Maker Ryan K showed up at our Thurs Aug 15 2012 meeting with what is one of the coolest maker projects I’ve seen in a while… A Laser powered by Lilikoi fruit!
Lilikoi (aka Passion Fruit, Passiflora Edulis) is a vine that grows all over our wet Maui regions. It can produce LOTS of fruit – which can make a mess for owners, and a bonanza for bugs. Ryan was cleaning up a whole bunch of them at his home and tasting one, realized it was pretty acidic. Being a curious Maker, he thought “Hmmm I wonder if you could make a power source with this?”
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, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, 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 with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
