Many of you may know all about one of our most popular boards, the Circuit Playground, but did you know we have a full series of shows aimed at teaching kids about all things electronics? Follow along as Adabot, Ladyada, and a whole cast of fun characters teach you the basics of electronics. While the show is aimed at kids, there is plenty of useful info for makers of all ages.
Make a beautiful hanging mobile with lights for your nursery. This mobile is so cute and so much fun that older kids and adults will definitely enjoy it as well.
The included sample code has around 8 different animated color modes that you can control via bluetooth using Adafruit’s free BlueFruit app. It also has a sound reactive mode, where the lights will pulse in time to music or voices in the room.
ALS Deep Cut
With so many guides on the Adafruit Learning System, some amazing guides of years past get buried and lost. ALS Deep Cuts brings these guides back up to the surface. This week’s guide is from back in 2016, and is the perfect project to dive into on a day like today.
Electronic talking toys are fun, but the same old sound loops can get pretty repetitive after a while. This guide will show you how to swap out the original sound board for an Audio FX Sound Board loaded up with lots of your favorite sounds. You’ll need a specific mask to follow along exactly, but these principles can be applied to nearly any toy designed to trigger a sound effect. Or, add a speaker and switch to the mix to give a voice to any prop or costume.
A new chip means a new ItsyBitsy, and the Raspberry Pi RP2040 is no exception. When we saw this chip we thought “this chip is going to be awesome when we give it the ItsyBitsy teensy-weensy treatment” and so we did! This Itsy’ features the RP2040, and all niceties you know and love about the ItsyBitsy family
What’s smaller than a Feather but larger than a Trinket? It’s an Adafruit ItsyBitsy RP2040 featuring the Raspberry Pi RP2040! Small, powerful, with a ultra fast dual Cortex M0+ processor running at 125 MHz – this microcontroller board is perfect when you want something very compact, with lots of horsepower and a bunch of pins. This Itsy has sports car speed, but SUV roominess with 8 MB of FLASH and 264KB of SRAM.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
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: CircuitPython 8.1.0 and 8.2.0-beta0 out and so much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi