Hackerspace donation box with wind tunnel, LED matrix, and music upon donations. via tin whiskers
This year, I’ve set out to create CRASH Space a donation box worthy of our hackerspace.
Obvs, the first step of any good project is coming up with a hella good idea, both in terms of electronic functionality, and style.
First, let’s talk style. Being one of the more whimsical hackerspaces, CRASH Space’s mascot is a Soldering Unicorn named Sparkles. Over the years, Sparkles has become arguably the most famous member of our hackerspace. For this project, I’m going to follow in Sparkles’ footsteps and give the donation box a My Little Pony theme.
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, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, 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 with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
