Make writes about the tumultuous year in the world of embedded electronics. Supply chain snags have scarcely relented, while new chips jostle for position as the maker’s go-to. Meanwhile, lots of exciting new boards, software, and other technologies let folks continue to innovate. Make surveys the maker landscape to see who stepped up when the chips were down!
PUTTING THE NO IN ARDUINO?
Arduino Week in March was a brilliant virtual event, showcasing amazing new products — but frustrated makers couldn’t get their hands on many items being showcased because supply issues prevented them from being manufactured.
PI NOT ALWAYS EASY
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is finding great success in the microcontroller market, as its Pico and new Pico W (wireless) microcontroller dev boards find their way into a plethora of projects, not to mention the RP2040 chip that powers them. Meanwhile the trend of porting Python projects to microcontrollers using Adafruit’s CircuitPython platform — instead of relying on the grunt of single-board computers — continues to prove popular, benefiting the whole RP2040 ecosystem.
But not everything is so sweet in Pi world, with SBCs practically unobtainable.
NO NEW NORMAL
Some experts predict we’ll see things back to “normal” or at least stabilizing by 2023.
And check on Adafruit.com for boards as they’ve been reworking many designs to keep products in stock.
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.
