:48 +0000

Mads Peitersen makes paintings of “gadget anatomy” via Waxy.

From Bunnie: chumby hacker boards (now available in beta)

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:31:45 +0000

Post from Bunnie (maker of the Chumby hacker board)…chumby hacker boards (now available in beta) « bunnie’s blog…

chumby is now offering a “hacker” board, which is the guts of the chumby One, but modified to be more hacker-friendly: it comes with three high speed USB host ports, uses the power connector from the Sony PSP (instead of the weird, hard to find connector on the chumby One) and incorporates a variety of headers, such as Arduino-style shield headers and a 44-pin breakout header that gives you access to a lot of digital I/O and some analog inputs. There’s even a four-directional switch on board and some LEDs so you can do quick hacks that don’t require a video display for user feedback. Speaking of the display, while this board doesn’t come standard with an LCD, it does provide composite video output via a 4-wire 1/8″ jack so you can, by using an iPod video cable, plug the chumby hacker board into any TV that supports a composite video input…

The board is priced at around $89. The goal of the beta program is to collect feedback from users who purchase the board to fine-tune the design and to figure out what I/Os and accessories make sense to bundle with the board. Like the Arduino, we don’t integrate a lot of features onto the mainboard itself (keeps base cost low). Instead, we’d like to make sure that adequate I/O resources exist for developers to hack in the peripheral module they require to complete their project — or for more enterprising developers to build their own flavor of peripheral board and sell their own accessory.

There’s a few resources available to get people started on using the boards: a forum for general support and questions, and a wiki containing links to datasheets, schematics, and other more permanent documentation that people will find useful. Adafruit also has available a snazzy hackerboard page with tons of info, well-documented tutorials, and nice photos to boot.

One other point of note about the hacker board is that you can install a native gcc toolchain on it, so you don’t need to configure/install a cross-compiler on your host PC to develop for it. Heck, it’s got a 454 MHz CPU and plenty of disk space, so why not? Adafruit has a tutorial on how to install the compiler using a downloadable self-extracting script and a USB dongle. I’ve also heard rumors that an OpenEmbedded port is coming to the board soon, so stay tuned.

If you do end up purchasing a board and participating in the beta, please do contribute to the fora and wikis with your feedback. As always, happy hacking!

Photos from MakerFaire Rhode Island

johngineer — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:26:25 +0000

I went to the MiniMakerFaire in Providence, RI this weekend — talked to folks about taking photos and took a few as well. Check ‘em out!

Connecting a printer to an Arduino

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:22:38 +0000

Quick tip in the forums for connecting a printer to an Arduino. Uberhund writes -

As someone who has actually made a working printer solution for the Arduino (one of the very few, from what I can tell), it’s still my opinion the solution below is optimum, as of this writing. The parallel to serial conversions and Arduino pin-count issues make the parallel approach a non-starter.

1) Acquire an RS232 serial shield. If from http://www.cutedigi.com, then these three Mods will be required:

MOD1: Bend shield pins 0 and 1 so they do not plug into the Arduino TTY dedicated digital IO pins. This allows the Arduino serial com to remain available to USB debugging.

MOD2: Add jumpers between whatever two ports you wish to use as printer IO pins and the RS232 shield pins 0 and 1 (remember – we bent the shield pins so they are no longer talking to the Arduino, but the RS232 shield is still expecting TTY-level serial data on its pins 0 and 1 anyway. The jumpers will “fool” the shield into believing data is from Arduino pins 0 and 1, when actually the signals are coming from whatever Arduino pins you jumper them to.)

MOD3: Add a reset button to the RESET and GND pins. Grrr. The shield completely covers the Arduino reset button. Who designs things this way?

2) Plug in your receipt printer to the DB9 pin of the shield and start churning out paper.

Believe it or not, it’s that simple. Why someone hasn’t make a decent printer shield is beyond me. I spoke with the support person for the RS232 shield about the issues, and he responded to me as if I were speaking Martian. It took me a year to find this solution. Enjoy.

Also check out – Arduino controlled EPSON TM-T88P Printer…

Boarduino Proto Shield

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:17:58 +0000

Boarduino Proto Shield…

We are very happy to announce a new product. I have always liked the Boarduino as a concept, but have been frustrated that you can’t easily use it for that semi permanent prototyping, and you can’t use it with Arduino shields. Both these problems are now solved with the Boarduino Shield. Available at the wickeddevice store. It uses long pin headers, so you can mount shields on the top and/or the bottom of the proto-shield. We think it’s pretty nifty.

Interesting! ~~We are hoping Wicked Device makes it an open source hardware project too~~, like the Boarduino – Update: The makers say it’s open source hardware! (We couldn’t find the files, license, etc. Sorry for any confusion on our part).

Chumby Hacker Board tutorials!

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:37:36 +0000

This page is a collection of mini-tutorials on doing stuff with the Chumby Hacker Board (for brevity we will refer to it as the CHB)! The CHB is a cool single board Linux computer that has much of the same hardware as the famous Chumby One. It’s great for people who are experienced with Linux and want to have the power of a microcomputer with audio and video output while at the same time getting all the peripherals of a microcontroller such as analog-to-digital conversion, PWM outputs, sensors, bit twiddling, and broken-out GPIOs!

Power supplies – How to power your Chumby Hacker board!
Serial port – How to connect to the serial terminal port for shell access
Compiler – Installing the Falconwing GCC toolchain
Accessing i2c – Connecting to i2c chips including the on-board accelerometer!

More to come soon!

Graffiti Analysis 3.0 is here…

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:29:33 +0000

ni9e blog: Graffiti Analysis 3.0 Is Here…

Break out your digital projectors, markers, turntables, lasers and 3D glasses, because Graffiti Analysis version 3.0 is finally here. For information and downloads go to graffitianalysis.com (source code available on github). Your one stop shop for ink and pixels.

New features include:
- audio input
- architectural awareness
- laser input
- keyword based .gml RSS playback
- red / cyan 3D effect

Overview:
Graffiti Analysis is an extensive ongoing study in the motion of graffiti. Custom software designed for graffiti writers creates visualizations of the often unseen gestures involved in the creation of a tag. Motion data is recorded, analyzed and archived as a Graffiti Markup Language (.gml) file, a specifically formatted XML file designed to be a common open structure for archiving gestural graffiti motion data.

Credits:
Graffiti Analysis is a project by Evan Roth. Software development by Mzz Chris Sugrue. Support for GAv3.0 from Les Grandes Traversees. Graffiti Analysis was built in Open Framewerkz, with additional code contributions from Theo Watson (laser input integration), Kyle McDonald (audio analysis) and ps / TPOLM (.gml RSS system).

NEW PRODUCT – Chumby Hacker Board – Beta

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:33:25 +0000

Chumby Hacker Board – Beta. The Chumby Hacker Board is a cool single board Linux computer that has much of the same hardware as the famous Chumby One. It’s great for people who are experienced with Linux and want to have the power of a microcomputer with audio and video output while at the same time getting all the peripherals of a microcontroller such as analog-to-digital conversion, PWM outputs, sensors, bit twiddling, and broken-out GPIOs!

While we believe that the CHB is a fairly easy-to-use Single Board Computer, having a pre-installed OS on the included uSD card and drivers for the peripherals, it’s not designed for beginners! The board is best used by those with previous Linux experience. The good news is you don’t have to have another Linux computer to set up the CHB but you should have familiarity with shells and shell scripting, gcc, make, dmesg, etc. We also suggest having had some poking around with microcontrollers such as BASIC Stamp, Arduino, AVR, PIC, 8051, etc. So that when we say “i2c” and “not 5v tolerant I/Os” you can follow along

This is the Beta release, just for the hackers! The CHB is not in any way officially supported by Chumby Industries! Chumby has generously offered a Forum and Wiki where they will try to share information but there is absolutely no tech support or guarantee that the CHB will meet your project needs. Please do not contact Chumby directly either by email or phone for help with your CHB. If you have questions, please post to their forums to receive help from others and the occasional assistance from a CHB developer.

Whats so great about it anyhow? Well! We have a list!

Freescale iMX.233 processor running at 454 MHZ
64 MB onboard RAM
Comes with 512MB uSD card with 100 MB Linux installation all ready to go
Dimensions are 3.9″ (100mm) x 2.4″ (60mm) x 0.75″ (20mm)
3.3V I/O pins can talk to most sensors, motor drivers, etc. No struggling with 1.8V levels.
Low power, fanless design draws only (200?) mA at 5V
Built-in Lithium Ion/Polymer battery charger and 5V boost converter for portable projects
Three USB ports!
1W mono speaker amplifier (0.1″ JST onboard connector)
Microphone input (0.05″ JST onboard connector)
LCD controller with 2mm output port
3.5mm A/V output jack with stereo audio and NTSC/PAL composite video
Back of board has GPIO outputs on 0.1″ header spacing, plug in an Arduino proto shield!
Quadrature encoder connections onboard
5-way joystick on-board
MMA7455 3-axis +-2G to +-8G accelerometer on-board
3.3V TTL serial port for easy shell access
Full GCC toolchain is ready for you to download and get crackin’!
Schematics, Gerbers and original layout files are at the Wiki

You’ll want to pick up a 5V switching power supply, a 3.3v FTDI cable and an A/V cable to get started.

Want some more information? Check out our Getting Started with the Chumby Hacker Board tutorial page which will show you how to get booted, connected and read data from the on-board triple-axis accelerometer in an evening. Wow!

In the Adafruit store now!

NEW PRODUCT – 3.5mm A/V Cable – 6′

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:30:55 +0000

3.5mm A/V Cable – 6′ – Often called ‘camcorder cables’ – these are standard 3.5mm audio cables that have 3 signals split out into RCA jacks. 6 feet long! Perfect for usage with your Chumby Hacker Board.

NEW PRODUCT – 5V 2000mA switching supply

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:27:22 +0000

NEW PRODUCT – 5V 2000mA switching supply – Need a lot of 5V power? This switching supply gives a clean regulated 5V output at up to 2000mA. 110 or 240 input, but this charger comes with standard US/Japan/Canadian prongs. If you live in another country, you can pick up a ‘figure 8′ cable at any hardware store for a few $

This cable terminates with a 3.5mm-3.8mm OD, 1.3mm ID positive tip connector. These are used on PSPs and Chumby hacker boards and work great for either. If you want to use this for your projects you can pick up a matching jack or splice on whatever connector you wish.

Arduino With Ethernet Shield + Pachube

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:03:53 +0000

Clete writes –

I’ve recently purchased the new Arduino Ethernet shield. This new shield has been revised to have a micro SD card slot that I hear can read/write cards sized up to 2GB. This can be useful for serving up files or even making torrent clients (albeit slow).

The first project that I have completed is a small program that will upload the temperature of my room every 10 seconds to an online service called Pachube, which is a service for uploading sensor data.

I used some code found at Pachube, modified it a bit, and combined it with some code from one of Adafruit’s tutorials. You can see my Pachube feed here.

In the future, I plan on adding some more sensors and also combining it with a web server run from the Arduino.

“The VC-free startup”

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:29:27 +0000

Dale (Publisher of MAKE) has a great post on O’Reilly Radar “The VC-free startup”…

A couple of items caught my eye in the notes from Paul Graham’s Y-Combinator talk on trends for the future (circa 2009):

There should be an O’Reilly book for business. It would be really short. “Make something people want, charge them money for it. Advanced: charge more money.”

B-school is West Point for industrial capitalism. It trains generals, not foot soldiers. Market now rewards people who can do stuff.

The hype around Silicon Valley may distract us from the basic business idea that Graham emphasizes: make something other people wish they had. If you can do that and you can reach people who will buy, then you can have a successful business. I’m seeing makers who are creating products for other makers to buy. Limor Fried’s Adafruit Industries is one example…

Makers of physical goods have some advantage in that people seem to understand paying for them. Makers may also find good opportunities making things that businesses need rather than selling direct to consumers.

Just to add to that – There are many success stories in the world of makers, but they’re mostly ignored by places like TechCrunch and business magazines. We’ve spent countless hours with journalists who have contacted us only to hear later that making good products that people want and charging a fair price is too “boring” for their editor.

More:

Million dollar baby – Businesses designing and selling open source hardware, making millions.

Sculptures by Odani Motohiko

adafruit — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 04:00:22 +0000

Sculptures by Odani Motohiko via jwz.

ASK AN ENGINEER 8/28/2010 (video)

adafruit — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 15:19:39 +0000

ASK AN ENGINEER 8/28/2010 (video).

ASK AN ENGINEER – 8/28/2010 10pm ET TONIGHT

adafruit — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:00:29 +0000

ASK AN ENGINEER – 8/28/2010 10pm ET TONIGHT!

Lots of stuff and some SURPRISES!

What is “Ask an engineer”? From the electronics enthusiast to the professional community – “Ask an Engineer” has a little bit of everything for everyone. If you’re a beginner, or a seasoned engineer – stop in and see what we’re up to! We have demos of projects and products we’re working on, we answer your engineering and electronics questions and we have a trivia question + give away each week. Mosfet the cat stops by too. Previous chats can be viewed at http://www.adafruit.com/ask

Chat details!

Visit our new “Ask an Engineer”section on Adafruit at 10pm ET, Saturday nights
Or visit our Ustream page
For old schoolers, you can use IRC, you’ll need a Ustream log/pass, check out the Ustream IRC how-tos here and here
We are #adafruit-industries6796 on IRC server chat1.ustream.tv
Watch the show with an iPad, iPhone or Android phone!

See you there!

Why does NASA sound so bad?

johngineer — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:16:21 +0000

An interesting discussion at the diyAudio forums about the quality of NASA audio. Panomaniac writes:

So what’s up with the rotten audio from the NASA missions? It has bugged me for years. Ever notice how bad it is? Why?

Now the old moon mission maybe I can understand, but the ISS and shuttle stuff? They are in low earth orbit, for crying out loud. How hard would it be to get pristine audio back down to earth?

A geostationary orbit, where the communication satellites sit, is 35000 Km above the earth’s surface, and they can beam 100s of SD and HD video and audio channels. The Space Station is only about 350Km up and they can’t get better than 1934 radio quality.

There’s also a summary at EE Times. So what do you think? Why is NASA still so lo-fi? We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t understand him when he gets there.

(and yeah, it’s an astronaut with a banjo — happy Friday!)

LED Wristwatch

adafruit — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:45:45 +0000

Sweet LED Wristwatch via HaD.

adafruit on the new @digg

adafruit — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:05:41 +0000

We’re playing around with the new Digg v4 – good stuff, easy to add your own feed as a publisher, fun to explore / share. If you want to follow us on Digg we are http://digg.com/adafruit

“Jungle” Is a Breadboard

adafruit — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:56:36 +0000

“Jungle” Is a Breadboard (Science And Mechanics – Mar, 1962)

THE electronic jungle in the foreground is the breadboard, or first working model, of the new miniature four-binary module held by a Bulova Research and Development Labs engineer at Woodside, N.Y. All the elements of resistance and capacitance to the prototype jungle are contained in the tiny device to be used as a timer in space vehicle controls.

Spinning miniPOV!

adafruit — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:40:52 +0000

Steve’s custom case for miniPOV. Cookie tin & a CPU fan

Vintage circuit boards create stunning sculptures

adafruit — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 11:36:01 +0000

Our featured “Big Build” artist is on Wired today! – Vintage Circuit Boards Create Stunning Sculptures @ Wired.com…

At first glance, electronic circuit boards may seem as far from art as you can get. But look closer, and the boards have patterns, horizontal and vertical grids that have a strange, precise beauty to them.

It’s the kind of beauty that we perceive in the whorls of a seashell or a grain of wood, says Theo Kamecke, an artist who is taking vintage circuit boards and transforming them into pieces that can adorn homes and galleries.

Kamecke has harvested the etching from the boards, then affixed them to hardwood to create the effect of polished metal on stone.

The results are exquisitely decorated chests, sculptures and boxes.

“Either you get it or you don’t, either you like it or you don’t,” says Kamecke. “I don’t mass-produce these, and no one else makes them.”

johngineer @ MakerFaire Rhode Island!

johngineer — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:13:35 +0000

A bit of a last minute addition to the lineup, but johngineer is going to MakerFaire Rhode Island!

I’m going to be doing a couple of mini photo workshops focused on taking product photos outdoors. The first session will be at 5pm, and will focus on using the sun as a light source. The second session, at 8pm, will use artificial light. Both sessions will discuss using reflectors, camera set up and use, and lots of other neat tricks.

After the shooting demos, I’ll be doing Q&A. If you have any questions about the photo tutorial, or photography in general, feel free to come on by and ask.

I look forward to seeing you there!

GPS tracking (jamming) for all…

adafruit — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:00:01 +0000

Interesting article in TIME magazine (kid version) –

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants — with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision — one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

…Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented from this month’s decision refusing to reconsider the case, pointed out whose homes are not open to strangers: rich people’s. The court’s ruling, he said, means that people who protect their homes with electric gates, fences and security booths have a large protected zone of privacy around their homes. People who cannot afford such barriers have to put up with the government sneaking around at night.

We think this will also increase the GPS jammer market (above google search) – and perhaps some will just build their own.

Super cute robot fish…

adafruit — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:51:03 +0000

Robot fish! 東京大学発ベンチャー　株式会社青電舎 via LaughingSquid.

Reverse engineering the Mac ‘breathing’ LED

adafruit — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:10:29 +0000

Repost from 2006!

For the Duel nature sculpure, I wanted to have a ‘breathing’ pattern where all the LEDs vary in brightness in a natural/organic way. A good example is the ’sleep indicator’ LED on recent Macs/Powerbooks. (There’s even a patent!) The problem is that, while the patent claims its a simple sinusoid (see the patent for the image), programming in a sinusoid doesn’t look nearly as good. So I decided to get the real waveform with a kludgy reverse engineering attempt:

I used a MIDIsense instead of a simple voltage divider because I want to extract the absolute LED brightness pattern and a photocell voltage divider acts ‘inversely’ (well, 1/R) instead of linearly (ie, just R). (The MIDIsense has an opamp to linearize the resistive sensor output)

There it is! There is a bit of ‘noise’ on the peaks because I’m picking up some of the PWM artifacts through the diffused white plastic.

From the mailbag

adafruit — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:48:25 +0000

It’s Thursday, time to reach in to the mailbag…

Wow. Y’all are awesome! I can’t believe the level of customer service you provide. I told my friends about your store and they have since ordered from you and had great experiences also. Thanks again – H.

MakerScanner

johngineer — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:23:29 +0000

via Buildlog:

Engineer Andy Barry has created a new budget open source 3D scanner. He calls it the MakerScanner and hopes to sell it through the MakerBot web site for around $200. It uses the same laser line, offset webcam than many other systems use. He does a good job of explaining on the MakerScanner.com web site. There are even more details on his web site and Thingiverse.

The system uses galvanometers to move a mirror which moves the laser line. A sine wave is output to one galvanometer so it creates a line from the laser diode. The other scans it across the model. All of the parts appear to be printed with a Makerbot.

DiskGenie hacking

adafruit — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:48:17 +0000

Great review / write up and hacking of the iStorage DiskGenie (Portable Encrypted Hard Drive with Secure PIN code access)…