Limor Fried is an MIT engineer and the founder of Adafruit, a one-stop shop for makers to buy electronics kits and components, and learn and share ideas related to electronics prototyping. Limor’s picks will be especially useful for anyone interested in electronics prototyping or looking to learn more about the field.
“They’re awesome machines. This is a 6-spindle pick and place chip mounter. It’s very flexible. It can place components as small as 0201s, which are basically like dust, up to 64×64 millimeter parts, which are big chunky modules or chips. It can kind of do it all and it’s very, very fast. It’s got flying vision. The software’s good.”
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.
