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.
We are still broadcasting live Wednesday nights for the biggest show and tell in the world at 7pm ET, and we’re still having Ask An Engineer at 8pm ET. We’ll see you there and we’ll provide any updates or information we have as things are changing moment by moment.
Make a Motion Sensitive Cosplay Staff with Lights and Sound Effects! Complete your Wizard or Druid cosplay with a glowing, ever-burning fire staff. This prop is lightweight and sturdy, and made from inexpensive materials. You don’t need much in the way of sculpting ability to create something organic and magical, that looks as though it was cut from the Yggdrasil with an enchanted axe and then imbued with fires from the Mines of Moria before serving the White Witch Jadis for a century or two and then falling into your hands at the end of a rollicking adventure.
This robotic musician uses miniature solenoids to tap out melodies on a toy xylophone. The Adafruit Grand Central M4 controls each of the eight solenoids using CircuitPython, one of the fastest growing programming languages, specifically designed to simplify experimenting and learning. Check out the full guide!
We found a cute little robot on thingiverse that used a simple, yet clever locomotion system. Simple in that it used a single yellow (dual shaft) TT motor to control both sides, with the addition of only a battery and power switch.
The basic design is, as I said, clever. What could be done to expand on it? We could use two motors. A CRICKIT would provide finer, individual control of the motors. Using the Feather M0 Bluefruit with the Featherwing CRICKIT would let us drive it remotely. All this additional hardware will require the robot to be larger. Check out the full guide!
A bumper car is usually driven by a crazed carnival-goer — but we’re going to build a self-driving Bumper Bot! This bot will use the Circuit Playground Express for brains and collision detection with its onboard accelerometer. The Crickit will provide all the muscle needed to drive two TT DC gearbox motors, as well as a micro servo direction indicator flag.
A small speaker and NeoPixels will also give us feedback while to bumper bot is out there having fun!! Check out the full guide!
This project guides you through building a robot that can wander around your floor. This riffs on John Park’s Crickit Carnival Bumper Bot. The difference is that the project progresses through several levels, starting with a very basic bot and adding capabilities. Check out the full guide!