Community Corner: This Past Week in Adafruit’s Community – April 25, 2014


Featured Adafruit Community Project

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timv1 shared this Co2 detecting and display in an outlet with an OLED in the Adafruit customer support forums:

Concerning the monitoring of the CO2 I’ll share an idea for displaying it. Wanted to keep it all inside an outlet that could be used to power a solenoid connected to the CO2 tank. Due to space limitations I decided on using a little OLED… A place like OshPark can make you up a board SUPER inexpensive if you’re interested in such things. Anyhow, here are some pictures of the what I did to get the little OLED into the outlet. (read more)

There are people making amazing things around the world, are you one of them? Join the 79,786 strong! And check out scores of projects they shared this week after the jump!


Adafruit’s Weekly Electronics Show and Tell!


From the Google+ Community

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Mark Miller Google For my next batch of mini machinery I decided to design

Mark Miller shared: “For my next batch of mini machinery I decided to design some new slides for X,Y and Z. Using the thick Lexan and a single chrome steel pipe (1/2″) I came up with these. They are rigid, non binding and very smooth running not to mention SO much easier to make than the ones I have been making. I cut parts today and have enough  ready to build a dozen (or more!) of these in three lengths. These are super simple to make and I have a very large supply of plastics and chrome piping thus MANY more machines in my future. The chrome pipe is in lengths up to about 24 inches long so I also may make a machine a bit larger scale. The motors on these are all DC 5 volt,160 Ma.” (read more)


Kevin Ochs shares: “Quick update on my hexapod robot project called Golem. I’ve decided to use +Google Translate’s voice feature to do text to speech on the fly. It obviously requires internet to work but the voice quality is tons better than espeak or festival. You will probably need to turn up your audio since it’s a bit low in order to not wake up the entire house while shooting this video.” (read more)


Irregular Shed shared: “I’m currently in the midst of modifying an old British pelican (pedestrian) crossing to work as a doorbell in my house. Over the weekend I managed to get two-way RF communication working between the units, after a bunch of problems with boards (including micro USB sockets snapping off both the Iteaduino Lites I’m using). I’m writing up the project bit by bit over here.” (read more)


Alex Wiebe Google My Sunday afternoon project A power supply for the bench

Alex Wiebe shared: “My Sunday afternoon project. A power supply for the bench. Ground, +3.3V, +5V & +12V. Red LED indicates mains switch (in rear) is on, green LED indicates power good (comes on after front toggle switch is engaged). A 25 ohm power resistor from +5 to ground keeps the voltage stable.” (read more)


cynthia shared: “My latest project, LEDs, velcro, conductive thread…” (read more)


Gordon Pimblott: “Amused the kids with some simple draw bots using a cup, motor and bolt.” (read more)


Andrew Wilds Google Born out of need folks used to make their own instruments

Andrew Wilds shared: “Born out of need folks used to make their own instruments when they couldn’t afford them, here are a couple of my first Cigar Box (Style) Guitars CB(S)G built to help keep that tradition alive.” (read more)


Community Projects from the Adafruit Blog

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mazzmn in the Element 14 community posted this great project that he made and a tutorial showing how to do one yourself: “I’ve been blogging about my experience in Road Test reviewing the Ultimate Raspberry Pi Bundle. As a part of this Road Test I’m creating a Fridge/Freezer Temperature Alarm system for our local food shelf, Channel 1. You can see where this Road Test started for me here.” (read more)


Agri Vision posted this project using their Raspberry Pi as a SSTV camera: “In this project the Raspberry Pi with the PiCam is used as a wireless camera which can transmit images over long distances, usually tenths of kilometers. Images will be transmitted by amateur radio (ham-radio) using slow scan television (SSTV) on the 2 meter band (144.5 MHz). Since the Pi can generate the HF FM signal itself, no additional electronics are needed for low power transmissions. For a little bit more power a one or two transistor amplifier will be suitable. Furthermore a low pass filter is recommended to filter out higher harmonics of the signal. This project also contains a python script which detects movement. Using this script the Raspberry Pi can be used as a wireless security cam at distances far outside the range of normal WiFi networks. Be aware that you need a ham-radio license to use this application!” (read more)


Check out these gorgeous eggs from David Bliss! “This year’s eggs were designed using Nodebox and Inkscape. Charlie worked mostly in Nodebox. It’s patch-based programming was right at his level and copy, rotate and wiggle all got a lot of action. Wyatt found inspiration in Minecraft and we worked together to write a letter writing script in Python to print out an wiki entry on egg. Then he created a vector version of the pixelated egg in Inkscape.” (read more)


big_red_frog shared a Neopixel matrix video on the Adafruit Forums: “This is a video of a 16 x 16 array of neopixels on a flexible substrate. Driven by an arduino nano and programmed via arduino plugin for eclipse which takes the programming environment to the next level. Simple bloom effect to shake out the system. Also implemented a custom 3×5 font. …Next phase is to convert to a flora and a beefy lipo supply…” (read more)


Rikard shared his LED table project, modifying an Ikea LACK table into a LED platform on which he can run a number of types of visualizations: “Expensive electronics and a cheap table. Are you bored of LED lights? No? Me neither. Thats why i thought another 256 RGB LED’s in my living room might be a good idea.” (read more)


JasonWebb

Jason Webb shared his recent tutorial detailing how to “use the MaKey MaKey to make DIY assistive technology for computer access“: “I will show you how to make your own simple, transparent interfaces out of common objects like aluminum foil and cardboard and an awesome $50 piece of technology!” (read more)


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Trammell Hudson shared his SDR on BBB: “I’m working on an embedded software-defined radio for sending PSK31 telemetry data that can run in the BeagleBone Black PRU (or perhaps repurposing the LCD interface) as well as smaller devices like the Teensy 3.1 with an embedded Digital-to-analog converter. Preliminary source is available from github….” (read more)


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Nate Kolbeck‘s Urban Hubs project acts as exchange points for local residents to drop off empty bottles and cans so that neighbors can collect them and redeem them for cash. You can download the files from UrbanHubs (read more)


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1 Comment

  1. Thanks for showing my g+ post!

    I love Adafruit if I am not watching your videos I am cruising your we page chucking stuff into my wish list!

    I am waiting on first order from Adafruit now so I can finish the SteamPunk Guitar Pickup Winder, powered by Beaglebone Black.

    Can’t wait to share it with you all!

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