It is in education that open-source hardware and software are often most widely embraced. Whether it is using gEDA for schematic simulation, or CooCox as an IDE, there is a vast constellation of tools available for teaching. With growing forums, from Stackoverflow and GitHub to our own element14 community, the support for open-source projects has never been as great or accessible, adding another dimension to open-source development. University courses are now frequently taught using boards such as the chipKIT Uno 32™ and commonly the original Arduino Uno, allowing students to take their first steps into Microchip’s PIC32MX or Atmel’s 8-bit ATmega328, though there is also increasing interest in teaching ARM 32-bit architectures. Affordable ARM®Cortex™- M series boards such as the Cookie, coupled with IDEs that are either free as trials from major manufacturers or completely open-source, have lowered the barrier to entry.
A new generation of engineers inspired by the open-source movement is already emerging and with a whole universe of open-source IDEs, debuggers, programmers and development platforms to support them we are witnessing a hardware revolution akin to what Linux achieved for operating systems. Just as Android presents the sleek face of tens of thousands of hours of combined effort worldwide and has become by far the biggest smart phone operating system, the humble beginnings of hardware projects that we see on Hack a Day and element14 may one day lead to phenomenal global advances.
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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 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Select Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: PyCon AU 2024 Talks, New Raspberry Pi Gear Available and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
