A weekend of hacking projects with the Adafruit Edge Badge #Adafruit #CircuitPython @alexwhittemore
Alex Whittemore posts about post-Hackaday Superconference 2019 thoughts and relates them to Adafruit and CircuitPython:
Supercon 2019 just wrapped up last night, and this one was even better than last year. It seems to be one of the highest-value conferences on the calendar for good conversations, and it’s almost shamefully worth leaving the talks for week-after youtubing to maximize time spend talking and hacking. Shamefully, because they’re always just great. Luckily, I feel like I struck that balance this year. Besides a lot of valuable business cards, I also managed to check off a couple projects on my list of “decently fast stuff I really want to try but can’t find time for”.
Also lucky, Adafruit had great conference presence in the form of hardware, actual humans, and killer rapid-prototyping software with hyper-extensive documentation (mostly but not exclusively, I mean CircuitPython).
Projects highlighted
A CO2 Dosimeter/Logger using the new Adafruit Edge Badge and the grove-breakout of the Sensirion SCD30.
We did a whole bunch more testing on the PyBadge, using the analog output MEMS mic, other badges hacked into oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers, and so on and so forth, but it really wasn’t necessary at all. Implementing this takes literally two components, and one is just a connector for convenience.
Plug a laser diode into the speaker port, and it basically just works. Audio quality of the original recording you use does matter, since the laser distorts that quite a bit, but listening to the mems-mic-demodulated result yourself, it sounds totally understandable and google agrees.
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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.
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