Circuit Playground’s 1.6 update brings another heaping helping of electronics assistance to our highly nutritious iOS app. Be sure to grab it fresh from the App Store if you haven’t already. Let’s dig in to what’s new on the menu in 1.6 –
• Resistor Divider Calculator
Enter any three of the four values: Vin, Vout, R1, & R2 – and your voltage divider is ready for the breadboard.
• Heat Sink Calculator
Make sure that heat sink can keep your component (relatively) cool while in use – provide the top four values, then enter Power or Junction Temp to calculate the remaining. Temperature can be given in Fahrenheit or Celsius.
• Wavelength to Color Converter
It’s a little tough to visualize an LED’s color when you only have its light wavelength go by. Input that nanometer value into the Wavelength to Color Converter for a preview of the color + relevant RGB/Hex values. Alternatively – use the color slider to find a color’s wavelength.
• Trace Width Calculator
Ensure your PCB traces can handle your circuit’s current – calculate the required trace width by providing 4 values for your project. Includes unit options for temperature & length values.
• Quarter Wave Calculator
Find the antenna length you’ll need to use for a given frequency, or the corresponding frequency for a given length. Length can be specified in feet/inches or metric value.
• New Pinouts for connectors, ICs, & boards
We’ve added a bunch of useful pinout diagrams to the app including – Raspberry Pi GPIO, MAX232, LM386, 74HC595, USB (A&B), RS232 (DB-9), VGA (DB-15), Ethernet (RJ-45), 16×2 LCD, 78xx, & 78Lxx
• Show & Tell more!
Show & Tell now lets you share multiple pics & video with Adafruit. Choose up to 3 photos and/or 1 video clip to represent your project – tap a thumbnail image to review each piece of media or remove it from your submission. Of course you can also use your iPad/iPhone/iPod’s camera to grab new pics or video – each one will automatically be saved to your device’s photo library.
Also – Circuit Playground 1.6 also adds support for iOS 6 & requires iOS 4.3 or later. Changing calculator pages on iPad can now be done with a two-finger swipe across the main view.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
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.
