Adafruit

When Chips Are Scarce: Maker Ingenuity in Uncertain Times

When Chips Are Scarce: Maker Ingenuity in Uncertain Times

By David Groom

David Groom

David bought his first Arduino in 2007 as part of a Roomba hacking project. Since then, he has been obsessed with writing code that you can touch. David fell in love with the original Pebble smartwatch, and even more so with its successor, which allowed him to combine the beloved wearable with his passion for hardware hacking via its smartstrap functionality. Unable to part with his smartwatch sweetheart, David wrote a love letter to the Pebble community, which blossomed into Rebble, the service that keeps Pebbles ticking today, despite the company's demise in 2016. When he's not hacking on wearables, David can probably be found building a companion bot, experimenting with machine learning, growing his ever-increasing collection of dev boards, or hacking on DOS-based palmtops from the 90s.

Find David on Mastodon at @ishotjr@chaos.social and to a far lesser extent on Twitter at @IShJR.

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The past few years have been … unprecedented. Supply chain failures manifest themselves visibly around us, from parking lots in Detroit full of cars that can’t be finished for lack of a single part, to immense backlogs of container ships at the Port of Long Beach. From consumers all the way up to foundries, it feels […]

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So Many Choices: Our Favorite Makers Weigh in on Their Go-To Dev Boards

So Many Choices: Our Favorite Makers Weigh in on Their Go-To Dev Boards

Mike Senese

By Mike Senese

Mike Senese

Mike Senese is a content producer with a focus on technology, science, and engineering. He served as Executive Editor of Make: magazine for nearly a decade, and previously was a senior editor at Wired. Mike has also starred in engineering and science shows for Discovery Channel, including Punkin Chunkin, How Stuff Works, and Catch It Keep It.

An avid maker, Mike spends his spare time tinkering with electronics, fixing cars, and attempting to cook the perfect pizza. You might spot him at his local skatepark in the SF Bay Area.

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Dev boards give makers limitless options for their projects. Some of our high-tech pals share their personal processes to pick a board.

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A Chip Is Born: RP2040-Based Boards Go From 0 to 60+ With Impressive Speed

A Chip Is Born: RP2040-Based Boards Go From 0 to 60+ With Impressive Speed

Gareth Halfacree

By Gareth Halfacree

Gareth Halfacree

Gareth Halfacree is the author of the Raspberry Pi User Guide and an expert in educational and embedded computing. A noted technology journalist and long-time tech author, Gareth also has an extensive background in computing education.

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The microcontroller market — where chips designed for real-time embedded use are placed into development boards typically referred to as “microcontrollers” themselves — is rarely shaken up. If you want something friendly to beginners, you pick an Arduino with a Microchip ATmega328; if you want connectivity, an Espressif ESP32-based board; for performance, STMicro’s STM32 series. […]

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Plan CO2: Making A Public Display

Plan CO2: Making A Public Display

By Dale Dougherty

Dale Dougherty

DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

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When I saw the big emoji (old school – smiley) on Carter Nelson’s RGB Matrix Portal Room CO2 Monitor project on Adafruit, I knew he was on to something. I wished that I would begin seeing more such displays in places like restaurants and shops, not to mention school classrooms, offices and makerspaces in the coming months. In Carter’s Adafruit project, the CO2 monitoring device presents a concise public-health message.

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Stephan and Odessa Schulz at a workbench

Plan CO2: Montreal Dad Makes a CO2 Monitor for His Daughter’s Classroom

By Dale Dougherty

Dale Dougherty

DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

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A device that measures CO2 can be built and deployed in indoor spaces such as classrooms to monitor ventilation in the room and warn if levels of CO2 are rising.

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Adafruit Interviews The New Owner of Radio Shack: Tai Lopez

Adafruit Interviews The New Owner of Radio Shack: Tai Lopez

By Caleb Kraft

Caleb Kraft

I get ridiculously excited seeing people make things. I just want to revel in the creativity I see in makers. My favorite thing in the world is sharing a maker's story. find me at CalebKraft.com

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Ever since the close of Radio Shack, we’ve all been watching to see what would happen to the name, and legacy of the franchise. For many of us, Radio Shack was our introduction to DIY electronics, and our only source of components before online shops were widely accessible. In the latest news on the Radio […]

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