Fidget spinners are fun little toys that spin around on a bearing and make surprisingly addictive stress relievers. With a flick of your finger you can set a spinner into a rapid spin and watch as it slowly comes to a stop from the forces of friction. You can even make spinning a competition with friends–see who can flick their spinner the hardest to get it spinning the fastest! But wouldn’t it be cool to measure how fast a spinner is spinning? It turns out with an Adafruit Circuit Playground board you can build a simple tachometer that measures the speed of a spinning fidget spinner!
This project will show you how to use a Circuit Playground Classic or Circuit Playground Express board to build a fidget spinner tachometer that measures the speed of a spinner. Circuit Playground is Adafruit’s all-in-one electronics learning board that has all the necessary components for this project, specifically a light sensor, NeoPixel LEDs, and the brains of an Arduino, built in to it so you can get started immediately with no soldering or other hardware setup. Even better you can build this project using either Arduino or CircuitPython code. If you’re new to Python this is a good example of how a project can be converted from Arduino to Python code.
We are angry, frustrated, and in pain because of the violence and murder of Black people by the police because of racism. We are in the fight AGAINST RACISM. George Floyd was murdered, his life stolen. The Adafruit teams have specific actions we’ve done, are doing, and will do together as a company and culture. We are asking the Adafruit community to get involved and share what you are doing. The Adafruit teams will not settle for a hash tag, a Tweet, or an icon change. We will work on real change, and that requires real action and real work together. That is what we will do each day, each month, each year – we will hold ourselves accountable and publish our collective efforts, partnerships, activism, donations, openly and publicly. Our blog and social media platforms will be utilized in actionable ways. Join us and the anti-racist efforts working to end police brutality, reform the criminal justice system, and dismantle the many other forms of systemic racism at work in this country, read more @ adafruit.com/blacklivesmatter
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 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Make: The Rise of Python, CLUE, CircuitPython 6 and more! #Python #Adafruit #CircuitPython @circuitpython @micropython @ThePSF
Adafruit IoT Monthly — BLE Store Capacity Indicator, Aquarium Automation, and more!
