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Radio Shack logos over the years #ShackToberFest

RadioShack is an American consumer electronics brand originally created as such a chain of stores in 1921 under the name “The Radio Shack Corporation.” Radio Shack used a number of logos over the years.  Logopedia has a list of them.

On the heels of #SepTandy, Adafruit is celebrating #ShackToberFest, a celebration of all things Radio Shack and Tandy. Tag your social media posts #ShackToberFest!

Intricate Lighting Circuit Sequencing #VintageLighting

Like an old player piano this light sequencer uses a large drum and physical contacts. Looks like a bit of a fire hazard but its fascinating to see!

From thatwasDope on YouTube

You can learn more about this method from this post on Nandita Palchouchuri

Around 1960-65, as a result of the ingenuity of pioneers like Sridhar Das and a handful of others ,festive decorations using large electric bulbs began to emerge.They were created in order to embellish the temporary Cloth Temples(Pandal)that house the deity Goddess Jagadhatri and Goddess Durga during the Dushehra festival, each year.

With passing years these panels have become very intricate and cleverly designed and occupy a very integral part in the making of the Durga festival ,diwali ,wedding marquees etc. A large number of contractors building these light panels now thrive in Bengal largely centred around Chandannagar.

And a good discussion on the forum here: Identifying a vintage lighting sequencer method

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Thankfully if you want to create an impressive lighting display you won’t need to rely on such an elaborate set-up.

• LIGHTSHIP: LED Animation over WiFi
• SmartMatrix Remote Controlled LED Art Display

Feather RP2040 SCORPIO

We just love sticking NeoPixels anywhere and everywhere. When we saw the new “PIO” feature of the RP2040 from Raspberry Pi, we knew it would be perfect for driving huge numbers of NeoPixels. So we created the Adafruit Feather RP2040 SCORPIO specifically for NeoPixel (WS2812-compatible) control, but also good for various other PIO-based projects that want to take advantage of the Feather pinout with an additional 8 consecutive outputs (or inputs).

Transform a Raspberry Pi RP2040 into a FIDO Passkey

Pol Henarejos’ Pico FIDO project transforms a Raspberry Pi Pico into an integrated FIDO Passkey, functioning like a standard USB Passkey for authentication.

The demonstrations use a Pimoroni TINY2040 and the central LED is used to indicate the status of the ley.

Security Considerations

Pico FIDO is an open platform, so exercise caution. The flash memory contents can be easily dumped, potentially revealing private/master keys. It is not feasible to encrypt the content, meaning at least one key (the master key) must be stored in clear text. If the Pico is stolen, the private and secret keys can be accessed.

See more, including the code, on GitHub.

Using LEDs to Make Sculptures #ArtTuesday

LEDs are affecting the world of art installations, fine art, and the performing arts. You can start at home with projects like Dano Wall’s Glue Stick Light Pipe Sculpture using Circuit Playground Express or you can explore the work being done by artists all over the world. Here’s more from the Interactive/Immersive:

Interactive art installations are reshaping how we experience creativity, and challenging traditional art forms. It’s not just about looking at art; it’s about being a part of it and being totally immersed in it (like the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit you might have heard about).

In this blog post, we’ll explore six intriguing examples of interactive art. From interactive digital art installations that responds to your touch, to collaborations blending human and artificial intelligence and 3D installation art or projection mapping, these interactive and experiential art pieces offer a unique interaction with contemporary art, where the distinction between viewer and creator becomes less defined.

See more!

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Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

Stationery themed hotel room in Japan #ArtTuesday

JetPens shared this video on Youtube! They also have an excelent Kokuyo Campus Factory Tour where you can see how the iconic Kokuyo Campus Notebooks are made

We got the chance to visit a stationery themed hotel room in Japan! The walls were decorated with Kokuyo stationery products, and there were even plushies that looked like huge erasers and rulers! If you visit Japan, be sure to check out Villa Fontaine Haneda Airport Garden Hotel.

CircuitPython 9.2.0 Released!

From the GitHub release page:

This is CircuitPython 9.2.0, the latest minor revision of CircuitPython, and is a new stable release.

WARNING for nRF52 boards only: If your board has an nRF52 UF2 bootloader whose version is before 0.6.1, you will not be able to load CircuitPython 8.2.0 and later, due to increased size of the firmware. See these instructions for updating your bootloader.

Highlights of this release

• Fix RP2350 cache invalidation for PSRAM.

Notable changes in 9.2.0 from 9.1.x

• Raspberry Pi RP2350 support.
• Update to Espressif ESP-IDF V5.3.1, including new I2C driver.
• Merge MicroPython updates from v1.22.2 and v1.23.
• Espressif BLE improvements.
• Add math.dist().
• _eve updates.
• New busio.I2C.probe() and bitbangio.I2C.probe() methods to check for a single device address.
• ESP32-S3: implement sdioio.
• New audiodelays and audiofilters modules. These modules are experimental, and the API may change.
• Incompatible change: Change default hostname for all Espressif boards to the ESP-IDF default, which is espressif.
• Incompatible change: Use default hostname for mDNS. Fix mDNS collision mangling.

Incompatibility warnings

• Change default hostname for all Espressif boards to the ESP-IDF default, which is espressif. Previous board-specific names were not applied consistently. Use wifi.radio.hostname to set a custom hostname.
• Use default hostname for mDNS. Fix mDNS collision mangling. DNS hostnames will be different.

Download from circuitpython.org

Firmware downloads are available from the downloads page on circuitpython.org. The site makes it easy to select the correct file and language for your board.

Installation

To install follow the instructions in the Welcome to CircuitPython! guide. To install the latest libraries, see this page in that guide.

Try code.circuitpython.org or the latest version of the Mu editor for creating and editing your CircuitPython programs and for easy access to the CircuitPython serial connection (the REPL).

Documentation

Documentation is available in readthedocs.io.

Port status

CircuitPython has a number of “ports” that are the core implementations for different microcontroller families. Stability varies on a per-port basis. As of this release, these ports are consider stable (but see Known Issues below):

• atmel-samd: Microchip SAMD21, SAMx5x
• cxd56: Sony Spresense
• espressif: Espressif ESP32, ESP32-S2, ESP32-S3, ESP32-C2, ESP32-C3, ESP32-C6
• nordic: Nordic nRF52840, nRF52833
• raspberrypi: Raspberry Pi RP2040, RP2350
• stm: ST STM32F4 chip family

These ports are considered alpha and will have bugs and missing functionality:

• broadcom: Raspberry Pi boards such as RPi 4, RPi Zero 2W
• espressif: ESP32-P4 (currently no USB support)
• litex: fomu
• mimxrt10xx: NXP i.MX RT10xxx
• renode: hardware simulator
• silabs: Silicon Labs MG24 family
• stm: ST non-STM32F4 chip families

Changes since 9.2.0-rc.0

Fixes and enhancements

Port and board-specific changes

Broadcom

Espressif

i.MX

nordic

renode

RP2

• Fix RP2350 cache invalidation for PSRAM. #9759. Thanks @dhalbert.

SAMx

SiLabs

Spresense

STM

Individual boards

Documentation changes

• Add note about different _bleio implementations. #9758. Thanks @dhalbert.

Build and infrastructure changes

• Remove version restrictions on Python cryptography library. #9757. Thanks @jepler.

Translation additions and improvements

New boards since 9.2.0-rc.0

Known issues

• See https://ift.tt/ghPIb41 for other issues, including issues still to be addressed for:
  • 9.2.0
  • 9.x.x
  • 10.0.0
  • long term
• Native-code .mpy files are not working. This capability is currently enabled only on the winterbloom_sol board.

Thanks

Thank you to all who used, tested, and contributed toward this release, including the contributors above, and many others on GitHub and Discord. Join us on the Discord chat to collaborate.