Limor “Ladyada” Fried believes that anybody, no matter their background, can make something that changes the world. It’s why the MIT hacker and engineer in 2005 founded Adafruit Industries, a New York City company that facilitates online learning for makers of all ages and skill levels. For Fried, it’s about teaching all of us that engineering is actually fun — Adafruit provides free guides for everything from DIY heart-rate monitors to LED skateboards to motion-activated sparkle skirts. In its early days, Adafruit received roughly 10 orders a week. Earlier this year, the company surpassed 2 million orders — and fulfilled another 200,000 since March.
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.
