Fun activity from the Exploratorium Teacher Institute Project.
Chill out with a frozen water balloon and explore some beautiful science.
Have a ball experimenting with a frozen water balloon—and learn about water chemistry, phase changes, and density.
Fun activity from the Exploratorium Teacher Institute Project.
Chill out with a frozen water balloon and explore some beautiful science.
Have a ball experimenting with a frozen water balloon—and learn about water chemistry, phase changes, and density.
From MIT Technology Review:
But while researchers have learned how to create 3D images that easily fool our visual systems, nobody has found a satisfactory way to create synthetic 3D sounds that convincingly fool our aural systems.
Today, that looks set to change at least in part, thanks to the work of Ruohan Gao at the University of Texas at and Kristen Grauman at Facebook Research. They have used a trick that humans also exploit to teach an AI system to convert ordinary mono sounds into pretty good 3D sound. The researchers call it 2.5D sound.
A new guide in the Adafruit Learning System today: a Motion Controlled Matrix Bed Clock
A multi-function Raspberry Pi based clock display by your bedside!
The 64×64 LED Matrix is a great platform to display anything you care about. Like the time and what day it is.
With the motion and light sensor, the display can be made to dim or blank out so it will not disturb you while sleeping. A simple wave motion in the dark room is enough to re-enable the display for a short period.
The 3D printed harness file is available with this project, so you can adapt it to suit your bed or desk space needs. In the current form, two printed parts are glued together with regular table pin connectors.
The code is written in Python and has lots of potential for easy improvements. The current implementation gives you the ability to connect to an MQTT broker for subscribing and publishing events in a canonical IOT setup. But you need not to worry about that if a clock is all you care about. Underneath the Python code, this project uses the display driver written by Henner Zeller, which makes the display fast and stable when used together with the Adafruit parts.
A new guide in the Adafruit Learning System today: a Motion Controlled Matrix Bed Clock
A multi-function Raspberry Pi based clock display by your bedside!
The 64×64 LED Matrix is a great platform to display anything you care about. Like the time and what day it is.
The 3D printed harness file is available with this project, so you can adapt it to suit your bed or desk space needs. In the current form, two printed parts are glued together with regular table pin connectors.
The code is written in Python and has lots of potential for easy improvements. The current implementation gives you the ability to connect to an MQTT broker for subscribing and publishing events in a canonical IOT setup. But you need not to worry about that if a clock is all you care about. Underneath the Python code, this project uses the display driver written by Henner Zeller, which makes the display fast and stable when used together with the Adafruit parts.
This new guide in the Adafruit Learning System goes over the development of State Machines for tracking the state of an electronic project.
What’s a state? Let’s use the example of the states of matter: solid. liquid, and gas (we’ll ignore plasma to keep this simple). There are well defined transitions to move between these states:
- melting transitions from solid to liquid,
- freezing transitions from liquid to solid,
- evaporating transitions from liquid to gas,
- condensing transitions from gas to liquid, and
- sublimating transitions from solid to gas.
Each of these have conditions in terms of material, temperature, and pressure that control whether or not the transition can happen. A simplified example of this is that when its temperature is less than 0C (32F), water will freeze transitioning it from a liquid state to a solid state.
The guide describes two methods using the recently released New Year’s Eve Ball Drop tutorial as a demonstration. Algorithms are coded in CircuitPython.
Along with some awesome slow motion shots this video breaks down the science of breaking glass. Shared by The Action Lab on YouTube:
In this video I talk about the actual speed of glass breaking, then I show you how fast glass cracks actually propagate by showing footage from a Shimadzu hypervision HPV-X camera filmed at 10 million frames per second. I talk about how the speed of glass actually varies per glass type and during the glass breaking.
In this guide we will create a simple knob sketcher toy using a graphical display and two potentiometers, also known as trim pots or just pots. We'll go over the basic idea of drawing a pixel to the display as well as how to use the pots to generate a variable voltage. The two concepts will be put together to create a couple different variations of a knob sketcher toy.
This guide uses an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4 Express as the main board. However, you could adapt this to other boards that run CircuitPython and have the available pins. You might need to change the example code to match the pins for your board.
The other key part for this project is a graphical display. This guide uses the two displays below, but you could also substitute for other similar displays as long as there is a CircuitPython driver available.
You'll need a pair of potentiometers also. The two options used in this guide are linked below. Pots are also pretty common things, so any similar ones would likely work.
In addition, you'll need a breadboard and some hookup wires. A button is used for the second knob sketcher. Details are provided later in the guide.
Along with some awesome slow motion shots this video breaks down the science of breaking glass. Shared by The Action Lab on YouTube:
In this video I talk about the actual speed of glass breaking, then I show you how fast glass cracks actually propagate by showing footage from a Shimadzu hypervision HPV-X camera filmed at 10 million frames per second. I talk about how the speed of glass actually varies per glass type and during the glass breaking.
From the A to synth blog:
I’m trying to figure out a bit more about the minimoog filter, to be able to use it in my XM8. I’ve started by simulating a circuit. I first drew up the Yusynth version, but thought the results were a bit odd so I switched to the Schmitzbits one. I later realised that I probably should have used a 0-10V CV with the Yusynth one to cover the full frequency range, this worked well with the Schmitzbits one.
First off is having a look at current-to-frequency ratios
I was curious what would happen if I changed the cap values from Schmitz to Yusynth, i.e. 22nF to 47nF. Turns out that by doubling the capacitance, you also double the amount of current needed per Hz. Not really that surprising when you think of it at it takes twice the current to charge the cap with the same speed.
In practice, this means that by doubling the capacitance, but leaving the rest of the circuit – including the control voltage – the same, the cutoff frequency will drop by one octave.
In general, increasing or decreasing a capacitor value will change the absolute cutoff value a certain control current will result in. But it probably still holds true that doubling the current will double the frequency and thus give a cutoff one octave up. I assume the same is true for changing the resistors between the steps in the ladder.
From the A to synth blog:
I’m trying to figure out a bit more about the minimoog filter, to be able to use it in my XM8. I’ve started by simulating a circuit. I first drew up the Yusynth version, but thought the results were a bit odd so I switched to the Schmitzbits one. I later realised that I probably should have used a 0-10V CV with the Yusynth one to cover the full frequency range, this worked well with the Schmitzbits one.
First off is having a look at current-to-frequency ratios
I was curious what would happen if I changed the cap values from Schmitz to Yusynth, i.e. 22nF to 47nF. Turns out that by doubling the capacitance, you also double the amount of current needed per Hz. Not really that surprising when you think of it at it takes twice the current to charge the cap with the same speed.
In practice, this means that by doubling the capacitance, but leaving the rest of the circuit – including the control voltage – the same, the cutoff frequency will drop by one octave.
In general, increasing or decreasing a capacitor value will change the absolute cutoff value a certain control current will result in. But it probably still holds true that doubling the current will double the frequency and thus give a cutoff one octave up. I assume the same is true for changing the resistors between the steps in the ladder.
Via Ed Yong for The Atlantic. On October 31, 1832, Charles Darwin walked onto the deck of the HMS Beagle and realized that the ship had been boarded by thousands of intruders. Tiny red spiders, each a millimeter wide, were everywhere. The ship was 60 miles offshore, so the creatures must have floated over from the Argentinian mainland. “All the ropes were coated and fringed with gossamer web,” Darwin wrote.
Spiders have no wings, but they can take to the air nonetheless. They’ll climb to an exposed point, raise their abdomens to the sky, extrude strands of silk, and float away. This behavior is called ballooning. It might carry spiders away from predators and competitors, or toward new lands with abundant resources. But whatever the reason for it, it’s clearly an effective means of travel. Spiders have been found two-and-a-half miles up in the air, and 1,000 miles out to sea.
Erica Morley and Daniel Robert have an explanation. The duo, who work at the University of Bristol, has shown that spiders can sense the Earth’s electric field, and use it to launch themselves into the air.
Every day, around 40,000 thunderstorms crackle around the world, collectively turning Earth’s atmosphere into a giant electrical circuit. The upper reaches of the atmosphere have a positive charge, and the planet’s surface has a negative one. Even on sunny days with cloudless skies, the air carries a voltage of around 100 volts for every meter above the ground. In foggy or stormy conditions, that gradient might increase to tens of thousands of volts per meter.
Ballooning spiders operate within this planetary electric field. When their silk leaves their bodies, it typically picks up a negative charge. This repels the similar negative charges on the surfaces on which the spiders sit, creating enough force to lift them into the air. And spiders can increase those forces by climbing onto twigs, leaves, or blades of grass. Plants, being earthed, have the same negative charge as the ground that they grow upon, but they protrude into the positively charged air. This creates substantial electric fields between the air around them and the tips of their leaves and branches—and the spiders ballooning from those tips.
Via Ed Yong for The Atlantic. On October 31, 1832, Charles Darwin walked onto the deck of the HMS Beagle and realized that the ship had been boarded by thousands of intruders. Tiny red spiders, each a millimeter wide, were everywhere. The ship was 60 miles offshore, so the creatures must have floated over from the Argentinian mainland. “All the ropes were coated and fringed with gossamer web,” Darwin wrote.
Spiders have no wings, but they can take to the air nonetheless. They’ll climb to an exposed point, raise their abdomens to the sky, extrude strands of silk, and float away. This behavior is called ballooning. It might carry spiders away from predators and competitors, or toward new lands with abundant resources. But whatever the reason for it, it’s clearly an effective means of travel. Spiders have been found two-and-a-half miles up in the air, and 1,000 miles out to sea.
Erica Morley and Daniel Robert have an explanation. The duo, who work at the University of Bristol, has shown that spiders can sense the Earth’s electric field, and use it to launch themselves into the air.
Every day, around 40,000 thunderstorms crackle around the world, collectively turning Earth’s atmosphere into a giant electrical circuit. The upper reaches of the atmosphere have a positive charge, and the planet’s surface has a negative one. Even on sunny days with cloudless skies, the air carries a voltage of around 100 volts for every meter above the ground. In foggy or stormy conditions, that gradient might increase to tens of thousands of volts per meter.
Ballooning spiders operate within this planetary electric field. When their silk leaves their bodies, it typically picks up a negative charge. This repels the similar negative charges on the surfaces on which the spiders sit, creating enough force to lift them into the air. And spiders can increase those forces by climbing onto twigs, leaves, or blades of grass. Plants, being earthed, have the same negative charge as the ground that they grow upon, but they protrude into the positively charged air. This creates substantial electric fields between the air around them and the tips of their leaves and branches—and the spiders ballooning from those tips.
Walking around BrasÃlia some years ago I had the distinct feeling that I was doing it “wrong” because, of course, I was. The center of BrasilÃa is organized along the Exio Monumental, featuring an array of government and other important buildings that form a long spine.
This is a place designed to be “read” at the speed of a vehicle, so taking in BrasÃlia by foot is like watching a movie in slow motion. It turns out, both can be rewarding in unexpected ways.
Can a film be consumed at the speed of reading a book? Yes, just as a car city can be enjoyed on foot. Slowing things down to an extreme measure creates room for appreciation of the object, as in BrasÃlia, but the prolonged duration also starts to shift the relationship between object, viewer, and context.
A Very Slow Movie Player (VSMP) doesn’t tell you the time; it helps you see yourself against the smear of time.
VSMP is an object that contains a Raspberry Pi computer, custom software, and a reflective ePaper display (similar to a Kindle), all housed inside a 3D printed case. Every 2.5 minutes a frame from the film stored on the computer’s memory card is extracted, converted to black and white using a dithering algorithm, and then communicated to the reflective ePaper display. This adds up to playing the film at a rate of 24 frames per hour, which is in contrast to the traditional speed of 24 frames per second. That’s the slow part, obviously.
You can read Bryan’s thorough article here and see it in action in the video below.
Walking around BrasÃlia some years ago I had the distinct feeling that I was doing it “wrong” because, of course, I was. The center of BrasilÃa is organized along the Exio Monumental, featuring an array of government and other important buildings that form a long spine.
This is a place designed to be “read” at the speed of a vehicle, so taking in BrasÃlia by foot is like watching a movie in slow motion. It turns out, both can be rewarding in unexpected ways.
Can a film be consumed at the speed of reading a book? Yes, just as a car city can be enjoyed on foot. Slowing things down to an extreme measure creates room for appreciation of the object, as in BrasÃlia, but the prolonged duration also starts to shift the relationship between object, viewer, and context.
A Very Slow Movie Player (VSMP) doesn’t tell you the time; it helps you see yourself against the smear of time.
VSMP is an object that contains a Raspberry Pi computer, custom software, and a reflective ePaper display (similar to a Kindle), all housed inside a 3D printed case. Every 2.5 minutes a frame from the film stored on the computer’s memory card is extracted, converted to black and white using a dithering algorithm, and then communicated to the reflective ePaper display. This adds up to playing the film at a rate of 24 frames per hour, which is in contrast to the traditional speed of 24 frames per second. That’s the slow part, obviously.
You can read Bryan’s thorough article here and see it in action in the video below.
via MOTHERBORD
Biersteker’s artwork is based on a single tree in Chengdu, a city of 14 million people in southwestern China. The tree is laden with sensors connected to its roots, leaves, and branches, which collect 1,600 data points. These sensors are monitoring environmental conditions such as CO2 level, temperature, moisture in the soil, and light level, which are fed to an algorithm to generate digital rings every second.
These rings can be used to document the tree’s health in real time, which makes the effects of climate change on nature more accessible to humans, Biersteker told me in an email. When the rings are far apart and closer to a perfect circle, this indicates that the tree is healthy and growing rapidly. However during days with heavy pollution, such as during a recent major traffic jam in Chengdu, the rings become distorted and crammed together.
Andy posts on The Ongoing Struggle a story that anyone developing an electronic product but especially an Internet of Things (IoT) product should heed.
The subtitle is the NTPmare shortly after Christmas:
Nearly two years ago, on the afternoon of Monday 16th January 2017, I received an interesting BitFolk support ticket from a non-customer. The sender identified themselves as a senior software engineer at NetThings UK Ltd.
85.119.80.232is actually one of the IP addresses of one of BitFolk’s customer-facing NTP servers. It was also, until a few weeks before this email, part of the NTP Pool project.“Was” being the important issue here. In late December of 2016 I had withdrawn BitFolk’s NTP servers from the public pool and firewalled them off to non-customers.
Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a means by which a computer can use multiple other computers, often from across the Internet on completely different networks under different administrative control, to accurately determine what the current time is. By using several different computers, a small number of them can be inaccurate or even downright broken or hostile, and still the protocol can detect the “bad” clocks and only take into account the more accurate majority.
NTP is supposed to be used in a hierarchical fashion: A small number of servers have hardware directly attached from which they can very accurately tell the time, e.g. an atomic clock, GPS, etc. Those are called “Stratum 1” servers. A larger number of servers use the stratum 1 servers to set their own time, then serve that time to a much larger population of clients, and so on.
Basically it seemed that NetThings UK Ltd made remote controlled thermostats and lighting controllers for large retail spaces etc. And their devices had one of BitFolk’s IP addresses burnt into them at the factory. And they could not be identified or remotely updated.
Never, never, never hardcode someone else’s Internet address into your code and rely on it 100% with no way to remotely change things. BitFolk was perfectly in their rights to make the IP private for their own security, yet Netthings was using their services, albeit lightly, to rely on their products being able to tell time.
The Company (Nettalk) ceased to trade with effect from 15 November 2018.
So the company went out of business. All their customers now have devices that fail to work.
All should heed this story when developing their products. Read the full story here.
35 years ago today, the Toronto Star published an article by preeminent scientist and science fiction author Isaac Asimov.
Asimov was asked what life would be like in 2019, a generation later than that time and 35 years after the book 1984. Here is some of his thoughts:
Three considerations must dominate our thoughts: 1. Nuclear war. 2. Computerization. 3. Space utilization.
The jobs that will appear will, inevitably, involve the design, the manufacture, the installation, the maintenance and repair of computers and robots, and an understanding of whole new industries that these “intelligent” machines will make possible.
This means that a vast change in the nature of education must take place, and entire populations must be made “computer-literate” and must be taught to deal with a “high-tech” world.
But from here, things become optimistic beyond what we have been able to accomplish:
The consequences of human irresponsibility in terms of waste and pollution will become more apparent and unbearable with time and again, attempts to deal with this will become more strenuous. It is to be hoped that by 2019, advances in technology will place tools in our hands that will help accelerate the process whereby the deterioration of the environment will be reversed.
Education, which must be revolutionized in the new world, will be revolutionized by the very agency that requires the revolution — the computer. Schools will undoubtedly still exist, but a good schoolteacher can do no better than to inspire curiosity which an interested student can then satisfy at home at the console of his computer outlet. There will be an opportunity finally for every youngster, and indeed, every person, to learn what he or she wants to learn. in his or her own time, at his or her own speed, in his or her own way.
Finally, Asimov’s predictions for space are also a bit more optimistic than we have been able to fully achieve:
By 2019, we will be back on the moon in force. There will be on it not Americans only, but an international force of some size; and not to collect moon rocks only, but to establish a mining station that will process moon soil and take it to places in space where it can be smelted into metals, ceramics. glass and concrete — construction materials for the large structures that will be put in orbit about the Earth.
In addition, observatories will be built in space to increase our knowledge of the universe immeasurably; as will laboratories, where experiments can be conducted that might be unsafe, or impossible, on Earth’s surface.
By 2019, the first space settlement should be on the drawing boards; and may perhaps be under actual construction.
He ends by saying “In fact, although the world of 2019 will he far changed from the present world of 1984, that will only be a barometer of far greater changes planned for the years still to come.”
Read the fill article here.
And as for how this article came to pass, the Star writes:
EDITOR’S NOTE
How and why did the Star get Asimov to write for us back in 1983?
Vian Ewart, who was Insight editor then, says the idea for an Orwell series came naturally, and he recalls the project fondly to this day. He put together a team including a writer (Ellie Tesher), an illustrator and layout designer.
“Asimov was popular at the time” for his science fiction, Ewart says, “so I simply phoned him at his New York home and asked him. He loved the idea of a 1984 series and was pleased to be ‘the lead-off writer.’ He was a very gracious man and charged $1 a word.”
35 years ago today, the Toronto Star published an article by preeminent scientist and science fiction author Isaac Asimov.
Asimov was asked what life would be like in 2019, a generation later than that time and 35 years after the book 1984. Here is some of his thoughts:
Three considerations must dominate our thoughts: 1. Nuclear war. 2. Computerization. 3. Space utilization.
The jobs that will appear will, inevitably, involve the design, the manufacture, the installation, the maintenance and repair of computers and robots, and an understanding of whole new industries that these “intelligent” machines will make possible.
This means that a vast change in the nature of education must take place, and entire populations must be made “computer-literate” and must be taught to deal with a “high-tech” world.
But from here, things become optimistic beyond what we have been able to accomplish:
The consequences of human irresponsibility in terms of waste and pollution will become more apparent and unbearable with time and again, attempts to deal with this will become more strenuous. It is to be hoped that by 2019, advances in technology will place tools in our hands that will help accelerate the process whereby the deterioration of the environment will be reversed.
Education, which must be revolutionized in the new world, will be revolutionized by the very agency that requires the revolution — the computer. Schools will undoubtedly still exist, but a good schoolteacher can do no better than to inspire curiosity which an interested student can then satisfy at home at the console of his computer outlet. There will be an opportunity finally for every youngster, and indeed, every person, to learn what he or she wants to learn. in his or her own time, at his or her own speed, in his or her own way.
Finally, Asimov’s predictions for space are also a bit more optimistic than we have been able to fully achieve:
By 2019, we will be back on the moon in force. There will be on it not Americans only, but an international force of some size; and not to collect moon rocks only, but to establish a mining station that will process moon soil and take it to places in space where it can be smelted into metals, ceramics. glass and concrete — construction materials for the large structures that will be put in orbit about the Earth.
In addition, observatories will be built in space to increase our knowledge of the universe immeasurably; as will laboratories, where experiments can be conducted that might be unsafe, or impossible, on Earth’s surface.
By 2019, the first space settlement should be on the drawing boards; and may perhaps be under actual construction.
He ends by saying “In fact, although the world of 2019 will he far changed from the present world of 1984, that will only be a barometer of far greater changes planned for the years still to come.”
Read the fill article here.
And as for how this article came to pass, the Star writes:
EDITOR’S NOTE
How and why did the Star get Asimov to write for us back in 1983?
Vian Ewart, who was Insight editor then, says the idea for an Orwell series came naturally, and he recalls the project fondly to this day. He put together a team including a writer (Ellie Tesher), an illustrator and layout designer.
“Asimov was popular at the time” for his science fiction, Ewart says, “so I simply phoned him at his New York home and asked him. He loved the idea of a 1984 series and was pleased to be ‘the lead-off writer.’ He was a very gracious man and charged $1 a word.”
Great read from Smithsonian on the life and work of Johannes Hevelius.
In the rare books collection of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, a large tome tied with string sits in an ivory box that looks like it came from a bakery. At one point, the book belonged to Edwin Hubble, who revealed that galaxies exist beyond our own and that the universe is expanding, among other things, at nearby Mount Wilson Observatory. Between the well-worn leather cover boards, I find some of the first detailed maps of the lunar surface, illustrated and engraved in the 17th century. As I delicately place the volume back in the box, the covers leave a light brown residue on my fingertips—a small remnant of one man’s quest to tame the moon.
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is being used everyday for a wide variety of uses online, so it’s no surprise that music is being generated using it. While it might not win any awards, in most cases it’s at least passable. But music is mathematical by nature, which makes it a good candidate for AI creation. Lyrics, on the other hand, are a different kettle of fish that AI still can’t get its arms around.
Here’s an example from the article of what a Taylor Swift song generator produced:
i’m not your friends / and it rains when you‘re not speaking / but you think tim mcgraw / and i’m pacing down
via MIT News
To overcome these limitations, Boyden and his students decided to adapt a technique that his lab developed a few years ago for high-resolution imaging of brain tissue. This technique, known as expansion microscopy, involves embedding tissue into a hydrogel and then expanding it, allowing for high resolution imaging with a regular microscope. Hundreds of research groups in biology and medicine are now using expansion microscopy, since it enables 3-D visualization of cells and tissues with ordinary hardware.
By reversing this process, the researchers found that they could create large-scale objects embedded in expanded hydrogels and then shrink them to the nanoscale, an approach that they call “implosion fabrication.”
via Koboto Music
This is a step by step tutorial on how I recreated The Terminator Theme for my “Minute Synth” Series on Instagram. Check It out to see which Eurorack Modules I used and What I did to dial in the sounds.
Hear more from Koboto Music
This new technique for 3D printing bone and cartilage tissue could lead to even bigger medical advancements. Via Digital Trends:
The process involves taking human stem cells and mixing them with a sodium alginate material derived from seaweed. This can be printed into particles which, once dissolved, leaves tiny breathable pores. Combined into strands it is possible to create patches of tissue. The undifferentiated stem cells are used to convert the tissue into specific cells, such as bone or cartilage. The team who worked on the project are also looking at how this same technique could be used to create muscle, fat, and an assortment of other tissues.
“These patches can be implanted in bone or cartilage, depending on which cells they are,” Ibrahim Ozbolat, associate professor of engineering science and mechanics at Penn State, said in a statement. “They can be used for osteoarthritis, patches for plastic surgery such as the cartilage in the nasal septum, knee restoration, and other bone or cartilage defects.”
From TheTNR on Hackster.io:
A quick intro to POV or persistence of vision: Any AC voltage light is actually blinking on and off at a frequency of 60hz or 60 times per second. Our brains perceive this as constant light. It is this concept which we will be taking advantage of, in order to create a spherical image using a single row of LEDs. We used 58 LED for each half. So you need totaly 116 LEDs. And will use a 3D printer for circle. You will find details on video.
We’ve got so much happening here at Adafruit that it’s not always easy to keep up! Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Each week we’ll be posting a handy round-up of what we’ve been up to, ranging from learn guides to blog articles, videos, and more.
Mike Barela shared some awesome info on how to use wedges of solder paste for better manual reflow that he learned via cj at @scalarelectric on Twitter.
More BLOG:
NYE Circuit Playground Drop – Drop into the new year with a blinged out Circuit Playground Express!
This guide will show how to build a simple drop mechanism that mimics the famous Times Square Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve in New York City. Read more.
More LEARN
Browse all that’s new in the Adafruit Learning System here!
We’ve got so much happening here at Adafruit that it’s not always easy to keep up! Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Each week we’ll be posting a handy round-up of what we’ve been up to, ranging from learn guides to blog articles, videos, and more.
Mike Barela shared some awesome info on how to use wedges of solder paste for better manual reflow that he learned via cj at @scalarelectric on Twitter.
More BLOG:
NYE Circuit Playground Drop – Drop into the new year with a blinged out Circuit Playground Express!
This guide will show how to build a simple drop mechanism that mimics the famous Times Square Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve in New York City. Read more.
More LEARN
Browse all that’s new in the Adafruit Learning System here!
We’ve got so much happening here at Adafruit that it’s not always easy to keep up! Don’t fret, we’ve got you covered. Each week we’ll be posting a handy round-up of what we’ve been up to, ranging from learn guides to blog articles, videos, and more.
Mike Barela shared some awesome info on how to use wedges of solder paste for better manual reflow that he learned via cj at @scalarelectric on Twitter.
More BLOG:
NYE Circuit Playground Drop – Drop into the new year with a blinged out Circuit Playground Express!
This guide will show how to build a simple drop mechanism that mimics the famous Times Square Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve in New York City. Read more.
More LEARN
Browse all that’s new in the Adafruit Learning System here!
Yay, we made it! 2018 here we come. Back in November, Limor had this idea to make a New Years themed project. I worked on the CAD and mechanical design while Dave Astels worked on the code.
Using Circuit Python in this project was an excellent decision as it allowed us to make adjustments quickly so we could fine tune the ball drop with synchronized audio.
The Adafruit Feather ecosystem is heavy in this project. The Tripler FeatherWing manages boards nicely and you get extra pins and power rails. Easy to swap in and out different boards.
I was able to 3D print big dual extruded domes, thanks to our new Ultimaker S5. This cuts down the print time from 21 hours to just 8hrs for a single dome by using a bigger nozzle and layerheight.
2020 aluminum extrusion works wells as a framing for builds because its strong and lightweight. With 3D printed roller wheels and ball bearings it can be made into a slider with a linear railing system.
Be sure to check out the learn guide for code, cad files and full assembly documentation.
The New Horizons spacecraft has been on a 13 year journey to the far reaches of our Solar System. Via the Verge:
Just after midnight on January 1st, a NASA spacecraft will whiz past the most distant space rock that’s ever been visited in our Solar System. This remote interplanetary flyby will be over in a blink. But if successful, the event could tell us a whole lot about the objects that dominate the far reaches of our cosmic neighborhood.
This new rock is unlike anything we’ve ever visited before. It’s a tiny frigid object about the size of New York City, orbiting in an area of the Solar System known as the Kuiper Belt. This region of space, located beyond the orbit of Neptune, is filled with possibly millions of small frozen objects. It’s a bit like a super distant Asteroid Belt. Except the bodies in the Kuiper Belt are thought to be incredibly primitive — leftover remnants from the birth of the Solar System.
LiDAR (an acronym for light detection and ranging) is a technology that measures the distance to a target by shining a pulsed laser light on it and analyzing the reflections.
The surface that you are bouncing the laser light off of will impact how good of a reading you get. Smooth, reflective surfaces will tend to bounce the light away from the sensor depending on the angle at which the light is hitting the surface. If the light is coming straight at the surface, it will reflect directly back and you will get a good reading. The further from straight-on you get, the poorer of a reading you will get, eventually you'll get no reading at all. Glass, mirrors, and any highly polished surface will be have this way.
From the Garmin LiDAR Lite datasheet
If the surface is rougher (i.e. not smooth) light will reflect off in various directions, some of it making it back to the sensor and giving a reading. Examples are paper, wood (not highly polished), and pets.
From the Garmin LiDAR Lite datasheet
For more information, see the Wikipedia page on reflection.
LiDAR is often seen used with a rotating sensor that takes distance readings at various angles as the sensor assembly rotates. This provides distances in a circle around the sensor. This data can then be used to construct 2D maps.
Autonomous vehicles (i.e. self driving cars) often use LiDAR to map out the space around them.
The Garmin LiDAR Lite is a simple, non-rotating sensor that measures the distance to the target it is pointed at.
In this guide we will build a range finder, or electronic tape measure if you like, using the new Garmin Lidar-Lite. This is a laser based distance sensor that works by bouncing a modulated laser beam against an surface and measuring how long it take for a reflection to come back.
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These nice switches are perfect for use with breadboard and perfboard projects. They have 0.1" spacing and snap in nicely into a solderless breadboard. They're easy to switch...
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The datasheet calls for a 680 uF electrolytic across the power connection, but a 470 uF seems to work fine.
This project would look good on anyone’s shelf. Detailed guide from lonesoulsurfer on Instructables:
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Vacuum tubes are an amazing thing to behold! I actually think I might have a slight vacuum tube obsession. Every time I come across them on my journeys I’m compelled to buy them.
The problem I have though is what to do with them all! Most just sit in a draw and I periodically pull them out and to admire them. I have made a display in the past (check out the ‘ible here) but I had to damage it to enable it to be illuminated with an LED.
You can actually heat up the heater coils inside the tube with 6.5v and they will softly glow. The problem though is they get very hot and could be dangerous to touch. So instead I decided to light them up with LED’s but this time not damaging the actual tube. I also included a circuit where the LED’s react to sound, making them flash and dance to sound. I included a way to turn this off so the LED’s are always on.
I need one of these! MajorOCD shared this project on Thingiverse!
I made this for my wife to hold her thread spools. The posts are printed separate and on their side for strength. Just slide them up from the bottom and push them in place. Depending on your printer’s tolerances, you may have to hammer them in place or use glue if they are too loose. Mine pushed very firmly in place with no need for glue.
The Arcade Hacker blog posts some fantastic news on reverse engineering the security in the Sega System 16 / 18 / 24 / X.
Dear all, after some lengthy testing we are happy to release full details on the security programing of the Hitachi FD1089 / FD1094 cpus used in Sega’s System 16 / 18 / 24 / X motherboards.
This guide is the result of several years of work by a small group of arcade enthusiasts to unravel the secrets of the security implementation found in one of the most loved and popular arcade game platforms. Thanks to this work it is now possible to fully preserve most Sega 16 bit systems enabled with security as fully working unmodified originals.
The work involves an Arduino Mega with a large shield to tie the pins to the Hitachi chip.
Having inserted the module in the socket we can proceed to program the security keys by typing w and pressing enter. Make sure you replace the module battery if necessary before attempting a key load, a new battery will last at least 20-30 years so don’t expect to have to repeat this often. Once the process finishes you can disconnect the Arduino module from your computer and remove the cpu module.
The electronupdate blog posts a teardown of an induction speaker.
An induction speaker. Pickup is via a couple of transformers. The most interesting part, however, is the MD8403 class-d amplifier chip.
See the post here and the video below.
This project turns your NeoTrellis M4 into a control surface for Ableton Live similar to functionality found on a Novation Launchpad or Ableton Push device. It allows you to start and stop 32 individual audio or MIDI clips with the touch of a button and each clip is colored according to values sent from Live's UI.
Of course, you'll also need an installation of Ableton Live. The Live Launcher plugin device is written in MaxMSP, so you'll need either Live 10 Suite (which includes Max for Live) or Ableton Live 10 + the Max for Live add-on. The Live Launcher is likely compatible with Live 9, but has not been tested at the time of this writing.
Shared by ianderson3 on Instructables:
This Instructable will focus on how to give a dead Roomba a new brain (Raspberry Pi), eyes (Webcam), and a way to control everything from a web browser.
There are a lot of Roomba hacks that allow control via the serial interface. I have not been fortunate enough to come across a Roomba that has current firmware or working motherboard. Either the Roomba is too old or the Roomba is dead. I found the Roomba I used for this project in a local thrift store bargain bin for $5. It still had a decent battery, but a dead motherboard. (I also found the webcam at the same thrift store for around $5). All I’m using from the original Roomba are the motors, chassis, and battery. You do not have to use a Roomba for this project. You could use different motors, wheels, and chassis if you like. I just fancy turning a piece of junk into something usable.
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!
