The greatest part of selling open source hardware is what happens after the sale. I am constantly surprised by the things people do with the Coobro Geo. People have emailed me pictures of hardware hacks, and sent me code that takes the device in a direction I had never dreamed of or thought possible. I know I am not alone in this, and have a strong feeling that anyone who has released open source hardware has spent time digging through Google searches and forums looking for projects that have used their hardware in unique ways. Here at Adafruit, and at my company, Coobro Labs, we want to celebrate these open source hardware hacks and upgrades. We want to do a better job of showcasing the hard work and ingenuity of our customers and their projects.
In order to bring attention to these projects, I have created a couple Open Source Upgrade badges. Anytime someone modifies a piece of open source hardware and adds to either the code, or the hardware, we will attach one of these badges of honor to the project. If you have a project that took a piece of open source hardware and gave it an upgrade, feel free to add the badge to your pictures or blog posts. Our goal here is to increase awareness of projects that would not have been possible (or would have been much harder) without open source hardware. To show people who are nervous about open sourcing their hardware that this is what open source hardware is all about.
I currently have two large badges in .png and .jpg formats ready to download. I will have multiple sizes available soon. Download the badges here.
Adafruit has had paid day off for voting for our team for years, if you need help getting that going for your organization, let us know – we can share how and why we did this as well as the good results. Here are some resources for voting by mail, voting in person, and some NY resources for our NY based teams as well. If there are additional resources to add, please let us know – adafruit.com/vote
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
It would be nice to have the source of the open source badges 😀
No problem, will upload the link with the ‘source’ images tonight!