Featured Adafruit Community Project

Manuel Clément shared:

My students coded and soldered all morning yesterday – clocking way past the hour for the #onehourofcode initiative! So proud to teach, touch the future! It is SO rewarding!

Code Breakers Society is a free class I teach every Sunday. I have about 15 students, aged 11 to 15. They learn Web Fundamentals (HTML/CSS/JS) as well as Python and Linux, on their own #raspberrypi computer, as well as electronics (soldering, hardware programming).

One parent told me “If school was like your class, kids would be yelling at their parents to get ready for school in the morning!”. Another held my hands tight thanking me, in tears, seeing her 11 year old daughter code.

Everyone please consider teaching even 1 kid programming and/or electronics. Even if you don’t code yourself, it is VERY easy with tools like Codecademy, CodeHS , Khan Academy and ready to assemble kits, components, and tutorials from Adafruit Industries and SparkFun Electronics. Go #STEM!

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There are people making amazing things around the world, are you one of them? Join the 69,375 strong! And check out scores of projects they shared this week after the jump!

Last Week’s Edition of Adafruit’s Electronics Show and Tell!

From the Google+ Community

(Note: Google+ login required.)

Matt Heilman shared a 100 LEDs project. (read more)

Luke Orehawa shared: “Led tables controlled with a Microchip PIC32MX795 controller. 10 x 18 rgb led resolution.” (read more)

Jack Houweling shared how to make a woodpecker toy. (read more)

Mark Miller shared: “Yet another solenoid engine I made. This one is similar to an earlier version, but I added the full driveshaft, fan blade, alternator(stepper motor) and a new transmission. This is all made from lexan/acrylic scraps, and misc shafting and other bits. It runs from 4 AA batteries and uses a single round solenoid(available for a 1$ from BG Micro) a switch(.49) and a few other misc items. Plenty of power left over to make a small car, turn a pencil sharpener or some other Rube Goldberg device. Lots of fun to make, and just run and watch. The stepper alternator puts out about 2 1/2 volts(led or whatever) and of course the exhaust pipe, air cleaner, carb etc is just to make it more engine looking and serve no purpose. Would love to see someone make these on a 3D printer, and would gladly collaborate on such a venture. Would make a great kit for kids too…..Gotta be some educational learning value in the thing someplace. Or maybe it’s just fun…..” (read more)

william foster shared: “yay i finished my tomahawk replica from the game assassin’s creed! it took me three days but i’m happy with how it came out.
if you want to see more stuff i make visit here.” (read more)

Oleg Mazurov shared: “Thai peppers growing under Chinese LEDs. The plant on the left is growing flowers.” (read more)

Gadsden Merrill shared: “SumoBots arena create with my awesome colleagues at TechShop Pittsburgh. Adding weapons and armour to the little fighting robots makes for some pretty badass competition.” (read more)

Community Projects from the Adafruit Blog

Eliz and Julia shared: “Being a student in NYC can sometimes be stressful (especially during finals!). We needed to remind ourselves to breathe so we created a mediation mandala lamp that’s powered by breath. The wind sensor tracks exhales and inhales. We programmed the lamp to change colors with breath. The light changes colors as you inhale and exhale. Focusing on breathing (and not thinking about anything else) is a way to meditate. Even just a few minutes of focused breathing can have an amazing effect on your mood and can reduce anxiety. This product is for busy people who need to remember to breathe! See all the steps and make your own! Everything you need is on Instructables.” (read more)

Whack-a-Grinch: “Sneak peek at tomorrow’s project: Whack-a-Grinch” (read more)

Salih Berk Ilhan shared his Delightful Interactive Toddler Spoon project: “Feeding toddlers is a problem for the parents because the toddlers tend to lose their interest easily. Therefore they refuse eating their food and get attracted by other things surrounding them. Delightful Spoon is an interactive toddler spoon that aims to attract toddlers during the meal time. Thanks to the capacitive touch sensor, every time the toddler puts the spoon into his/her mouth the spoon lights up charmingly.” (read more)

Steve sent us a message about a 3D printed internet cat laser toy he designed: “I took a robotics course this semester here in northern California and my
class project was to make an internet cat laser toy. It turned out
wonderfully so I thought I would share it with you after coming across the
one in learn.adafruit.com. The idea came to me in a fit of frustration trying to figure out what my project was going to be at the absolute last second. I spent the next month
or so tweaking the code after printing up the robot. Pictures and source
code are included in the youtube video.” (read more)

Marcus Olsson shared with us an Electric imp automatic door lock: “When we, PinMeTo, moved in to our office at MINC in the beginning of September we only had three keys to four persons and an extra key cost 500 sek so i built an automatic door lock for the door. Maybe cheaper to just buy an extra key but not as fun.” (read more)

Dynamic art for Christmas Using Adafruit 16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Shield: “Merry Christmas! Dynamic art for Christmas uses Arduino and Adafruit’s servo 16 shield board to run 8 servos and 8 leds each with their own wave length.” (read more)

DIY Programable Water Bath: “The Adafruit DIY sous vide guide was an excellent starting point for this project. They give a great deal of information about several of the components I used, so I’ll mostly just refer people to their site. I did end up getting rid of the PID controller, it was more complicated than it needed to be especially with both heating and cooling (with very different properties). Another plus of building this water bath was that I had a sous vide along the way. I made a few steaks, and they were excellent.” (read more)

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