Hi! We are Vasilis Georgitzikis, Maria Kousta, Markellos Orfanos, Stelios Tsampas and Dimitris Amaxilatis, and we are the team behind codebender. In the past, each of us has worked on quite a few projects you might know, like MacPorts, Growl, the Arduino TFTP bootloader and we even had a project featured on hackaday. None of it comes close to our work on codebender though.
codebender comes to fill the need for reliable and easy to use tools for makers. A need that from our own experience could not be totally fulfilled by any of the existing solutions. Things like installing libraries, updating the software or installing the IDE can be quite a painful process.
In addition to the above, the limited features provided (e.g. insufficient highlighting, indentation and autocompletion) got us starting building codebender, a completely web-based IDE, that requires no installation and offers a great code editor. It also stores your sketches on the cloud.
That way, you can still access your sketches safely even if your laptop is stolen or your hard drive fails! codebender also takes care of compilation, giving you extremely descriptive warnings on terrible code. On top of that, when you are done, you can upload your code to your Arduino straight from the browser without installing anything.
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.
