Like many electronics hobbyists, I’ve been slowly collecting tubes of integrated circuits and LED displays that come in plastic tubes. Sadly, this collection has literally spent the last ten years as a slowly growing pile of tubes sitting on the floor of my lab. One of those problems that really sneaks up on you, unfortunately.
I decided to try and get back into the woodworking hobby this summer, so I decided to make a small set of vertical cubbies for my IC tubes, and used it as an excuse to practice my dovetail joinery, since a storage rack made out a cheap piece of whitewood 1×12 board from Home Depot is pretty low stakes.
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 – we’ll post the link there.
