Popular Science organized the rockets headed to Mars by size.
Like everything else in the 1960s, NASA’s Saturn V rocket set a mark for extreme. At 363 feet tall, with 7.5 million pounds of liftoff thrust, it lifted six moon-bound missions into space. Retired in 1973, it remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket our species has ever built. With moon missions on hold, we haven’t needed anything close to its capacity. Until now. As governments and private companies race to send astronauts to Mars, bigger is once again better—and necessary. Whose heavy-lifter is the biggest and baddest? Here’s how they stack up.
Arduino products and projects are fun for all makers – from the very beginner to the most skilled. We’ve put together a list of some of our favorite arduino-centric gifts for graduates, including a couple of fun projects from our Adafruit Learning System! Don’t see exactly what you’re looking for? No sweat. Check out our full listing of arduino products here.
FROM THE ADAFRUIT STORE
Parallax BOEBot Robot for Arduino Kit: This kit brings the excellent design and tutorials of Parallax to the Arduino world. Make your Arduino the onboard brain of a mobile robot and learn robotics, electronics, and programming with this versatile kit and its accompanying step-by-step lessons. The Board of Education Shield plugs into your own Arduino (not included) and mounts on the popular Boe-Bot robot chassis. (read more)
Getting Started with Arduino By Massimo Banzi – 3rd Edition: This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open-source electronics prototyping platform that’s taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino, updated for the latest Arduino release, gives you lots of ideas for Arduino projects and helps you get going on them right away. From getting organized to putting the final touches on your prototype, all the information you need is right in the book.(read more)
The DIY Gamer Kit is an Arduino controlled gaming device. Once you solder the whole thing together, you’ll have an 8×8 LED matrix display that serves as the device’s screen. From there, just easily upload your game’s code onto an Arduino (not included) and play! It’s a great learning experience with a fun result. (read more)
AdaBox001 – Welcome to the Feather Ecosystem: Please note! This is NOT the subscription version of AdaBox! This is ONLY AdaBox001 that shipped out to AdaBox subscribers in September of 2016. This version does not include free shipping, the lithium ion battery, or AdaBox subscriber exclusive pin. If you’d like to subscribe to AdaBox, please visit the AdaBox page!
When we launched our subscription service for makers, our first box sold out almost immediately. While it’s still too late to be one of our very first AdaBox subscribers, it’s not too late to buy our first AdaBox as a standalone product. (read more)
FROM THE ADAFRUIT LEARNING SYSTEM
Ninja Timer: Giant 7-Segment Display: Ever wanted to build an enormous timer using 7-segment displays? Here’s a way to do just that using NeoPixel strips for the segments and acrylic diffusers to blend the individual LEDs into seamless light sources.
This guide shows how to build 12″ tall digits, each made from a meter of NeoPixels cut into segments and then joined at angles. Each digit is controlled by a single Arduino data pin, so you can make and use as many digits as you like, dependant on power supply and available Arduino pins. (read more)
Circuit Playground Password Vault: Long, random passwords — such as eF@V3p%2R*qhw8 are great because they’re so secure when compared to easy ones such as Pencil or 12345, but can be difficult to remember and to type. Once you build this Circuit Playground Password Vault, you won’t need to remember or type them ever again! The Circuit Playground can act as USB keyboard, so it can be plugged into any computer and be used to enter password for you. (read more)
Aiming to capture the memory these aging or derelict places before they are completely demolished, American filmmaker Dan Bell is documenting the relics of a certain past, spaces where young people would hang out, or seniors would get their daily exercise through a mall walking program. So far, Bell has recorded footage of over 100 derelict spaces, ranging from malls, motels, hospitals, factories and even a resort, posting them on his YouTube channel, This Is Dan Bell. In this TEDx talk, Bell talks about his Dead Mall Series of short films:
As we begin to incorporate robots into our daily lives more and more what challenges need to be overcome? WIRED talked to UC Berkeley’s Anca Dragan to find out. According to Dragan the 4 main challenges are
THE ROBOTS ARE coming. And really, in some ways, they’re already here. If you’ve ever tripped over a robot vacuum, you’ve actually waded into the fascinating frontier that is human-robot interaction. If humans are at all going to get along with increasingly sophisticated robots, we need to figure out how we’re going to interact with them, and in turn they’ll need to adapt to us.
This technological revolution is different than those that came before it. In the Industrial Revolution, the static, hulking machines required humans to fundamentally change the way they worked. But in the robot revolution, both parties have to make compromises. You’ll have to learn to communicate with a new kind of being, and that new kind of being will have to help you along as well. Subtle communications, like a robot pretending to struggle with a heavy object it’s handing to you so you’re not surprised by the weight, will be pivotal for our two species to work together without driving each other crazy.
Digitally manipulated photographs by Aydin Büyüktas, Via Featureshoot
As a continuation of his initial Flatland project, Istanbul-based photographer Aydin Büyüktas travelled to the USA at the end of 2016 to expand his collection of mind-bending images. Inspired by sci-fi writers, in particular Edwin Abbot’s 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, he uses digital manipulation to transcend the limits of human vision and create his own way of seeing the world, or in his words a “multidimensional romantic point of view.”
Following two months of research, Büyüktas spent a month capturing photos with an aerial drone, flying his drone a total distance of 10,000 miles. To make the resulting images, he spent the next two months creating composites combining between 18-20 images in each one. In this series, baseball courts and highways replace the Turkish markets and striking landmarks of his previous work, however we still view the world from Büyüktas’ warped rollercoaster-like vision, which plunges us directly into the landscapes from vertiginous heights.
Is the universe expanding? Is this an aftereffect of the Big Bang? Or is it still the big bang, and we’re still exploding? And if it is, is it slowing down? As it turns out, it’s much, much stranger than that.
The universe isn’t just expanding — it’s expanding faster and faster and faster. Why? Nobody knows.
Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild has been out for a few weeks now, which means makers and cosplayers have had plenty of time to study the new additions to the world — like Link’s traveler’s shield. YouTuber Indy Mogul came up with a replica that only costs $50 to make. The primary supply list includes EVA foam floor mats, craft foam, foam core, paint, and a few other basics. Something I learned from this video unrelated to the shield: you can get EVA foam floor mats with laminate floor covering so they look like wood. Handy, right?
Not for this build though. Indy Mogul removes the laminate before proceeding with the build and uses a rotary tool to simulate the wood grain… before deciding to paint on the texture instead. The tutorial is straightforward and full of helpful tips, including some problem solving you can apply to your projects.
Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild has been out for a few weeks now, which means makers and cosplayers have had plenty of time to study the new additions to the world — like Link’s traveler’s shield. YouTuber Indy Mogul came up with a replica that only costs $50 to make. The primary supply list includes EVA foam floor mats, craft foam, foam core, paint, and a few other basics. Something I learned from this video unrelated to the shield: you can get EVA foam floor mats with laminate floor covering so they look like wood. Handy, right?
Not for this build though. Indy Mogul removes the laminate before proceeding with the build and uses a rotary tool to simulate the wood grain… before deciding to paint on the texture instead. The tutorial is straightforward and full of helpful tips, including some problem solving you can apply to your projects.
The PhantomX Hexapod MK-III is the third major revision of the popular research level hexapod robotics platform by InterbotiX Labs.
The PhantomX Hexapod MK-III is equipped with 6 fully articulated legs built around the advanced AX-12 and AX-18 DYNAMIXEL actuators and was designed with educators and hobbyists in mind, offering a top of the line research platform at an affordable price. Anyone can jump head first into the world of robotics using our open source Inverse Kinematics (IK) Gait Engines, wireless command protocol, and Arbotix controller.
As you may have heard, our new Express line of boards, starting with the Feather M0 Express, ship with a new UF2 capable, open source bootloader created by Microsoft. As Ladyada showed on her stream, this bootloader makes it faster and easier to load new code onto a microcontroller.
A bootloader is responsible making it easy to load new software onto a microcontroller. A good bootloader can make or break a project. For example, Arduino’s original bootloader was one reason for its success because it allowed for loading new software without expensive external hardware. The UF2 Bootloader goes one step further and removes the need for any additional software. Instead of needing to install software like Arduino or bossac, one simply plugs in the board, double taps reset and then drags a uf2 file onto the BOOT drive that appears. No extra software needed!
The bootloader works by emulating a removable disk in addition to the standard Arduino bootloader. Since all major operating systems support removable USB drives, support is built-in. At the same time, the UF2 bootloader still works as expected with Arduino.
This is a temperature/humidity/noise detector to be used in any room, in this case a library. This device continuously takes the input devices and logs the data into the dashboard with a buffer of 1 hour and access every data intake online through phpMyAdmin. This device can take incoming Tweet events to do various jobs through outputting current readings to Twitter or mail. You can also access these functions through the dashboard.
This is a temperature/humidity/noise detector to be used in any room, in this case a library. This device continuously takes the input devices and logs the data into the dashboard with a buffer of 1 hour and access every data intake online through phpMyAdmin. This device can take incoming Tweet events to do various jobs through outputting current readings to Twitter or mail. You can also access these functions through the dashboard.
In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to make Alfred – the Arduino servant robot that uses Alexa-powered voice control on Raspberry Pi over a Bluetooth connection. It sounds really complicated, but it’s a great way to learn about microcontrollers, electronics, circuits, bluetooth, Linux, the internet, and programming. Also, it’s a great way to learn about something while:
1) not being entirely bored
2) making something that you can show off to people and make them think you’re smart
Additionally, unlike other tutorials that use voice control there’s no port forwarding required (you don’t have to open up your computers to the internet and hackers), and you don’t have to pay for services (the voice control and software are all free).
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!
In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to make Alfred – the Arduino servant robot that uses Alexa-powered voice control on Raspberry Pi over a Bluetooth connection. It sounds really complicated, but it’s a great way to learn about microcontrollers, electronics, circuits, bluetooth, Linux, the internet, and programming. Also, it’s a great way to learn about something while:
1) not being entirely bored
2) making something that you can show off to people and make them think you’re smart
Additionally, unlike other tutorials that use voice control there’s no port forwarding required (you don’t have to open up your computers to the internet and hackers), and you don’t have to pay for services (the voice control and software are all free).
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!
leefiles shared this super thin Raspberry pi zero Ws case on Youtube!
Heat-Shrink Raspberry Pi Zero W – Thinnest Case
* Couldn’t find a compact case for the pi zero to complement thinness
* Used heat-shrink tubing Measured width is 1.5 inch before shrinking You can shrink it properly with a heat gun. You can also use a hair drier. If not, you can use a lighter.
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 Official Opening of the 2017 Adelaide International Kite Festival with the Mayor of the City of Port Adelaide Enfield Council, Mr Gary Johanson #aikf #kitefestival
It really was the lack of events in and around Berlin that got the Jam going. I wanted to attend one of the UK Jams, as it seemed full of like-minded people willing to help each other and learn new things – something we sorely lacked here.
I did later manage to attend the Raspberry Pi Birthday Party in Cambridge. While the event was considerably larger than most Jams I had heard about, it was totally amazing to meet the community. It reinforced the sense of belonging I had been looking for.
I held the first Raspberry Jam Berlin in a co-working office that offers their space at weekends for free if you don’t charge for tickets. I had some Pis set up with various add-on boards and we also gave a few talks about the Raspberry Pi.
My favourite thing about the Raspberry Jam is meeting different people and seeing those projects that are getting pushed beyond my own understanding, but also being able to help new people get interested in the Raspberry Pi. It’s very satisfying to know someone has left the Jam inspired!
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!
There are four ways you can connect the internet to a Raspberry Pi board. You can use a built-in WIFI, add a WIFI dongle, use an ethernet socket, or add one via USB. In this article we will take a look at each option, to investigate what is the fastest connection option for each board. The boards tested:
Raspberry Pi 3
Raspberry Pi 2
Raspberry Pi Zero
Raspberry Pi Zero W
Each board will be tested for speeds using:
built-in WIFI (if possible)
built-in ethernet (if possible)
USB (3.0) to ethernet adapter (1 Gb)
WIFI USB 2.0 dongle
Testing conditions of the Raspberry Pi network speed test
This should lead to some interesting results as it turned out. Each test is run with an iperf server running on the target device (I’d rather see some CPU action on the board itself) and the client (PC – Windows 10) is connected through a LAN cable (1Gb) to the Linksys WRT-1900ACS. The test will be run minimum 3 times in a short period of time. In few cases where results have been inconsistent, the additional tests have been done. The USB ethernet adapter is backward compatible and auto-negotiation will determine the correct link speed. I have verified the adapter on my PC with the test speeds in excess of 700Mbits/s.
Each board is tested with the same (latest at the time of writing Raspbian Pixel image) class 10 microSD card, the same power supply is used in all cases (an original adapter for indoor tests, and the battery bank for the range tests).
The wireless performance tests have been done at 1m, 5m (through walls), 10m, and 20m. As the board and adapter orientation do matter, I tried to orient the board and the adapter in a way that would allow for the best internet speeds. The orientation of the adapter has been consistent across the tests. This should cover the test environment setup, but feel free to ask me any questions about it.
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!
Brian Dorey from AB Electronics UK has an interesting two-part series (hopefully more to come!) showing an ongoing project to build a handheld wireless barcode scanner built around the Raspberry Pi Zero. After looking at a few commercial systems that wouldn’t integrate with their online shop they decided to fabricate their own solution – at just a little over 2cm in thickness with what appears to be a nice smoothed grip-back, the homemade solution frankly looks better than most things on the market, and that touchscreen sure will be nice to look at!
PiTFT – Assembled 480×320 3.5″ TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi: Is this not the cutest, little display for the Raspberry Pi? It features a 3.5″ display with 480×320 16-bit color pixels and a resistive touch overlay so is slightly larger than our popular original. 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.
Turning yourself into a robot doesn’t necessarily mean working with metal and wiring. In fact, using different, more forgiving materials means you’ll be comfortable while wearing the costume. The Bales Workshop turned to cardboard to bring their take on Futurama’s Bender to life for Halloween 2011. They added some PVC pipe, some plastic bowls, and other everyday objects to the build, but the core is cardboard. The trick to getting the domed head and the cylindrical looks for the arms and legs is to start with sonotubes. They’re already the right shape and can be adjusted.
To make the head, Bales started with a 10 inch sonotube and cut one end in order to turn it into a closed dome. He explains:
I started by painstakingly dividing one end of a tube into 16 equal segments, connecting lines to make tall isosceles triangles, and then cutting them out with a sharp razor knife. I don’t have any record of the segment widths, nor the triangle heights, but I’m sure I was just making it up as a went along. My hope was that they would all be able to arch into the center, be attached to one another with hot glue, and create a perfectly closed dome … or one which would require minimal filling with caulk. That plan didn’t fall into place, so I had to devise another strategy.
I used a plastic lid (with the rim removed) as the central hub for connecting the 16 points into a sad little dome. Rivets were the mechanical fastener of choice.
You can see a couple of pictures of Bender’s head taking shape:
Get complete details on making the costume at Instructables.
Turning yourself into a robot doesn’t necessarily mean working with metal and wiring. In fact, using different, more forgiving materials means you’ll be comfortable while wearing the costume. The Bales Workshop turned to cardboard to bring their take on Futurama’s Bender to life for Halloween 2011. They added some PVC pipe, some plastic bowls, and other everyday objects to the build, but the core is cardboard. The trick to getting the domed head and the cylindrical looks for the arms and legs is to start with sonotubes. They’re already the right shape and can be adjusted.
To make the head, Bales started with a 10 inch sonotube and cut one end in order to turn it into a closed dome. He explains:
I started by painstakingly dividing one end of a tube into 16 equal segments, connecting lines to make tall isosceles triangles, and then cutting them out with a sharp razor knife. I don’t have any record of the segment widths, nor the triangle heights, but I’m sure I was just making it up as a went along. My hope was that they would all be able to arch into the center, be attached to one another with hot glue, and create a perfectly closed dome … or one which would require minimal filling with caulk. That plan didn’t fall into place, so I had to devise another strategy.
I used a plastic lid (with the rim removed) as the central hub for connecting the 16 points into a sad little dome. Rivets were the mechanical fastener of choice.
You can see a couple of pictures of Bender’s head taking shape:
Get complete details on making the costume at Instructables.
This YouTube Drone project broadcasts footage over a cellular data connection direct to YouTube. You use a Raspberry Pi, Camera Module and SixFab LTE shield with a drone kit to build the working device.
The YouTube Drone is a great project because it incorporates so many different Raspberry Pi features: video recording, flight control (either RC or automated), YouTube integration, and data network access.
It’s also fundamentally inspiring. Hooking up a drone to a Raspberry Pi with network coverage lets you test a lot of future technologies.
There’s potential to integrate it with computer vision technology, as well as automatic flight.
We made a prototype of something we’ve called Museum Egg.
We built it during the Science Museum London Digital Lab Hackathon. The Hackathon was a brilliant 2 day event where the Science Museum and it’s data became our creative playground.
The idea is that the Museum Egg is carried around the museum by a visitor. It tracks the things they look at and spend time in front of. At the end of the visit, when it’s returned and docked, a personal postcard is printed of that visitor’s favourite items.
The egg contains a Raspberry Pi Zero, Micro SD card and a Bluetooth adapter so that the Pi can scan for Bluetooth beacons. The Pi runs on a 2000mAh rechargeable battery along with an Adafruit PowerBoost 500 module to handle the battery charging and connection to the Pi. A green LED was included so we would know the device was working correctly.
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 purpose of this project was to see whether there was any correlation between weather and the color of clothing people chose to wear. We were curious as to what extent the weather affected people’s clothing choices. Some individuals may plan out their day accordingly, others may not care at all. We wanted to know roughly how much there was a change of color then.
We deployed our project in the window of our Computer Science teacher’s classroom; an area with enough foot traffic to gather lots of data. Our project required a camera and needed to be displayed publicly, so we decided to design our enclosure in a way that would be visually appealing to people. Since we were trying to find a correlation between clothing color and weather, the face of the enclosure was fashioned in a way that made it look like a friendly cloud.
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 fiancee, Shirin, and I have been dating for about 4 years and I wanted to do something really nice for her birthday. She misses our dog Pickles while she’s at work so I built her a device that allows her to give him treats while she is away and Pickles is home. My goal was to give her a little burst of dopamine and, if I’m lucky, a little heart flutter when she uses it. She has been consistently using it 5-10 times a week so it apparently both works and was well received.
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!
After having mastered the set up of a LAMP server (Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHPMyAdmin) solution on my Raspberry Pi 3, and rounding it out with with a cloud solution for the file server (OwnCloud), and a content manager for the web server (Joomla), it was time for the next step: a mail server. Many thanks to Sam Hobbs, who invested countless hours in documenting and perfecting the Pi implementation, and carefully explaining it in detail. His instructions are more elaborate than mine, and worth visiting, as I have simplified his implementation significantly, and there are other features that he has implemented which you may want to replicate.
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!
We recently went on holiday and I took my laptop & VGA cable with me. It was my intention to hook it up to the TV and play some media on it to keep the kids happy on rainy days (pretty essential in the UK!). It turned out the TV had the VGA port covered up by the mounting bracket, so we ended up putting the laptop on a chair and watching videos from there; it did the job, but there was a perfectly good TV I could have used.
At home we have a Fire TV Stick that runs Kodi, but the problem with Fire TV is that it has to have an internet connection, otherwise it refuses to run any apps. I’d rather not have to tether it to my phone all the time.
Next time I’ll be more prepared; I’ve put together a compact and flexible setup consisting of a Raspberry Pi 2 running OpenElec (and Kodi) together with a set of cables allowing me to hook it up to pretty much any TV. The Pi runs Kodi really well; the OpenElec distribution boots really quickly & has good Wifi and BlueTooth support.
My first venture into raspberry pi stuff. Running a custom pure data patch I’ve been working on for a couple years on a Raspberry Pi 3. This project took a couple months and I’m still tweaking stuff here and there but it’s pretty much complete, it even survived it’s first live show!
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!
Do you like making things? Do you fancy trying something new? Are you aged 11 to 16? The Pioneers programme is ready to challenge you to create something new using technology.
As you’ll know if you took part last time, Pioneers challenges are themed. So here’s the lovely Ana from ZSL London Zoo to reveal the theme of the next challenge:
MAKE IT OUTDOORS
You have until the beginning of July to make something related to the outdoors. As Ana said, the outdoors is pretty big, so here are some ideas:
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!
Flint OS loves the Raspberry Pi and STEM education. We have created a comprehensive set of JavaScript APIs to interface with the Raspberry Pi hardware and peripherals, providing young users to understand programming and electronics by the most intuitive JavaScript language. We also welcome educators and the community to create new courses with the open web technologies stack.
Flint OS can be deployed and managed across schools and organisations big or small, via a centralised cloud-driven management portal. Either utilising older hardware or incorporated into new hardware giving business customers flexibility in their purchasing decisions.
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!
Turn an old pair of binoculars (or a telescope) into a long range recording device with PiNoCulars. This great project adds a Raspberry Pi Camera Module to an old pair of binoculars.
The Raspberry Pi Camera Module is a great tool for digital making. With it, you can quickly add an 8-megapixel camera to the Raspberry Pi board.
It connects directly to the Raspberry Pi using the CSI camera interface, a thin cable socket on the Raspberry Pi board.
The Camera Module is fantastic for video and still photography projects, such as time-lapse cameras. OpenCV software makes it easy to add computer vision to your projects. With this, you can train a Raspberry Pi to identify objects and react accordingly.
Turn Binoculars into PiNoculars
The PiNoculars project is one of our favourite Camera Module hacks.
Created by digital maker Josh Williams, PiNoculars are a regular set of binoculars, with a Raspberry Pi Camera module fixed over one of the eyepieces.
The Raspberry Pi is connected to the top of the binoculars along with a touchscreen display. The whole assembly is powered by a Goal Zero AA battery pack.
“I was on 18-hour road trip back from Colorado to Michigan with my wife, and I was restless,” Josh tells us. “I had brought the Raspberry Pi and Pi Camera Module along to play around with time-lapse photos in the mountains.”
When Josh looked at his pair of binoculars, he had a brainwave. “Raspberry Pi and Camera Module and duct tape made for a crude prototype,” says Josh.
When he got home, Josh set about refining the build. He now has detailed instructions for two different types of PiNoculars. One follows the duct tape and foam route, while the second is a more complex build using laser cutting to create a mount for the Raspberry Pi and touchscreen.
“I used Adafruit’s [PiTFT] capacitive touchscreen,” says Josh. “Their tutorials made it incredibly easy to attach to the Pi. Josh suggests that makers read Adafruit’s DIY WiFi Raspberry Pi touchscreen camera tutorial by Phillip Burgess and the Ruiz Brothers.
Adafruit PiTFT Plus 320×240 2.8″ TFT + Capacitive Touchscreen: 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 capacitive touch overlay. That’s right, instead of a resistive touchscreen, which requires a fingernail or stylus, you can now use a fingerpad. The screen looks much nicer, with a black bezel and glass overlay. If you don’t need a capacitive touchscreen, check out the resistive touch version. 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!
