How Mail Is Delivered During Natural Disasters

There has been a lot of talk about the difficulties the USPS has had recently, and rightly so. But there are some ways in which the USPS continues to operate really well, and one of the most impressive is the bravery and resilience of mail carriers during natural disasters.

The USPS only stops delivering mail when local authorities issue severe evacuation orders, and mail carriers are among the first to return once the orders have been lifted. Here’s more from MOTHERBOARD:

It may seem odd that letter carriers felt the need to deliver mail while fires were still burning…in a disaster, do people really need their mail?

…People impacted by hurricanes, wildfires, blizzards, flooding, and pandemics need things, whether it be food, medicine, clothes, blankets, or any number of other physical objects to stay alive and begin the process of rebuilding their lives. The post office brings these things to people. And, through tools like mail forwarding, it keeps track of where people are in a way no other federal agency can.

See and learn more!

USPS National Map

Abigail Disney on Respect and Dignity

Imagine a society where it wasn’t considered bold to talk about worker’s rights. Powerful talk by Abigail Disney from TED on YouTube:

What’s the purpose of a company? In this bold talk, activist and filmmaker Abigail Disney imagines a world where companies have a moral obligation to place their workers above shareholders, calling on Disney (and all corporations) to offer respect, dignity and a living wage to everyone who works for them.

See more

Guess what’s on the proto panel! Try your best!

We tile up a bunch of testers and prototypes to send at once, it is a little easier that way and they ship at once – we even get a stencil to match for faster proto assembly. Best part is trying to jigsaw the boards together to make them fit into a clean rectangle. Can you identify all of the testers and prototypes in this mix? For this order we’re using JLCPCB – check out our video on how we order from ’em here – video.

Matrix Portal Creature Eyes

Seems like every great monster film sets off a chain of sequels. Bride of…, Son of…, Revenge of…, Teen Wolf Too (hey, they can’t all be winners).

Our electronic eyeball projects have spawned their own little franchise, with Pi Eyes, HalloWing, Monster M4SK and more. The arrival of the Matrix Portal M4 board made another sequel inevitable — this time a retro-style return to form of our first project of the series, but punching it up with bright colors, full-screen themes, and coded all in CircuitPython now.

This makes a nifty Halloween window or tabletop display. And it’s a not-too-daunting introduction to CircuitPython and graphics. When the Halloween season’s over…if you don’t keep the decorations up year ’round like some of us…everything can be repurposed into your own projects, or try out some others like a Moon phase clock.

This project requires:

• Adafruit Matrix Portal M4 board
• Any of our 64x32 pixel “HUB75” (not NeoPixel) RGB LED matrices
• USB C cable
• USB power supply with output of 2 Amps or more

This guide will get the software running on the bare Matrix Portal hardware. Mounting or supporting the clock in an enclosure or frame is left as an exercise to the reader.

If you'd like your LEDs diffused (and if your LED matrix is 4mm pitch or smaller), some acrylic may help:

Adafruit carries a number of 64x32 RGB LED Matrices, varying between the space between LEDs (pitch) and whether rigid or flexible. Choose your favorite - larger pitch means the display is larger, width and height-wise but with the same number of pixels, and larger may be easier to read further away. Smaller for near your desk, for example.

A blog running on solar power #CircuitPython #Solar #RaspberryPi #PiDay @louwrentius

Louwrentius is running their blog off solar power.

I’ve put a solar panel on my balcony, which is connected to a solar charge controller. This device charges an old worn-out car battery and provides power to a Raspberry Pi 3b+, which in turn powers this (static) website.

I noticed that the load current sensor of the solar charge controller was not very precise, so I added an INA260 based sensor. This sensor uses I2C for communication, just like the LCD display. It measures voltage, current and power in a reasonable precise resolution.

Using the sensor is quite simple (pip3 install adafruit-circuitpython-ina260):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

#!/usr/bin/env python3 import board import adafruit_ina260 i2c = board.I2C() ina260_L = adafruit_ina260.INA260(i2c,address=64) print(ina260_L.current) print(ina260_L.voltage) print(ina260_L.power)

See all the details in the wonderful article here.

Raspberry Pi as a USB MIDI Host via @BlitzCityDIY

Liz Clark shared on YouTube:

Raspberry Pi as a USB MIDI Host

Tuesday, November 3, 2020 is the United States general election. Prepare to vote using tools available through vote.org and help family and friends make sure that they’re ready to vote too 🗳

USB MIDI Hosts allow you to use USB MIDI devices without a computer or DAW.

Raspberry Pi USB MIDI Host instructions from Neuma Studio:
https://neuma.studio/rpi-midi-complete.html

Winterbloom Synth Modules: https://winterbloom.com/

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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 LEGO Minifigure Jukebox #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

This awesome LEGO project uses mini figures to play music via Spotify.

via meltaxa on instructables

There are some inspirational projects that use a Raspberry Pi as an interactive jukebox leveraging NFC technology right here on Instructables, such as the RFID Jukebox. My 7 year old son loves all things LEGO, including on gaming consoles. It was then I realized that the LEGO Dimensions toy pad is really a NFC reader that comes with it’s own special tags, in the form of LEGO Minifigures on a disc. I connected the toy pad to a Raspberry Pi and inspired by the aforementioned project, remixed the idea to work with the LEGO set.

Read more.

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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!