We thoroughly reading through this piece from No Film School (and were so glad to confirm our NoHo Hank improvising suspicions). Make sure you read all the way through for Buchanan’s advise to aspiring editors:
Buchanan and the show’s other editor, Kyle Reiter, attempt to make every scene as funny, dramatic, or tense as they possibly can. It’s then a process of narrowing things down and nailing tone.
“And then you sit down and you watch the whole thing together, and that’s when you start to feel like, ‘Okay, we’ve gone too broad comedy here,’” he said. “‘We can’t have this broad comedy scene with this super-dramatic scene right after.’”
Adafruit PDM Microphone Breakout with JST SH Connector: An exotic new microphone has arrived in the Adafruit shop, a PDM MEMS Microphone! PDM is the ‘third’ kind of microphone you can integrate with electronics, apart from analog or I2S. These microphones are very commonly used in products, but are rarely seen in maker projects. Still, they have some benefits so we thought we’d offer a breakout for the shop.
Working with Grove requires no soldering. Just plug the sensors, actuators, or displays into this shield via a Grove cable (not included), so you can focus on coding and making!
Robots are everywhere! They vacuum our houses, work in our factories, help us learn at school, and play with us at home. They sample rocks from other planets, survey disaster zones from the air, and bring back images from the bottom of the ocean.
Bots! by Kathy Ceceri – Book and Parts Bundle: We wanted to offer a pack that has everything you need to follow along the book and complete the projects. Many of the parts included are common, re-usable components, so you will be able to build on what you’ve learned and come up with new inventions!
What better way to dip your maker toes into the inviting waters of electronics and robotics than with this bundle which includes goodies to follow all the chapters? No soldering required, great for any age and experience!
FTDI Serial TTL-232 USB Type C Cable: Just about all electronics use a UART serial port with RX and TX pins for debugging, bootloading, programming, serial output, etc. But it’s rare for a computer to have a serial port anymore. Thus, a serial cable is an essential part of any electrical engineer’s toolkit.
This is a USB C to TTL serial cable with an FTDI FT232R usb/serial chip embedded in the head. It has a 6-pin socket at the end with 5V power and ground, as well as RX, TX, RTS and CTS at 3V logic levels. Useful whenever you want to communicate with a TTL serial device such as an Arduino Pro Mini or ESP breakout, and the pinout will match up exactly to any ‘FTDI’ 6-pin header.
Rainbow Pibow Coupé 4 for Raspberry Pi 4: What’s that you say? You just received your new Raspberry Pi 4 in the mail and want to get a new colorful case? Well, you are in luck! We now have this new slim, hackable, and attractive case for your new Raspberry Pi 4! This is the classic Pimoroni rainbow case in a slim fit, so you can fit HATs, pHATs and bonnets on top.
Pimoroni Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi: Looking for another way to keep your Raspberry Pi cool? Hook up Pimoroni’s miniature 5V Fan SHIM and prevent your hard-working Pi from overheating! It’ll keep your Pi running at top performance and it’s stealthy-silent. The software will turn on the fan only when necessary, and has an RGB LED status indicator as well.
Designed for use with the high-power Raspberry Pi 4, but will also work just fine with the 3 B+ and 3 A+
The Things Indoor LoRaWAN WiFi Gateway – 8 Channel LoRa 900 MHz: Meet the affordable 8 Channel LoRa gateway from TTN, The Things Indoor Gateway! Simple name for a straight-to-the point product. It’s the new low cost, indoor multi-channel LoRaWAN gateway designed by The Things Network, so you know it will work perfectly with TTN. Make a free account, plug it in, follow the easy step-by-step installation instructions and you’ve got yourself a LoRaWAN to Internet gateway in under 5 minutes. No setup or usage fees.
Adafruit Perma-Proto 40-Pin Raspberry Pi Half-Size PCB Kit – with 2×20 Header: We put a PermaProto half-sized proto board in a blender with a Pi Cobbler and out emerged this very tasty confection – the 40-Pin PermaProto for Pi! It has the Cobbler baked right in. Simply solder the 2×20 box header in, and you get all the labeled breakouts with extra prototyping space, power rails, mounting holes and that gorgeous silk.
Adafruit Perma-Proto 40-Pin Raspberry Pi Breadboard PCB Kit – with 2×20 Header: We put a PermaProto full-sized proto board in a blender with a Pi Cobbler and out emerged this very tasty confection – the 40-Pin PermaProto for Pi! It has the Cobbler baked right in. Simply solder the 2×20 box header in, and you get all the labeled breakouts with tons of prototyping space, power rails, mounting holes and that gorgeous silk.
Adafruit PDM Microphone Breakout with JST SH Connector: An exotic new microphone has arrived in the Adafruit shop, a PDM MEMS Microphone! PDM is the ‘third’ kind of microphone you can integrate with electronics, apart from analog or I2S. These microphones are very commonly used in products, but are rarely seen in maker projects. Still, they have some benefits so we thought we’d offer a breakout for the shop.
Working with Grove requires no soldering. Just plug the sensors, actuators, or displays into this shield via a Grove cable (not included), so you can focus on coding and making!
Robots are everywhere! They vacuum our houses, work in our factories, help us learn at school, and play with us at home. They sample rocks from other planets, survey disaster zones from the air, and bring back images from the bottom of the ocean.
Bots! by Kathy Ceceri – Book and Parts Bundle: We wanted to offer a pack that has everything you need to follow along the book and complete the projects. Many of the parts included are common, re-usable components, so you will be able to build on what you’ve learned and come up with new inventions!
What better way to dip your maker toes into the inviting waters of electronics and robotics than with this bundle which includes goodies to follow all the chapters? No soldering required, great for any age and experience!
FTDI Serial TTL-232 USB Type C Cable: Just about all electronics use a UART serial port with RX and TX pins for debugging, bootloading, programming, serial output, etc. But it’s rare for a computer to have a serial port anymore. Thus, a serial cable is an essential part of any electrical engineer’s toolkit.
This is a USB C to TTL serial cable with an FTDI FT232R usb/serial chip embedded in the head. It has a 6-pin socket at the end with 5V power and ground, as well as RX, TX, RTS and CTS at 3V logic levels. Useful whenever you want to communicate with a TTL serial device such as an Arduino Pro Mini or ESP breakout, and the pinout will match up exactly to any ‘FTDI’ 6-pin header.
Rainbow Pibow Coupé 4 for Raspberry Pi 4: What’s that you say? You just received your new Raspberry Pi 4 in the mail and want to get a new colorful case? Well, you are in luck! We now have this new slim, hackable, and attractive case for your new Raspberry Pi 4! This is the classic Pimoroni rainbow case in a slim fit, so you can fit HATs, pHATs and bonnets on top.
Pimoroni Fan SHIM for Raspberry Pi: Looking for another way to keep your Raspberry Pi cool? Hook up Pimoroni’s miniature 5V Fan SHIM and prevent your hard-working Pi from overheating! It’ll keep your Pi running at top performance and it’s stealthy-silent. The software will turn on the fan only when necessary, and has an RGB LED status indicator as well.
Designed for use with the high-power Raspberry Pi 4, but will also work just fine with the 3 B+ and 3 A+
The Things Indoor LoRaWAN WiFi Gateway – 8 Channel LoRa 900 MHz: Meet the affordable 8 Channel LoRa gateway from TTN, The Things Indoor Gateway! Simple name for a straight-to-the point product. It’s the new low cost, indoor multi-channel LoRaWAN gateway designed by The Things Network, so you know it will work perfectly with TTN. Make a free account, plug it in, follow the easy step-by-step installation instructions and you’ve got yourself a LoRaWAN to Internet gateway in under 5 minutes. No setup or usage fees.
Adafruit Perma-Proto 40-Pin Raspberry Pi Half-Size PCB Kit – with 2×20 Header: We put a PermaProto half-sized proto board in a blender with a Pi Cobbler and out emerged this very tasty confection – the 40-Pin PermaProto for Pi! It has the Cobbler baked right in. Simply solder the 2×20 box header in, and you get all the labeled breakouts with extra prototyping space, power rails, mounting holes and that gorgeous silk.
Adafruit Perma-Proto 40-Pin Raspberry Pi Breadboard PCB Kit – with 2×20 Header: We put a PermaProto full-sized proto board in a blender with a Pi Cobbler and out emerged this very tasty confection – the 40-Pin PermaProto for Pi! It has the Cobbler baked right in. Simply solder the 2×20 box header in, and you get all the labeled breakouts with tons of prototyping space, power rails, mounting holes and that gorgeous silk.
Sphero acquires littleBits. It’s been a busy week, and we’re just getting to post about this now… Most of this is to collect some links and past coverage in one spot…
Sphero and littleBits have long been kindred spirits in the world of entertaining STEM toys, and soon they’ll be one and the same. Sphero this morning announced plans to buy the New York-based electronic building block company.
Founded in 2010 and 2011 respectively, Sphero (nee Orbotix) and littleBits took separate approaches, but ultimately ended up in similar spaces. Sphero first brought to life a smartphone-controlled 3D-printed ball that debuted at CES in 2011. That same year, Ayah Bdeir’s electronics kit side project became a serious business under the littleBits banner.
Both companies were alumni of Disney’s accelerator. Sphero leveraged that connection in the breakout Star Wars: The Force Awakens toy, a remote control BB-8. Ultimately, however, it flew too close to the sun with its licensed products, creating R2-D2, Lightning McQueen and talking Spider-Man toys. Early last year, the Colorado-based company ended the Disney deal, laid off dozens and announced that it was moving full time into educational toys.
littleBits, according to Crunchbase, had a total of $70.1M in funding.
Sphero, also according to Crunchbase has a total of $120.3M in funding, this includes the recent Kickstarter of $1M. The details of the littleBits acquisition are not public, so no word on how much, etc. littleBits sold for.
Avengers: Endgame might be Tony Stark’s story but it is, for better or worse at times, in many ways equally a love letter to Chris Evans’ journey as Captain America. So maybe it’s not surprising that one of the film’s most devilishly-difficult-to-spot Easter eggs in a cheeky callback to one of Cap’s cinematic foes.
The Fry’s Electronics store in Palo Alto will shut its doors in January, creating a vacancy in one of the city’s ripest areas for new development.
With its lease expiring on Jan. 31, the big box store, which has been located at 340 Portage Ave. in the city’s Ventura neighborhood since 1990, had no choice but to shutter, according to Manuel Valerio, spokesman for the chain computer hardware and home appliances retailer.
“If not for the lease not being renewable, Fry’s would happily keep the doors open in Palo Alto,” Valerio said in an email Thursday.
Next in our series of "people who left Apple and founded a revolutionary company that was ahead of its time and created amazing products but ultimately failed," let's check out General Magic and their operating system called Magic Cap.
General Magic was formed by Marc Porat, Andy Hertzfeld, and Bill Atkinson in 1990. They had been working on an internal Apple project called Paradigm, but convinced Apple CEO John Sculley to spin it off as a separate company. Their idea was called a personal digital assistant in the 90s, but looking at it now it looks a lot like a modern smartphone. Porat described it as "a tiny computer, a phone, a very personal object... It must be beautiful. It must offer the kind of personal satisfaction that a fine piece of jewelry brings. It will have a perceived value even when it's not being used... Once you use it you won't be able to live without it."
Check out Josh Carter's page, Before General Magic There Was Paradigm. That looks a lot like an iPhone (except for the stylus, Jobs would get rid of that), and this was in 1990!
Take a look at a video of Andy Hertzfeld demoing a General Magic phone prototype in 1995:
And check out this trailer for a documentary about General Magic:
Let's install a Magic Cap emulator and see what it was like! Unfortunately, the emulator is from the 90s and it runs on 90s Mac OS, so we need to install another emulator first. Yo dawg, I heard you like emulators...
A new beta version of Microsoft MakeCode for the Adafruit Circuit Playground Express is out today. The most significant change is support in the Music category for a Play Melody block where there are both predefined melodies and create your own mini sequencer. Multiple sequential blocks will extend the number of notes played.
This version also removes support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 as a supported browser.
Just in case you were looking for a little isnpiration. Shared by root43 on YouTube:
Quite often I get asked: Why would I buy a Raspberry Pi? Or: I bought a Rasperry Pi, but I don’t know what to do with it. In this video I will try to give some ideas on what you can do with a Raspberry Pi. There are of course infinite ways you can use your Pi, but I want to point out three areas which might be useful for a lot of people.
There is of course the whole learning to code, tinkering and making aspect of the Pi, but in this video I want to concentrate on more general, software driven things:
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 printed this model on ANYCUBIC Photon. Accuracy was required and I didn’t want to tinker with grinding ABS, but nevertheless a small adjustment of parts was required. Motor I used from HDD Samsung SP0411N Nidec pl40.
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!
Sharing screens is incredibly helpful if you require viewing what is being displayed on the main screen.
Usually, VNC will create a new session on the Raspberry Pi meaning you won’t be able to see what is happening on the screen from the current user or any other users that are connected to the Raspberry Pi.
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!
Great solution to make sure your record collection doesn’t become a relic. Shared by Engineerish on YouTube:
A convenient and affordable way to use your old turntable with your Sonos setup!
While this probably won’t give you that audiophile-approved top class audio – it suits my needs. The potential quality drop is balanced out by the low price point and the simplicity.
Again – huge thanks to replayreb for the tutorial!
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!
Katherine Schwab writes in Fastcompany about the issue of users accepting robots in places like a library in Helsinki. Adding Googly Eyes made all the difference!
Addressing the complexity of human-robot interaction was the goal of the designers behind a new robot at the central Oodi library in Helsinki, Finland. The library brought in the digital consultancy Futurice to help it to transform some of its existing robots—which help move books between floors—into ‘bots that could help librarians with other tasks.
Futurice came up with a simple interface: Googly eyes. Inspired by one of Disney’s 12 basic principles of animation, Axelsson decided to use googly eyes combined with sound and movement to both show the robot’s intent and express its state of being. Most importantly, the eyes are programmed to indicate the robot’s direction to customers, so they’re not caught unaware when it’s moving around.
The small change shifted the robot from a utilitarian automated book cart on wheels to a robot with personality. That was a big bonus: “It’s more approachable with the eyes.”
Earlier this year, the supermarket chain Giant Food Stores similarly added googly eyes to customer-facing robots, which it rolled out to 172 stores on the East Coast. The company reports that people like to take pictures with the bots.
Via Instructables, Antoine7890 presents the Blinky KEY Board Soldering Kit.
This is Blinky KEY board, an electronic kit you put together to make your own LED blinking keychain! Everybody can build this project, thanks to these easy to follow, step-by-step instructions I made and a few simple tools. You will learn basic electronic components, and also how to solder to make something useful!
The board has 5 bright LEDs that blinks and display various animations! Powered by a single coin cell battery and the popular Atmel Attiny85 chip, you can create your own Arduino code to create your own animations!
The project is open-source and kits are available if you wish to get the parts rather than hunt for them.
After years of struggeling and always forget to give the tomatoes water, it was time for a solution, an irrigation system. No ready-made package but something that I made by myself in order to learn something.
The challenge was there!
But how to start? How do you make sure the tomatoes are automatically getting some water.After searching the web, I soon realized that a Raspberry Pi was a solution to control all this. The Raspberry Pi is a super tiny computer, as big as a bank card, the operating system I have used is Linux.
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!
