Much talk lately about hardware startups on the rise.
Costs are coming down, Kickstarter is circumventing investors who are (were?) scared, and cool stuff is hitting the market in new and interesting ways.
But when you start to poke around, it becomes clear that the changes happening in the market are actually much more profound, and are mirroring a lot of what has happened with software startups since the late 1990s. Changes in creation, prototyping, production and distribution is making it more and more possible to thrive as a 4-person hardware startup and new ones seem to be launching every day.
I can’t overstate how exciting this is – consumers will get access to devices that more exactly fit their needs and producers will no longer need million-dollar retail distribution deals to survive.
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.
