Since we started Makers I’ve made it a priority to try to visit Adafruit Industries, the amazing Manhattan-based electronics shop run by Limor Fried. Fried started her company out of her dorm room at MIT, building cool electronics kits for her friends. She slowly expanded into other hobbyist realms including Arduino add-ons, how-to books, and cases. Now her store is bustling with 1,302 items for sale with about 600 orders per day…
We had the unique opportunity to tour her brand new Manhattan warehouse/design center/factory in Soho where she and her team create amazing gizmos and gadgets. They are also working on student outreach via their superfun Circuit Playground in order to convince kids that STEM is actually cool.
This visit we saw Adafruit’s mini-fabrication line, their amazing, home-grown CRM system, and, most important, Adabot, the company’s robotic mascot.
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 – we’ll post the link there.
