Adafruit
One name that regularly crops up in the list of accessories for boards is Adafruit Industries. The company was founded by Limor Fried, who is an electrical engineer and a strong open source advocate. She has built a company that, as well as selling add-ons for Raspberry Pi, Arduino and BeagleBoard, also sells a fantastic range of kits for hobbyists, including a load of wearable electronics. Prom Tiara with multiple LEDs, anyone?
Return of the hobbyist
This is not an exclusive listing; there are other boards, but these seem to be the leaders. When you look at the numbers, you can see a fantastic number of people getting themselves involved in hobbyist hacking (in the positive sense) of hardware and software. It is also clear that engineering professionals have embraced these boards, for fun at home (well, engineers are different), for use in skunk works projects, and as the basis for commercial production. The large communities that have developed around the boards provide both support and stimulation. Are we looking at the replacement to Radio Shack for the 21st century?
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: New Python Releases, an ESP32+MicroPython IDE and Much 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
Interesting to see a summary of the board types out there, written in an unbiased manner – that’s not always the case.
But the hobbyists haven’t “returned”, because they never went away. Where do you think Linux and a significant amount of the software that runs under it came from? Or the freeware/shareware that’s been available for PCs for the past 30+ years?
Even though the article didn’t discuss it, the “hardware hobbyists” didn’t disappear either – the reason the more well-known hobbyist magazines went away (which might imply the loss of their target audience) wasn’t because hardware hobbyists went away, but because the magazine owners decided that they wanted to get in on the so-called PC revolution and changed their publications to become “me too” PC magazines.
Interesting to see a summary of the board types out there, written in an unbiased manner – that’s not always the case.
But the hobbyists haven’t “returned”, because they never went away. Where do you think Linux and a significant amount of the software that runs under it came from? Or the freeware/shareware that’s been available for PCs for the past 30+ years?
Even though the article didn’t discuss it, the “hardware hobbyists” didn’t disappear either – the reason the more well-known hobbyist magazines went away (which might imply the loss of their target audience) wasn’t because hardware hobbyists went away, but because the magazine owners decided that they wanted to get in on the so-called PC revolution and changed their publications to become “me too” PC magazines.