While I do post a new deep cut guide from years past here every week, another way to discover popular guides from years past is to check out the Weekly Trending Guides on the Adafruit Learning System. This is a list of all of the guides that got over 400 weekly views over the previous week. This list slowly evolves and is fun to track what makers are up to week-over-week. While there are a lot of old favorites in this list, this week saw a boost in people interested in John Park’s Cardboard Fundamentals guide, and a makers were also brushing up on their transistor knowledge.
Have you ever wished you could take pictures at night with the sweet Raspberry Pi High Quality (HQ) Camera?
Using the raspistill command line program is tricky because the auto setting determination usually results in a black picture.
Now, though, with a little Python, you can take pictures up to six seconds long at ISO 800! That’ll turn a dark night lit only by a few house lights into a bright, well-saturated picture!
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.
This project is a derivative of Morgan Stewart’s Circuit Playground Yoyo (Watch her demo it on Adafruit’s Show & Tell). In this remix, we’ll encase a single Circuit Playground board and a lipo battery in 3D printed parts to make a yoyo. The NeoPixel LEDs can shine through the cover, making cool glowy effects. Most of the yoyo parts are 3D printed, and no hardware (machine screws, hex nuts, etc) are required. They feature threads that allow the pieces to be twisted together.
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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.
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.
