A sweet romance is not for me
I need electricity
If you wanna make me flip
Hit me with a micro chip

I’ll be a diode, cathode, electrode
Overload, generator, oscillator
Make a circuit with me

Just plug in and go-go-go
I’ll be your human dynamo
Signals in my power cord
Impulse on my circuit board

I’m an AC/DC man
You can read my circuit diagram
I feed on electric jolts
I need fifty-thousand volts

A sweet romance is not for me
I really need electricity
If you wanna make me flip
Come on and hit me with a micro chip

I’m an AC/DC man
You can read my circuit diagram
I feed on electric jolts
I need fifty-thousand volts

I’ll be your human dynamo.

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!

When hardware is as mashable as software, recipes for new gadgets that perform any imaginable function will be crowd-sourced and shared among a community of hardware hackers. Accelerating this trend toward open source hardware are prototyping platforms like Arduino and companies like Bug Labs, whose modular system of components anticipates the democratization of device design.

0018 – 2010.01.29

[core / libraries]

• Added tone() and noTone() functions for frequency generation.
• Added Serial.end() command.
• Added precision parameter for printing of floats / doubles.
• Incorporated latest version of Firmata.
• Fixed bug w/ disabling use of the RW pin in the LiquidCrystal library.
• No longer disabling interrupts in delayMicroseconds().
• Fixed bug w/ micros() returning incorrect values from within an interrupt.
• Fixed bug that broke use of analog inputs 8-15 on the Mega.

[environment]

• Synchronized with the Processing 1.0.9 code base, bringing various fixes, including to a bug causing saving to fail when closing the last sketch.
• Added support for third-party hardware in the SKETCHBOOK/hardware folder, mirroring the current structure of the hardware folder in Arduino.
• Added Ctrl-Shift-M / Command-Shift-M shortcut for serial monitor.
• Hold down shift when pressing the Verify / Compile or Upload toolbar buttons to generate verbose output (including command lines).
• Moving build (on upload) from the applet/ sub-folder of the sketch to a temporary directory (fixing problems with uploading examples from within the Mac OS X disk image or a Linux application directory).
• Fixed bug the prevented the inclusion of .cpp and .h (or .c and .h) files of the same name in a sketch.
• Improved the Mac OS X disk image (.dmg): added a shortcut to the Applications folder, a background image with arrow, and new FTDI drivers.

Topics will include:

• A NEW MintyBoost model that will be released, charges NiMH cells. It’s awesome. Will be out in 1-2 months
• A new DATALOGGER SHIELD will be out soon, we’re using it to test the upcoming MintyBoost
• MONOCHRON clock kit is finished, parts are on the way – you can pre-order during the show (this will be the only pre-order time)
• New blog & product page features will be released in the next week or so
• Are we crazy for talking about upcoming products and projects? Time will tell! But the only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once!

We will have a 10% off code for ADAFRUIT KITS during the chat and 10% pre-orders for the MONOCHRON clock. It’s a crazyada superbowl sale!

Chat details!

• Visit our new “chat” 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
• There will be a trivia question at the end of the night as always!
• Lastly, if anyone can save a text log we’d appreciate it

You will receive the Designs (Plans) for this RF Jammer in Electronic form. The Listing picture is for showing how the RF jammer looks like. This listing is only for the Design of the RF Jammer, it does not include the Device itself!!! You will receive RF Jammer Designs upon Payment. The Designs will be delivered to you on CD by Priority Mail.

A CD!

2010 is shaping up to be a good year for beginners to jump in and share more of their projects we think.

Maker Community Guidelines

Make: Online is a community of engaged makers. Makers of all walks of life, of all skill levels, and of diverse DIY interests and talents, are made to feel comfortable and expressive here. To that end, we moderate our comments to help create an environment where people can share their ideas and enthusiasm, ask questions, connect with fellow DIYers, and generally feel connected to a wider maker community. Please keep these guidelines in mind when commenting:

Commenting Do’s:

• Useful input – Ask yourself: “Is this useful?” If it’s not useful, why post it?
• Help people “learn out loud” – Help us create an environment where people feel free to ask questions, on any skill level, related to making, from the most rudimentary to the most complicated. And if you respond with your knowledge and expertise, try and speak to as wide a spectrum of “students” as possible. Try to bring newbies up to speed, rather than making them feel bad for not knowing something. Be “generous” with your help and your support.
• Additional information – If you know something more about the posted item, or what’s being discussed in the comments – a similar project, a useful datasheet, a trusted supplier, etc. — please share it.
• Clarifying errors – We welcome the correcting of mistakes, in the posting, or in the ensuing discussion, but please do so in a respectful manner.
• Support – Part of building a community of makers involves creating a supportive environment in which people feel like their projects and ideas won’t be laughed at or summarily dismissed. Comments are a great opportunity to congratulate a builder on a successful project or to help someone brainstorm an idea further or to overcome a stumbling block.
• Constructive criticism – Criticism of a project or idea is always welcome, as long as it’s constructive and not mean-spirited, sarcastic, or dismissive. Again, apply the: “Would I say this to this person’s face?” test.

Commenting Don’ts:

• Spam – Self-explanatory.
• Offensive content – of any sort: racist, sexist, profane, sexual, off-color humor, etc.
• Political discussions – MAKE is a technology site. We know that we have readers from across the political spectrum. We like that. But we know that this can easily lead to scorching flame wars if overtly political topics are brought up. Please don’t bring them up. Let’s focus on something we can all agree on: the joy of making.
• Personal attacks/mean-spirited remarks – Calling people names, making fun of someone, dissing their project, or otherwise commenting where the sole purpose is in making the person feel bad.
• Sarcasm/snarkiness – Unnecessary sharpness and dismissiveness in tone is frowned upon.

We use as light a hand as possible in moderating comments, but feel that creating a supportive environment for the MAKE community is ultimately more important than completely unmoderated freedom of expression. There are plenty of other sites online where free-for-all posting is allowed.

How many Google services do you use? Order now a “Are you evil?” T-shirt or get it printed yourself at your desired production house! Download the “Are you evil?” printable version here! Based on “Are you social?“. Inspired by Kosmars’ collection! Aram Bartholl 2010…

We’re somewhat evil it seems.

Most of us can’t tell our secant from our cotangent. But the forms are everywhere, and Nikki Graziano wants to help us see them. Graziano, a math and photography student at Rochester Institute of Technology, overlays graphs and their corresponding equations onto her carefully composed photos. “I wanted to create something that could communicate how awesome math is, to everyone,” she says. Graziano doesn’t go out looking for a specific function but lets one find her instead. Once she’s got an image she likes, Graziano whips up the numbers and tweaks the function until the graph it describes aligns perfectly with the photograph. See more of her Found Functions series at Nikkigraziano.com.

When graphed, this trigonometry function produces an ever-repeating wave of peaks and valleys that mirror the natural curves Graziano sees in plants. (October 2008.)

…the boys soldered together an Arduino Proto Shield kit from Adafruit. You can witness their amazing efforts in super-speed time, where sixty minutes of inhaling metallic fumes has been condensed into three power-packed minutes!

We make a lil’ appearance too!

abachman writes …

Blinking stopped, TVs dropped. I am become death, destroyer of Lost season premieres.

Tell those TVs to “get Lost” and *turn them off*, for today only the TV-B-Gones are 10% off. Use the code “lost” (no quotes) on check out.

Related:
PID Controlled Solder Paste Fridge
$20 solder paste fridge!

• Adacast
• announce
• arduino
  • boarduino
  • gpsshield
  • motorshield
  • protoshield
  • waveshield
• art
• ask-an-engineer
• avr development
• books
• clocks
• code
• digg button
• disassembly
• drawdio
• duelnature
• EE
• events
• fuzebox
• game of life
• kits
• ladyada.net
• laser
• leds-lcds
• meggy jr
• midisense
• minipov
• mintyboost
• open source hardware
• power supply
• projects
• random
• robotics
• sensorsparts
• sim reader
• site updates
• spokepov
• tools
• tvbgone
• tweet-a-watt
• Uncategorized
• useful-stuff
• wavebubble
• wires-cables-etc
• x0xb0x
• xbee
• ybox

The Hammersmith Group just published a nice overview of the potential for connected devices by Constantine Valhouli dubbed “The Internet of things: Networked objects and smart devices.” It quotes myself, Julian Bleecker, Bruce Sterling, Adam Greenfield and covers devices from the WineM to Botanicalls to the Ambient Orb along with the original online coffee pot. There’s a variety of other interesting research papers on this site…

Practical Arduino (Jon Oxer & Hugh Blemings) – 1st print
This book is best used for people who’ve gone through our tutorials and want more! Please note that the book does not come with any electronic parts or hardware. You’ll probably want an Arduino starter pack or similar so that you have the Arduino, USB cable, power adapter, wires, and a protoshield. Read more…

Make: Electronics (Charles Platt) – 1st print
We checked out this book before putting it in the shop, its geared towards ultimate-beginners and teaches electronics starting from basic core of analog to some digital to microcontrollers. You’ll learn tools, prototyping soldering techniques, transistors, 555’s, etc. while completing useful projects. A nice and tidy intro! This book is a good accompaniment to learning microcontrollers/Arduino in that it fills the necessary electronics theory and background. Read more…

Chat details!

• Visit our new “chat” 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
• There will be a trivia question at the end of the night as always!
• Lastly, if anyone can save a text log we’d appreciate it

I recently picked up an Arduino starter kit from Adafruit Industries. For those unfamiliar with the Arduino, it is a popular open-source processor and development kit for hobbyists. Starter kits are available from lots of places for about $50 or so. I wrote a quick little program for it to automatically tap the left or right buttons for you — depending on how far left or right you turn a potentiometer. This helps makes the game more tolerable, in my opinion. It’s not a cure all though — Checkered Flag also suffers from a pretty low framerate. Anyhow if anybody has an Arduino or decides to pick one up, here’s the program in it’s entirety — along a picture of my modified controller (with Arduino attached). The program could probably use a bit more tweaking — however I’ve probably taken it as far as I’m going to….

• Shipping supplies
• Packaging supplies
• Office supplies

The TechShop San Francisco Building at 5th and Howard Streets (Signage Added Digitally). TechShop San Francisco will be located at 926 Howard Street, just 1 block from the Moscone Center, 3 blocks from the Powell Street BART station, and 6 blocks from Union Square. The building is 15,500 square feet and includes a private parking lot. TechShop San Francisco will feature all the tools and equipment that members enjoy at other TechShop locations, including:

• Epilog Helix 60-Watt Laser Cutters
• Tormach CNC Milling Machines
• Stratasys 3D Printer
• NextEngine 3D Scanner
• Formech 600 24″ x 24″ Vacuum Forming System
• Formech Heat Strip Bending System
• Morgan Industries Injection Molding System
• Janome Sewing Machines
• Janome Serger Sewing Machine
• Computer-Controlled 52″ Vinyl Cutter
• Powder Coating System
• CNC Plasma Cutter, 4′ x 8′
• MIG Welders (Steel)
• TIG Welders (Steel and Aluminum)
• Oxy Aceylene Welders and Cutters
• Hand-Held Plasma Cutter
• Sheet Metal Spot Welder
• Sheet Metal Brake, 16 ga x 50″
• Rotary Sheet Metal Punch
• Sheet Metal Corner Notcher
• English Wheel and Planishing Hammer
• Sheet Metal Shear, 16 ga x 50″
• Sheet Metal Roller, 16 ga x 50″
• Automotove Bay with Tools and Equipment
• Sandblaster, Large
• Metal Grinders and Sanders
• Metal Chop Saw
• Metal Horizontal Band Saw
• Metal Vertical Band Saw
• Computer Controlled Embroidery Sewing Machine
• Quilting Machine
• Silkscreen Printing Equipment
• Electronics Testing and Soldering Equipment
• Epson R1900 13″ x 19″ Achival Printer with Continuous Inking System
• ShopBot 5′ x 9′ CNC Wood Router System
• SawStop Professional Cabinet Table Saw
• Wood Planer
• Wood Jointer
• Wood Band Saw
• Wood Sanders
• Wood Scroll Saws
• Wood Lathe
• Drill Presses
• Metal Lathes, 14″ x 40″
• Vertical Milling Machines with DRO and Power Feed
• Granite Surface Plate with Digital Height Gauges
• Lots of Machine Shop Accessories and Tooling
• Lots of Fast Computer Workstations with 2D and 3D Design Software
• Complete Stocked Tool Room
• Member Storage Rental
• Private Studio / Office Rental
• Meeting Rooms
• Comfortable HackerSpace Areas with Power and WiFi
• Retail Store with Supplies and Materials
• Free Coffee and Popcorn
• …And LOTS More!

You’ve come to the right place! This bundle is designed to get you started quickly and easily on your path of learning electronics. Once you’ve received your starter pack you can follow the introductory tutorials here on our site, designed for everyone, even people with little or no electronics and programming experience. The starter pack has everything you need (except tools) for all lessons. We think this is the best Arduino starter pack out there at this price! AND it’s made with love

Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things. So much to see, you will need 2 days to see it all! Bay Area – May 22nd and 23rd, 2010, San Mateo County Event Center. San Mateo, Calif.

A garage renaissance is spilling over into such phenomena as the booming Maker Faires and local “hackerspaces.” Peer production, open source, crowdsourcing, user-generated content — all these digital trends have begun to play out in the world of atoms, too. The Web was just the proof of concept. Now the revolution hits the real world. In short, atoms are the new bits.

Let me tell you my own story. Three years ago, out on a run, I started thinking about how cheap gyroscope sensors were getting. What could you do with them? For starters, I realized, you could turn a radio-controlled model airplane into an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone. It turned out that there were plenty of commercial autopilot units you could buy, all based on this principle, but the more I looked into them, the worse they appeared. They were expensive ($800 to $5,000), hard to use, and proprietary. It was clear that this was a market desperate for competition and democratization — Moore’s law was at work, making all the components dirt cheap. The hardware for a good autopilot shouldn’t cost more than $300, even including a healthy profit. Everything else was intellectual property, and it seemed the time had come to open that up, trading high margins for open innovation.

To pursue this project, I started DIY Drones, a community site, and found and began working with some kindred spirits, led by Jordi Muñoz, then a 21-year-old high school graduate from Mexico living in Riverside, California. Muñoz was self-taught — with world-class skills in embedded electronics and aeronautics. Jordi turned me on to Arduino, and together we designed an autonomous blimp controller and then an aircraft autopilot board.

We designed the boards the way all electronics tinkerers do, with parts bought from online shops, wired together on prototyping breadboards. Once it worked on the breadboard, we laid out the schematic diagrams with CadSoft Eagle and started designing it as a custom printed circuit board (PCB). Each time we had a design that looked good onscreen, we’d upload it to a commercial PCB fab, and a couple of weeks later, samples would arrive at our door. We’d solder on the components, try them out, and then fix our errors and otherwise make improvements for the next version.

What the country needs most now is not more government stimulus, but more stimulation. We need to get millions of American kids, not just the geniuses, excited about innovation and entrepreneurship again. We need to make 2010 what Obama should have made 2009: the year of innovation, the year of making our pie bigger, the year of “Start-Up America.”

Obama should bring together the country’s leading innovators and ask them: “What legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over” — and make that his No. 1 priority. Inspiring, reviving and empowering Start-up America is his moon shot. And to reignite his youth movement, he should make sure every American kid knows about two programs that he has already endorsed: The first is National Lab Day. Introduced last November by a coalition of educators and science and engineering associations, Lab Day aims to inspire a wave of future innovators, by pairing veteran scientists and engineers with students in grades K-12 to inspire thousands of hands-on science projects around the country. Any teacher in America, explains the entrepreneur Jack Hidary, the chairman of N.L.D., can go to the Web site NationalLabDay.org and enter the science project he or she is interested in teaching, or get an idea for one. N.L.D. will match teachers with volunteer scientists and engineers in their areas for mentoring.

Phil was in the meeting in NYC with MAKE and the National Lab Day team – we’re really excited by all of this! National Lab day for many will be the National day of making

Chat details!

• Visit our new “chat” 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
• There will be a trivia question at the end of the night as always!
• Lastly, if anyone can save a text log we’d appreciate it

Is this real?

Nice little blurb… LED-Inflused Coffee Table @ Fast Company

McGrew, 35, and Northrup, 32, are a husband-and-wife design team who have completed projects for Wikipedia, Clif Bar, and Timbuk2, and recently collaborated with open-source hardware designers Evil Mad Science to create interactive LED-infused coffee tables.

McGrew: “We have three tables — the Wave, the Ripple, and the Pulse — with the same lighting on the inside. They see change and light up in response. If you set something down on it, it lights up, but then calms down and stops twinkling. When you move that item, it will light back up again.”

Northrup: “We wanted to showcase two different ways you can use light. The Wave typically has a glass top, so you’re seeing everything — the circuit board, the LEDs, the patterns they’re making. The Ripple and the Pulse are more of a secret because they have this frosted top that just looks like a really nice table. When you interact with one of them, it becomes more than a table. You get this second, wonderful experience.”

McGrew: “The two big problems LEDs have always had — they weren’t very bright and were very expensive — are going away. We’re leveraging whatever we can get our hands on to help us make cool stuff.”

What’s behind the name of her company, adafruit? What follows is my conjecture. Way back in the dark ages there was a object-oriented  programming language named Pascal which was also one of the first programming languages compiled for the  Apple II computer. My youngest son Jason and I bought it for $525 (ouch!). It was, in due course, followed by a  programming language named Ada. Seems that the name Ada (Lovelace) is revered by Geeks. “In 1953, over one hundred years after her death, Lovelace’s notes on Babbage’s Analytical Engine were republished. The engine has now been recognized as an early model for a computer and Lovelace’s notes as a description of a computer and software.” [Quote from  here and much more on Ada's history.] In short, her notes include (Section G), in complete detail, a method for calculating a sequence of  Bernoulli numbers with the Engine, which would have run correctly had the Analytical Engine ever been built. Based on this work, Lovelace is now widely credited with being the first  computer programmer and her method is recognized as the world’s first  computer program. So we take “ada” + “fruit” and we have a name along the lines of  bearing fruit from Ada’s original work some 160 years ago. That ought to be geeky enough for the most uber geek out there. Hat’s off to Ms Fried and all the giants upon whose shoulders we attempt to stand on.

Good guesses! For now, you can watch our about videos…

icebike from the Adafruit forums writes -

Just a note to say the MintyBoost charges my B&N nook eReader. Given the runtime claims from B&N are *cough* optimistic, the minty should come in handy when camping.

On a related note, how many electronics hobbyists who read our blog have a Kindle, nook, Sony reader, or any e-ink reader?

Is 2010 – Year of the iChat, video Skype, Ustream… (video conferencing) ? Maybe for us! One of the important goals for us this year at Adafruit is using some of the great video technology out there to do more things with more people (and less going to airports, and talking on speaker phones) – It would be impossible to do an engineering conference each week with up to 500 people, but we do a weekly online video chat called “Ask an Engineer” 10pm ET every Saturday night. Last week we had Mitch Altman on the show, inventor of TV-B-Gone, a 3 camera set up and played clips from MAKE TV of Mitch and Ladyada – it’s really a great way to reach the electronics community and we answer engineering questions for a full hour each week. We also give away a kit, have a discount code and MOSFET the cat shows up.

What else? The screen shot above is from our video chat today with Jay, inventor of Drawdio – with Ladyada and PT. We’re working on all sorts of great things with Jay this year along with doing more with one of our favorite kits, the Drawdio kit (and assembled Fun Pack).

We use iChat and for some upcoming LIVE video chats we’ll use Skype, while also broadcasting over Ustream. We have some work to do to get this all working, but so far so good. As we get stuff cooking we’ll post what hardware and software we’re using and hopefully that will help others who want to do similar things.

This Friday we’re going to have dinner over Skype with the Instructables folks. We’ll see how it goes and if our USB grill works

So – are any of you out there using video conferencing? Post in the comments, we’re curious how many people *actually* do this on a regular basis!

Despite hundreds of researchers working worldwide in the area of robotics, their development efforts tend to be proprietary. Researchers may be working on similar problems but they rarely share code or hardware. Willow Garage was founded in 2006 with the idea of creating an open-source hardware and software platform. In addition to its hardware prototype, Willow Garage has also developed the Robot Operating System (ROS), which originated at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. ROS is based on Linux and can work with both Windows and Mac PCs.

We’ve sent an email to company (and to Wired) to see if this story is accurate, specifically if their bots’ are open source hardware, commercial use allowed as defined by the OSI, open source definition)…

Andrew writes -

For a long time I’ve been interested in electronics, it comes with the geek territory. So when I read about the Arduino electronics platform and it’s ability to be programmed via Processing I was very excited. However, I decided to start small and build up my non-existent electronic skills.

To develop my skills I bought a MiniPOV v3 kit, this is a little kit designed to teach soldering, programming micro-controls and is just fun play with. In total, the kit took around five to six hours to construct and flash.

At first the soldering rather difficult and resulted in a few messy joints, but over time I got better, with faster and cleaner solders. While not perfect, it did work first time. I decided to document the process with a serious of photos and videos.