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LCDs are a fun and easy way to have your microcontroller project talk back to you. We wanted to make a ‘backpack’ (add-on circuit) that would reduce the number of pins without a lot of expense. By using simple I2C and SPI input/output expanders we have reduced the number of pins (only 2 pins are

If you’re planning a technically-complicated costume, it might serve you well to start building now for Halloween. To help, Hackaday features a guide from Ikkalebob on how to produce a compact animatronic eye mechanism using Adafruit parts.The eye is inspired by mechanisms used in professional animatronics. However, that doesn’t mean it’s hard to build. Complex

The NeoKey BFF is designed to fit onto the back of any QT Py or Xiao board to build a one-key keyboard. It has a Kailh socket, where you can plug in any MX-compatible switch and it has a reverse mount NeoPixel to light-up your switch.The Adafruit NeoKey BFF guide has everything you need to

The microSD Card BFF has a micro SD card slot that can fit on the back of your miniature dev board. It uses the three SPI pins plus one chip select pin to access megs or gigs of data. Onboard is a slim, high quality Molex push-pull micro SD card socket. Since the QT Py

The same Feather you know and love, with the TFT on the backside!Welcome the Adafruit ESP32-S2 Reverse TFT Feather! It’s basically our ESP32-S2 TFT Feather but with the 240×135 color TFT display on the back-side not the front-side. That makes it great for panel-mounted projects, particularly since we’ve also got some space for 3 buttons

Wokwi is an embedded systems and IoT simulator supporting ESP32, Arduino, and the Raspberry Pi Pico. Your code never leaves your computer – Wokwi runs the simulation inside VS Code, using the firmware binaries from your project.Features Supported architectures: RISC-V, ARM, Xtensa, and AVR. Huge library of electronic components: sensors, LEDs, LCDs, motors, relays, etc.

A number of binary watches have been made over the years, with the latest one by Instructables user Taifur.I focused on the aesthetic of the PCB as I am going to keep it open from any type of casing. Intentionally I kept the trace of the top PCB layer free from solder mask so that

Japanese YouTuber Mutekimaru Channel set up a fishtank to play Pokemon. A camera tracks the fish’s position in the tank to indicate controller inputs. The video above goes through the whole set up. After one unfortunate game crash the fish actually end up making an eShop purchase and revealing the credit card info!More from Sora

Arduino Day, the annual celebration of the Arduino ecosystem of hardware and software, has been announced for March 25, 2023. Details are to follow.via Twitter.

The Adafruit IoT Button with NeoPixel BFF can attach to the back of a QT Py or Xiao board. Onboard is single tactile switch and a single NeoPixel RGB LED. Perfect for compact IoT projects.The Adafruit IoT Button with NeoPixel BFF guide has everything you need to get started with using the IoT Button BFF.

Becky Stern is back with another of her excellent Digi-Key electronics tutorials. In this one, she covers the basics of Arduino I/O, both analog and digital.

The PCA9546 1-to-4 STEMMA QT I2C multiplexer lets you get up to 4 same-address I2C devices hooked up to one microcontroller – this multiplexer acts as a gatekeeper, shuttling the commands to the selected set of I2C pins connected with STEMMA QT cables.The Adafruit PCA9546 4-Channel STEMMA QT Multiplexer guide has everything you need to

This is the type of project that seems pretty over the top to most, but completely genius if you’re the member of your household in charge of moving the trash cans. In the end, the build is really well done, esepcially considering the many complicated factors involved.See the full video from Max Maker here on

The PCA9546 1-to-4 I2C multiplexer lets you get up to 4 same-address I2C devices hooked up to one microcontroller – this multiplexer acts as a gatekeeper, shuttling the commands to the selected set of I2C pins.The Adafruit PCA9546 4-Channel I2C Multiplexer guide has everything you need to get started with using the I2C multiplexer breakout.

The Infineon team recently create their own version of this mechanical 7 segment display. It is a really fun project for a funky large scale clock or display! In this video I’ll be showing you how to build your own two digit mechanical seven segment display using an Arduino Mega and micro servos. You’ll need

Natasha wanted to make a lit-up animated Birthday cake. She turned to using NeoPixel color LEDs, inside the cake!!What’s better than birthday candles? LED animations of course! In this video we’ll tackle the age old question: can you embed LEDs into a birthday cake? Using flexible LED matrixes and an Arduino, Natasha explores how to

Max Maker from Germany got tired of rolling out all of his various trash cans from the back yard to the street. So, he created an Arduino Uno-powered, rack and pinion-driven Trash Train that delivers the cans to where they’re picked up in the front yard. Building the systems was a long and complicated process,

Tired of rummaging for your remote every time you get up from the couch? This Arduino project pauses and plays your TV automagically!I’m often tired when I sit down to watch TV at the end of a day, so I want the experience to be as easy as possible. One simple improvement I’ve dreamt about

The IS31FL3731 will let you get back to that classic LED matrix look, with a nice upgrade! This I2C LED driver chip has the ability to PWM each individual LED in a 16×9 grid so you can have beautiful LED lighting effects, without a lot of pin twiddling. Simply tell the chip which LED on

hanzlica on instructables shares how to make an Operation-like game with the Grinch. Be careful though, it is Christmas day and the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes.This large-scale Grinch Operation Box is reminiscent of a childhood favorite game. The goal is to remove the Grinch’s bones without touching other parts of the box. If

On the Adafruit Forums, user hydrophyte shares a fascinating project: This is a phytoplankton culture setup in a wall-mount clear plastic cylinder with additional brackets holding electronics enclosures + air pump. This kind of affordable small air pump tends to wear out fast, so it runs just one minute per hour: probably adequate for occasional

The Arduboy is a handheld game console with open source software, based on the Arduino hardware platform. In the episode of Pioneers in Open Source above, Jay speaks with the creator of the Arduboy, Kevin Gates about his game console. They chat about how he developed it, his background and how open source played a

The Adafruit MOSFET Driver is great for driving motors, inductors, high power LEDs, single-color LED strips, or other loads up with to 1.5 Amps continuous draw, 3 Amp peak. This board has a simple plug-and-play JST PH (2mm pitch) input connector for solderless use. Provide power (from 3V up to 30V) and signal (3V to

Our most recent display breakouts have come with a new feature: an 18-pin “EYE SPI” standard FPC connector with flip-top connector. This is intended to be a sort-of “STEMMA QT for displays” – a way to quickly connect and extend display wiring that uses a lot of SPI pins. This breakout board that brings all the

Sebastian Tomczak has developed an Arduino sketch and Max patch which takes the inertia motion unit data of the Nano BLE 33 and sends it via Bluetooth BLE using the ArduinoBLE library.The data is transferred as a set of BLE Characteristics as a BLE Service. The Max patch scans for the BLE device, connects to

Let’s Learn Together shows the most common actuators that are available to control a model railroad turnout: solenoid actuators DC motors servos and how to interface the first ones with Arduino, using relays or MOSFETs.The tutorial also covers two remaining types of actuators.The source code for the examples and the files required to build the MOSFET board are

The Adafruit 5×5 NeoPixel Grid BFF can attach to the back of a QT Py or Xiao board. Onboard is a grid of 25 1.5×1.5mm NeoPixel LEDs connected to pin A3 by default. You can cut/solder some jumpers to select A1, or A2 instead if you like. There’s also solder pads for 5V, GND and

The Adafruit NeoPixel Driver BFF lets you quickly add a strand of NeoPixels with a 5V level shifter and a detachable JST PH connector. This PCB is designed to fit onto the back of any QT Py or Xiao board with headers or by soldering directly. Onboard is a 74AHCT125 single-gate level shifter that will take pin A3

This board is like a little ray gun for infrared light, with two high powered LED outputs. When controlled with the onboard N-Channel FET driver, you’ll be blasting 100mA-200mA of current pulsing through each LED for 10+ meters of range! This is the easiest way to get great IR emitter range without wiring up a bunch of

To make prototyping and designing with QSPI flash a little easier, we designed these breakouts that convert the wide 8-SOIC packages to a cute 0.3″ wide DIP. They’re available with 16Mbit, 64Mbit and 128Mbit size chips. We find these handy when testing out different flash sizes, or if we just want to add more storage

If you just need a megabyte or two of extra storage for a project, we recommend an Adafruit SPI FLASH Breakout. The breakout is single-channel SPI only, but it comes with level shifting so it can be used safely with 3V or 5V power and logic. You can address them as a flat memory space or,

Neat project from Arnov Sharma that incorporates our NeoPixel Mini 3535 RGB LEDs w/ Integrated Driver Chip .Made a custom Matrix board that can be controlled via any MCU.Read the full tutorial here on Hackster.io

Arduino has partnered with Damien George to use MicroPython on a number of Arduino products.Thanks to one of our developers (Ubi de Feo) we were able to test MicroPython on a class of students and we’ve learned a lot from that experience. In particular, we noticed that it’s hard to find a very simple cross platform

Never hunt around for another crystal again, with the Si5351 clock generator breakout from Adafruit! This chip has a precision 25MHz crystal reference and internal PLL and dividers so it can generate just about any frequency, from <8KHz up to 150+ MHz. This chip is available on the original breakout board with three full edge-launch SMA

The PCA9548 gives you a way to get up to 8 same-address I2C devices hooked up to one microcontroller – this multiplexer acts as a gatekeeper, shuttling the commands to the selected I2C port with your command.The Adafruit PCA9548 8-Channel STEMMA QT / Qwiic I2C Multiplexer guide has everything you need to get started with

Bring on haunted pumpkin season! Excellently creepy build + write-up from Arnov Sharma up on Hackster.ioSinging Pumpkin is basically a Arduino Music Player that runs Creepy Music from an SD Card Reader, whole setup is powered by an Arduino Nano HAPPY HALLOWEEN! All month we’ll be bringing you ideas and projects for an Electronic Halloween!

It’s amazing what makers can now create using readily available stepper motors, aluminum extrusion beams, 3D printed parts, and MCUs like Arduino. In this Mr. Innovative video, he builds a tabletop gear cutting machine. And it’s always great that public comments allow people to offer useful feedback on how to improve one’s creation (as they

The Arduino to CircuitPython Guide has had some updates to the Working with Numbers, Variables, types and scope and Time pages. The updates are a mix of updates as a result of the evolution of CircuitPython and guide feedback.Check out the full guide: Arduino to CircuitPython

The YouTube channel ToP Projects Compilation has a round-up of 13 really enticing projects, from a robot bartender, to boxing glove game controllers, fitness tracker, and more. Links to all of the projects are in the video description.

You can build a digital nose with the ENS160 Gas Sensor, a fully integrated MOX gas sensor. This is a very fine air quality sensor from the sensor experts at ScioSense, with I2C interfacing so you don’t have to manage the heater and analog reading of a MOX sensor. It combines multiple metal-oxide sensing and heating elements

HackSpace Magazine Issue 59 reviews the Metro Mini 328 V2:Although Arduino-compatible boards are not as difficult to find in stock as a Raspberry Pi, they can still be challenging to source. The revamped Adafruit Metro Mini 328 V2 is a 5 V, 16MHz, Arduino-compatible board that fits right into the STEMMA QT and Qwiic Connect

The TCA8418 has the ability to act as your I2C multi-tool for handling keypads, buttons or LEDs. It has 18 total ‘I/O’ pins, 10 columns and 8 rows. Additionally, it has a 10-element event queue, so even if you don’t get to the interrupt immediately, keypress and release events will be held for you.The Adafruit

If you want to store calibration values, MAC addresses, non-secure access tokens, or other unique identifiers, EEPROM storage is a great option. The Adafruit 24LC32 I2C EEPROM breakout comes with 32 Kbit (4 KByte) of storage, and handy chainable Stemma QT connectors, it’s just the right amount of simple I2C-controllable storage. Since its external to

The Adafruit MacroPad RP2040 Guide has been updated to include a page on using the MacroPad with External Hardware. The page details how to attach hardware to the onboard STEMMA QT port using both CircuitPython and Arduino.Check out the full guide: Adafruit MacroPad RP2040

Today Arduino announced that Arduino IDE 2.0 has moved to stable and is available for download. It has a modern editor and provides a better overall user experience thanks to a responsive interface and faster compilation time.Feature highlights: Autocomplete during sketch editing Dark Mode Arduino Cloud Serial Plotter (The Serial Monitor and Plotter can be

we’re trying to revive the old EZ-Link Bluefruit design from many years ago – originally done with a CSR chipset that became very hard for us to get. ESP32 is a lot easier and the original chip has BT classic support – required for BT SPP which is what we’re using. This test uses the

The Adafruit MAX17048 LiPoly / LiIon Fuel Gauge and Battery Monitor connects to your Lipoly or LiIon battery and it will let you know the voltage of the cell and decodes the non-linear voltage to get you a valid percentage as well. To use, connect a 1S 3.7-4.2V Lithium Ion or Polymer battery to one

A new guide today in the Adafruit Learning System: Controlling Objects in Unity with a 9 DoF Sensor and ArduinoUnity is one of the most widely used game engines for developing video games. In this guide, you’ll learn how to integrate your Arduino based hardware projects with your Unity projects to create interactive experiences. Data from

Programming Electronics Academy on YouTube provides a beginners tutorial for using ESP-NOW technology using Arduino for ESP32 and ESP8266 boards.ESP-NOW is a fast, connectionless communication technology featuring short packet transmission. ESP-NOW is ideal for smart lights, remote control devices, sensors and other applications. ESP-NOW applies the IEEE802.11 Action Vendor frame technology, along with the IE

A Feather with ESP32-S3 and a TFT!This is the Adafruit ESP32-S3 TFT Feather. It’s got all the delicious creamy goodness features of a Feather main board, the comforting warmth of an ESP32-S3 WiFi+BLE microcontroller, and the crispness of a 240×135 pixel color TFT display.The Adafruit ESP32-S3 TFT Feather guide has everything you need to get