NEW PRODUCT – BlinkyTape by Blinkinlabs – BlinkyTape is a very special LED strip, taking the smarts of NeoPixels and combining it with an Arduino-compatible for an all-in-one ready to go design. You don’t have to source your own microcontroller, power supply or connectors. Simply plug in a standard USB battery pack or wall charger, and you’re good to blink.
BlinkyTape has 60 independently controllable full-color RGB LEDs, all wrapped up in a weather-resistant silicone case. All this is powered by a integrated light processor (e.g. Atmega32u4 microcontroller) which has a standard micro-USB connector. This means you can connect it to a battery or power supply to run on its own, or it can talk to a computer for interactive installations.
When you first plug in your BlinkyTape, you’ll be greeted by a colorful rainbow pattern. But the fun doesn’t stop there: the BlinkyTape comes with a full set of companion software to make it easy for you to make the patterns and effects you want. You can graphically draw pattens and animations the LED strip using PatternPaint (http://blinkinlabs.com/software/patternpaint/). If dynamic lighting is more your style, check out our Processing library (http://blinkinlabs.com/blinkytape/docs/processing/) — it has a range of examples that allow you to create an LED light soundtrack to your favorite tunes, a backlight for your monitor, and more!
We are angry, frustrated, and in pain because of the violence and murder of Black people by the police because of racism. We are in the fight AGAINST RACISM. George Floyd was murdered, his life stolen. The Adafruit teams have specific actions we’ve done, are doing, and will do together as a company and culture. We are asking the Adafruit community to get involved and share what you are doing. The Adafruit teams will not settle for a hash tag, a Tweet, or an icon change. We will work on real change, and that requires real action and real work together. That is what we will do each day, each month, each year – we will hold ourselves accountable and publish our collective efforts, partnerships, activism, donations, openly and publicly. Our blog and social media platforms will be utilized in actionable ways. Join us and the anti-racist efforts working to end police brutality, reform the criminal justice system, and dismantle the many other forms of systemic racism at work in this country, read more @ adafruit.com/blacklivesmatter
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.
