In Australia there’s a spider known as Thwaitesia argentiopunctata, a/k/a the Mirror Spider. Apparently they have cousins in Southeast Asia as well, as photographer Nicky Bay has been shooting them in his home city-state of Singapore. Writes Bay:
For several years, I have been observing the odd behavior of the Mirror Spider (Thwaitesia sp.) where the “silver-plates” on the abdomen seem to shrink when the spider is agitated (or perhaps threatened), revealing the actual abdomen.
At rest, the silver plates expand and the spaces between the plates close up to become an almost uniform reflective surface.
As part of our ongoing coverage of National Hispanic Heritage Month, today we are celebrating Mario J. Molina, Mexican chemist and first Mexican-born citizen to receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Mario José Molina-Pasquel Henríquez is a Mexican chemist and one of the most prominent precursors to the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole. In 2004 he became professor at the University of California, San Diego and the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He was a co-recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his role in elucidating the threat to the Earth’s ozone layer of chlorofluorocarbon gases (or CFCs), becoming the first Mexican-born citizen to ever receive a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Molina is a climate policy adviser to President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto.
If you’ve been less than pleased with the current state of the Transformers film franchise, give this fan short a look. Generation 1, a 13 minute live action romp, uses practical and in camera effects and is all about costuming. The latter is due to the fact that cosplayers were involved in production. The Arizona Autobots cosplay group makes costumes inspired by the Transformers armor featured in the animated series. They’ve been around for two years, constructing their costumes from cardboard and EVA foam. Director Lior Molcho was inspired by their work when he encountered them at a convention and reached out to the group (it consists of 30 members) to craft the short.
You can read an interview about the construction of the suits at Make
If you’ve been less than pleased with the current state of the Transformers film franchise, give this fan short a look. Generation 1, a 13 minute live action romp, uses practical and in camera effects and is all about costuming. The latter is due to the fact that cosplayers were involved in production. The Arizona Autobots cosplay group makes costumes inspired by the Transformers armor featured in the animated series. They’ve been around for two years, constructing their costumes from cardboard and EVA foam. Director Lior Molcho was inspired by their work when he encountered them at a convention and reached out to the group (it consists of 30 members) to craft the short.
You can read an interview about the construction of the suits at Make
If you’ve been less than pleased with the current state of the Transformers film franchise, give this fan short a look. Generation 1, a 13 minute live action romp, uses practical and in camera effects and is all about costuming. The latter is due to the fact that cosplayers were involved in production. The Arizona Autobots cosplay group makes costumes inspired by the Transformers armor featured in the animated series. They’ve been around for two years, constructing their costumes from cardboard and EVA foam. Director Lior Molcho was inspired by their work when he encountered them at a convention and reached out to the group (it consists of 30 members) to craft the short.
You can read an interview about the construction of the suits at Make
My Python program on Raspberry pi lead to to gradually increase brightness of LED which connected to Raspberry PWM Pin , and then gradually decrease brightness using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
There are people making amazing things around the world, are you one of them? Join Adafruit Community! And check out scores of projects they shared this week after the jump!
There are people making amazing things around the world, are you one of them? Join Adafruit Community! And check out scores of projects they shared this week after the jump!
My Python program on Raspberry pi lead to to gradually increase brightness of LED which connected to Raspberry PWM Pin , and then gradually decrease brightness using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM)
Thermal printers are incredibly handy things to have for computer hackers. They’re small and very cheap to run, making them ideal for portable projects, like this DIY Thermal Instant Camera called “Polapi”.
Polaroids, and other instant cameras, are back in fashion again. While we all snap pics on our phones, it’s great fun to print out a photo of friends on the spot.
The cute option is the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8, beloved of Japanese tourists. But it’s £60 for the camera, and £15 for 10 sheets (making each photo cost a whopping £1.50).
Mini Thermal Receipt Printer: Add a mini printer to any microcontroller project with this very cute thermal printer. Thermal printers are also known as receipt printers, they’re what you get when you go to the ATM or grocery store. Now you can embed a little printer of your own into an enclosure. This printer is ideal for interfacing with a microcontroller, you simply need a 3.3V-5V TTL serial output from your microcontroller to print text, barcodes, bitmap graphics, even a QR code! Read more.
Adafruit PiTFT – 320×240 2.8″ TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi: Is this not the cutest little display for the Raspberry Pi? It features a 2.8″ display with 320×240 16-bit color pixels and a resistive touch overlay. The plate uses the high speed SPI interface on the Pi and can use the mini display as a console, X window port, displaying images or video etc. Best of all it plugs right in on top! Read more.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Thermal printers are incredibly handy things to have for computer hackers. They’re small and very cheap to run, making them ideal for portable projects, like this DIY Thermal Instant Camera called “Polapi”.
Polaroids, and other instant cameras, are back in fashion again. While we all snap pics on our phones, it’s great fun to print out a photo of friends on the spot.
The cute option is the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8, beloved of Japanese tourists. But it’s £60 for the camera, and £15 for 10 sheets (making each photo cost a whopping £1.50).
Mini Thermal Receipt Printer: Add a mini printer to any microcontroller project with this very cute thermal printer. Thermal printers are also known as receipt printers, they’re what you get when you go to the ATM or grocery store. Now you can embed a little printer of your own into an enclosure. This printer is ideal for interfacing with a microcontroller, you simply need a 3.3V-5V TTL serial output from your microcontroller to print text, barcodes, bitmap graphics, even a QR code! Read more.
Adafruit PiTFT – 320×240 2.8″ TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi: Is this not the cutest little display for the Raspberry Pi? It features a 2.8″ display with 320×240 16-bit color pixels and a resistive touch overlay. The plate uses the high speed SPI interface on the Pi and can use the mini display as a console, X window port, displaying images or video etc. Best of all it plugs right in on top! Read more.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Thermal printers are incredibly handy things to have for computer hackers. They’re small and very cheap to run, making them ideal for portable projects, like this DIY Thermal Instant Camera called “Polapi”.
Polaroids, and other instant cameras, are back in fashion again. While we all snap pics on our phones, it’s great fun to print out a photo of friends on the spot.
The cute option is the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8, beloved of Japanese tourists. But it’s £60 for the camera, and £15 for 10 sheets (making each photo cost a whopping £1.50).
Mini Thermal Receipt Printer: Add a mini printer to any microcontroller project with this very cute thermal printer. Thermal printers are also known as receipt printers, they’re what you get when you go to the ATM or grocery store. Now you can embed a little printer of your own into an enclosure. This printer is ideal for interfacing with a microcontroller, you simply need a 3.3V-5V TTL serial output from your microcontroller to print text, barcodes, bitmap graphics, even a QR code! Read more.
Adafruit PiTFT – 320×240 2.8″ TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi: Is this not the cutest little display for the Raspberry Pi? It features a 2.8″ display with 320×240 16-bit color pixels and a resistive touch overlay. The plate uses the high speed SPI interface on the Pi and can use the mini display as a console, X window port, displaying images or video etc. Best of all it plugs right in on top! Read more.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Thermal printers are incredibly handy things to have for computer hackers. They’re small and very cheap to run, making them ideal for portable projects, like this DIY Thermal Instant Camera called “Polapi”.
Polaroids, and other instant cameras, are back in fashion again. While we all snap pics on our phones, it’s great fun to print out a photo of friends on the spot.
The cute option is the Fujifilm Instax Mini 8, beloved of Japanese tourists. But it’s £60 for the camera, and £15 for 10 sheets (making each photo cost a whopping £1.50).
Mini Thermal Receipt Printer: Add a mini printer to any microcontroller project with this very cute thermal printer. Thermal printers are also known as receipt printers, they’re what you get when you go to the ATM or grocery store. Now you can embed a little printer of your own into an enclosure. This printer is ideal for interfacing with a microcontroller, you simply need a 3.3V-5V TTL serial output from your microcontroller to print text, barcodes, bitmap graphics, even a QR code! Read more.
Adafruit PiTFT – 320×240 2.8″ TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi: Is this not the cutest little display for the Raspberry Pi? It features a 2.8″ display with 320×240 16-bit color pixels and a resistive touch overlay. The plate uses the high speed SPI interface on the Pi and can use the mini display as a console, X window port, displaying images or video etc. Best of all it plugs right in on top! Read more.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
One of the very cool features of the Pi Zero is it’s ability to tether itself directly to another computer through USB, enabling it to share network resources.
In this video I’m going to show you how to set this up, and how a simple, and cheap hardware modification can turn this $5 Pi into an even more useful USB dongle computer.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Thanks to Diego for sending this in – and for providing all the necessary code and instructions available here on GitHub.
If you want to make this first you need to have a java ide, i recoment eclipse since is the one i use and you need the arduino ide from the harware poin you also need any kind of arduino with serial usb communication as many RGB LED’s neopixel, i use this ones from adafruit , a ~470 ohm resistor and last if you have too many LED’s you may need 5v power supply for 32 LED’s you dont need one.
Featured Adafruit Products!
NeoPixel Stick – 8 x 5050 RGB LED with Integrated Drivers: Make your own little LED strip arrangement with this stick of NeoPixel LEDs. We crammed 8 of the tiny 5050 (5mm x 5mm) smart RGB LEDs onto a PCB with mounting holes and a chainable design. Use only one microcontroller pin to control as many as you can chain together! Each LED is addressable as the driver chip is inside the LED. Each one has ~18mA constant current drive so the color will be very consistent even if the voltage varies, and no external choke resistors are required making the design slim. Power the whole thing with 5VDC (4-7V works) and you’re ready to rock. Read more.
I just put 2,400 vintage games (and an emulator to run them) into an NES cartridge for about 30 bucks. Computing power has finally become small (and inexpensive) enough to make such a project possible. What a wonderful time to be alive.
The basics of what I’m calling the Pi Cart (great name, eh?) involve a Raspberry Pi Zero, an old NES cartridge, a small USB hub and adapters of various sizes. Unless you want to get crafty or save a few bucks on adapters, no soldering is required.
This guide will show you how to build your own Pi Cart. When you’re done, you will be able to connect the Pi Cart to your TV or monitor and get playing.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Professional makeup artist Anna Lingis’ skills cover a wide spectrum. She does fashion makeup, bridal makeup, and also special effects makeup — like this Nightmare Before Christmas Jack Skellington application. She used black paints from Global Colours, white paints from The Face Painting Shop, and NYX’s stormy skies palette to achieve the look. The transformation involved a fair amount of work and would be a blast to replicate for Halloween parties. You could even just do the face part and pair it with a striped t-shirt.
Equipment failure can cause a huge impact on business in the manufacturing industry. It is critical to keep production line rolling. One of the reasons, this can occur is due to insufficient oil level. Sometimes the oil is not in the stock and takes a few days to procure it. This system monitors the oil level and indicates to the user, if the level is below certain level. The backend of the system uses Azure IOT stream analytics and shows the trend of oil consumption. It can be used for predictive maintenance. The system can also tell, if there is unusual consumption of oil that can be caused by potential leakage or other issues.
Professional makeup artist Anna Lingis’ skills cover a wide spectrum. She does fashion makeup, bridal makeup, and also special effects makeup — like this Nightmare Before Christmas Jack Skellington application. She used black paints from Global Colours, white paints from The Face Painting Shop, and NYX’s stormy skies palette to achieve the look. The transformation involved a fair amount of work and would be a blast to replicate for Halloween parties. You could even just do the face part and pair it with a striped t-shirt.
The basic idea is simple. Recreate a sunset with light and sound during those short winter days when the real deal is hours away. I guess this could be even more useful to people who have to get up really early.
About half an hour before the wake up time the lamp will start to go through it’s color cycle, starting from deep orange and ending up at a warm, bright white. All the while generating a soundscape that also increases in intensity. Birds, waves, wind, depending on the current theme. I’m still experimenting with the optimal duration of this fade, currently around 40 minutes.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
The basic idea is simple. Recreate a sunset with light and sound during those short winter days when the real deal is hours away. I guess this could be even more useful to people who have to get up really early.
About half an hour before the wake up time the lamp will start to go through it’s color cycle, starting from deep orange and ending up at a warm, bright white. All the while generating a soundscape that also increases in intensity. Birds, waves, wind, depending on the current theme. I’m still experimenting with the optimal duration of this fade, currently around 40 minutes.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
One of the coolest things about the Raspberry Pi is its GPIO pins. They’re just sitting there, waiting to be connected to all kinds of useful peripherals so your Pi can interact with the world around it.
Power an LED to signal the user. Place a button in the path of a circuit and detect when a user presses it. Attach sensors to read temperature and humidity, and plug other cards like the Sense HAT over top of the pins.
A few months ago, I got a set of 37 sensor modules on Amazon. I knew they wouldn’t directly interface with the Pi, but that it was entirely possible to do it, so I put them aside for later.
Well, I finally decided to pull one out, and thought the mini-joystick might offer some interesting… opportunities.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Handy post from Richard Saville (aka Average Man Vs. Raspberry Pi) up on about tech.
Every model of Raspberry Pi has always required a relatively low amount of power when comparing to fully fledged desktop PCs.
Despite further hardware improvements, even the latest Raspberry Pi 3 only increased this marginally, meaning portable projects are still as easy as ever to achieve.
The Pi 3 has a recommended power supply of 5.1V at 2.5A, which will cover you for most scenarios when using the board at its full potential. The models before it demanded a slightly lower 5V at 1A, however in practice greater amperage was advisable.
For low power projects, you can reduce the amperage by quite some way before affecting performance or stability, with just a little trial and error testing for each specific project.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
A thesis project that is a beautiful dress that responds to touch and interacts with social media, from Clodagh O’Mahony. This is an amazing piece with may layers.
My mission is: To design a wearable connected platform that introduces what is sold as a “purer” form of social media. The quantitative data means users would have to go to extraordinary lengths to misrepresent their lives, thereby making its information more reliable than that of its competitors. Thanks to revenue from wearable sales, it can afford to offer a platform with less advertising.
I built two things, a website and a dress.
The dress runs off a Raspberry Pi, which hosts the SQL databases used by the website and runs the python program that makes everything work. As an immediate feedback some fibre optics light up when the dress is touched, a colour for different body parts (waist=purple, hip=green, hand=blue, etc.). At the same time the dress registers when and where it was touched to a database to be displayed on the user profile, as well as adding a certain number of points to the user total. The user total determines their place on the homepage leader board. The sensor used is a capacitive one, specifically this one, from Adafruit. Its used with conductive thread to pick up human contact all over the dress.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
My Raspberry Pi based cat flap monitor detects a foreign cat by the time it takes to come through the cat flap – knowing it’s on foreign territory and looking and sniffing for danger, it takes much longer than our own cat. Hence I can get the Raspberry Pi to play a scary MP3, causing the foreign cat to flee for its life!
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
If you’ve ever wished you could communicate with your pet, then you have something in common with Bibi, Aslak and Szymon. We ran a Pi Cap workshop in late July to find out what people would do when equipped with our latest product, the Pi Cap, and they were one of the teams invited to participate.
The Pi Cap is a Raspberry Pi add-on which allows you to add precise capacitive touch, proximity sensing and high quality audio to your Raspberry Pi projects. It works with the Raspberry Pi A+, B+, Zero and later (any Raspberry Pi with a 40 pin GPIO connector).
When given the opportunity to test our fully featured libraries and online tutorials, Bibi, Aslak and Szymon decided they’d use the Pi Cap to give Rory – the office pug – the ability to speak. Using a Pi Zero and our capacitive touch code example, they wrote a program that would give Rory voice when he lay down, got stroked, or when anyone tweets to the hashtag #PugProse.
Needless to say, the project got a great reaction from the crowd, not only because of the amazing outfit, but because it was a great example of how the Pi Cap and Pi Zero could be used to create a small portable wearable.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
If you’ve ever wished you could communicate with your pet, then you have something in common with Bibi, Aslak and Szymon. We ran a Pi Cap workshop in late July to find out what people would do when equipped with our latest product, the Pi Cap, and they were one of the teams invited to participate.
The Pi Cap is a Raspberry Pi add-on which allows you to add precise capacitive touch, proximity sensing and high quality audio to your Raspberry Pi projects. It works with the Raspberry Pi A+, B+, Zero and later (any Raspberry Pi with a 40 pin GPIO connector).
When given the opportunity to test our fully featured libraries and online tutorials, Bibi, Aslak and Szymon decided they’d use the Pi Cap to give Rory – the office pug – the ability to speak. Using a Pi Zero and our capacitive touch code example, they wrote a program that would give Rory voice when he lay down, got stroked, or when anyone tweets to the hashtag #PugProse.
Needless to say, the project got a great reaction from the crowd, not only because of the amazing outfit, but because it was a great example of how the Pi Cap and Pi Zero could be used to create a small portable wearable.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Ada Lovelace Day (ALD) is an international celebration day of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). It aims to increase the profile of women in STEM and, in doing so, create new role models who will encourage more girls into STEM careers and support women already working in STEM.
The software driving this installation creates an ensemble of virtual performers that make decisions in realtime about what notes to play and when, according to Riley’s score and performance directions. Each performer is aware of the others, and together they work to create a harmonious performance of In C.
This installed version of In C++ uses an ensemble of Raspberry Pi computers, amp circuits, speakers, and laser-cut wood panels.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
The software driving this installation creates an ensemble of virtual performers that make decisions in realtime about what notes to play and when, according to Riley’s score and performance directions. Each performer is aware of the others, and together they work to create a harmonious performance of In C.
This installed version of In C++ uses an ensemble of Raspberry Pi computers, amp circuits, speakers, and laser-cut wood panels.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
I love sleeping.
More to the point, usually, I really don’t love waking up.
I drag myself around and it usually takes until I arrive at work before I am really what you might call awake.
Alarm clocks are annoying. Clock radios are better but depend on what’s on the radio that day. Winter is worse than summer due to the lack of daylight filtering through the windows.
So I thought: why not try to experiment with light and sound in order to design a customized wake-up call. The idea of a sunrise lamp isn’t particularly new (1890) but I was excited to create my own platform for experimentation.
The basic idea is simple. Recreate a sunset with light and sound during those short winter days when the real deal is hours away. I guess this could be even more useful to people who have to get up really early.
About half an hour before the wake up time the lamp will start to go through it’s color cycle, starting from deep orange and ending up at a warm, bright white. All the while generating a soundscape that also increases in intensity. Birds, waves, wind, depending on the current theme. I’m still experimenting with the optimal duration of this fade, currently around 40 minutes.
In fact, I find it is so much fun to build these ‘themes’ that I can’t seem to stop coming up with new ideas. It’s incredible fun to wonder what it would be like to wake up on a tropical beach, in the rain forest, African savanna, etc. and then being able to try it out.
Makes it quite a bit easier for me to get out of bed every morning (with a silly grin on my face). It’s really surprisingly effective and hard to describe. Rather than being resentful that it is already time to get up, I am now more inclined to be eager to get going. If someone had told me that this actually works I would have put a sunrise lamp in my bedroom years ago.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
This is an anti-vibration foot for a flashforge creator pro. it has a base cup for holding the anti-vibration material, a foot pad for the printer and a template for cutting the anti-vibration material. This was created because I had some extra sorbethane left over from an old engineering project. It’s anti-vibration qualities are amazing so I created a foot pad to hold it and set the printer on
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
