A couple of months ago I decided to try and move into product development, not a complete switch of career but perhaps moving a percentage of my time to building real things. This is a change that has no clear path at least from an income perspective so as a way in I have been spending some of my spare time designing and building devices which have a connection to the work I am doing with my existing clients.
The first item was a status gauge which I will write about separately, the second item was something I initially called the status puck. This is a hockey puck shaped glowing device which showed me the result of a series of tests run against a project I am working on. The tests are run by a service called Codeship and they provide a simple output with 3 possible states. These tests are run by multiple people working on the project so this light would represent the overall state of the code providing the team with a quick insight into the validity of the code.
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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.
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