January in New York always has me fantasizing about warmer days, and alongside that, warm-weather projects, like this gem from Wired.
With a few inexpensive household materials, you can build a safe and effective oven that can utilize the sun’s power to generate interior temperatures in excess of 200 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s hot enough to cook sausages, bacon, hash browns, or tater tots. Of course, conditions have to be just right to heat up an oven that much: a hot day with the sun in an optimal position, and its rays shining on an oven constructed with strict attention to detail. However, even if you throw everything together just well enough to do the trick, your solar oven can still reach temperatures of about 160 degrees. That’s hot enough to hold an impromptu wiener roast in the backyard, or to make gooey and melty chocolate s’mores on your next camping trip where campfires are verboten.
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.
