How can we help a child that faces everyday challenges with a disability? My answer is to give them the most awesome prosthetic hand, and raise their self esteem to Super Hero Levels. The vision was to create a hand, so that a child can have something that solves a mechanical challenge, is affordable, and mostly Looks Awesome!
Design goals:
It had to look awesome
It had to perform awesome
Hide all the strings, so nothing distracts from the magic.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! We also offer the LulzBot TAZ – Open source 3D Printer and the Printrbot Simple Metal 3D Printer in our store. If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
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 — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 2025 Wraps, Focus on Using Python, Open Source 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
Pat Starace has the ability to take ideas to a very high level while keeping the ultimate design and engineering as efficient and elegant as possible. His background in animation mixed with all sorts of fabrication and embedded systems experience makes his work really unique. I loved the look and felt positive emotions as soon as I saw the first few seconds of the video, and I also got an extra boost when I saw the Adafruit NeoPixel ring (cool, I use those!). There is something great about getting that feeling of accomplishment vicariously through another maker’s project. It goes beyond the “I wish I had made that” to “I’m so glad that Pat made that,” because it is something that will make the world just that much better.
Thanks to Pat and thanks to all the contributors who made the concepts and components that brought this and all other open projects to fruition.
Pat Starace has the ability to take ideas to a very high level while keeping the ultimate design and engineering as efficient and elegant as possible. His background in animation mixed with all sorts of fabrication and embedded systems experience makes his work really unique. I loved the look and felt positive emotions as soon as I saw the first few seconds of the video, and I also got an extra boost when I saw the Adafruit NeoPixel ring (cool, I use those!). There is something great about getting that feeling of accomplishment vicariously through another maker’s project. It goes beyond the “I wish I had made that” to “I’m so glad that Pat made that,” because it is something that will make the world just that much better.
Thanks to Pat and thanks to all the contributors who made the concepts and components that brought this and all other open projects to fruition.