Adafruit Weekly Editorial Round-Up: CircuitPython Turbo, Back at Ladyada’s Desk and More!

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ADAFRUIT WEEKLY EDITORIAL ROUND-UP

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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.

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BLOG

National Hispanic Heritage Month 2026: September 15th through October 15th

Happy National Hispanic Heritage Month! Running mid-month from September 15 through October 15th this is a time to share stories, learn about history and celebrate America’s diversity.

Check out the full post here!

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LEARN

CircuitPython Turbo: Go Blinka!

The new Turbo in CircuitPython helps when the board spends time calculating: making NeoPixel effects, drawing fractals, processing audio, filtering sensor readings, or preparing lots of pixels. Those projects can get smoother animation, quicker responses, or room to do more things at once.

With Turbo, it’s easier, better, and now even faster to make LED light up costumes that also reacts to sound at the same time, a sensor dashboard with animated graphics, or a tiny game doing physics while drawing the screen. turbo speeds up the busy Python parts. It won’t make a slow sensor or display connection faster, and the rest stays familiar Python

See the full guide here!

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YOUTUBE

Back at Ladyada’s Desk! Doing bringup on PORT AUTHORITY our ‘smart’ controllable USB HUB

We got tired of using crummy USB hubs. Do they have individual port control? Maybe…maybe not! Do they have voltage and current monitoring? Never! What about XH or USB A for fixed connections that don’t flop out? I2C control or EEPROM for configuration? Proper protected input ports with 5V overcurrent/overvoltage protection? ESD and overcurrent protection on each port? YES YES YES, it’s time for PORT AUTHORITY, the stackable USB hub we always wanted! Starring the USB2514 hub, TPS259470A eFuse, and TPS2117 power mux to select between USB self- or external power.

See more on YouTube!

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Catch up with us on the blog, in the Adafruit Learning System, and on YouTube.

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New nEw NEWs From Adafruit is an email newsletter sent out once a week to subscribers only. It features new products, special offers, exciting original content, and more. Sign-up NOW for the Adafruit weekly Newsletter here: https://www.adafruit.com/newsletter

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exonemo: Terminal at NowHere NYC #Sisyphus

The Terminal (2026), artist rendering via NowHere

 

The artist duo exonemo are presenting Terminal at the New York art space NowHere. A series of techno sculptures where the only way to survive is to fail. The computers are constantly trying to crack a code that would lead to their immediate physical demise from swinging hatchet or falling boulder.

In The Terminal, a computer, a rock hovering over its delicate form, engages in a brute-force algorithmic attack using random numbers as blunt objects. To fail at cracking the code means survival; to succeed means… crunch. There is only an ironic, pyrrhic victory possible here. Does our machine friend even want to win? This tableau perversely evokes surprisingly empathetic feelings. In an era that finds much of humankind becoming increasingly suspicious of machines, a sad, solitary piece of hardware working in murkiness against its own existence still moves us.

Plan a visit!

Address: 40 Lispenard St.
Hours: Mon – Fri, 11am – 6pm

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Adafruit New Products this Week

We’ve got the New nEw NEW for you right here! This week we debuted 2 New Products.

Keep up with all the new at Adafruit.com/NEW.

Want to get new products info beamed straight into your inbox? New nEw NEWs From Adafruit is an email newsletter sent once a week to subscribers only. It features new products, special offers, exciting original content, and more. Sign-up for the Adafruit weekly Newsletter here: https://www.adafruit.com/newsletter

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JLC puts AI-assisted board design in files you can read, review, and edit

The JLC Spark exhibition floor. Photo: @akita11.

Open the project file, change a part, see what the tool did, keep working after the AI has had its turn. That’s what interests me in JLC’s board-design tools. Editable files mean you can carry the design through the next revision yourself.

For us (Limor, me, and some of the other folks experimenting and documenting some of these new tools), the interesting part is reducing the work between a prototype and something we can manufacture repeatedly. Making one is a start. Then you have to make another one, and it would be nice if the second board didn’t need its own exorcism. I feel like this will help get some protos out of proto purgatory.

That’s why the latest from JLC is what everyone is going to do eventually. It just hasn’t been distributed yet. JLC’s fourth Spark conference took place September 19, 2026, at the Futian Convention and Exhibition Center in Shenzhen. There were open-source hardware projects, manufacturers, and people making AI devices. The JLC preso shows design software, PCB fabrication and assembly, mechanical parts, and startup support closer together. They also outlined a seed-investment program. Not three-e Seeed. Seed, as in they will invest in things.

The .eprj3 format presentation. AI-assisted English translation of the original slide photo. Original photo: @tks.

A new .eprj3 format stores project data as JSON and text, so you can use Git diffs and edit the files, including with AI tools. EasyEDA can still open the project. The AI design tools are worth watching, particularly because the resulting projects remain editable. I’d say open source has a solid and stable home in hardware. I totally get that a lot of companies and people are going to need to make huge ego-killing adjustments to how they work.

We’ve all used autocorrect and more for years. Same things, new tools. With a board, of course, the suggestion can end up as copper. Say a tool changes a connection – I want to look at that change before ordering anything. A text diff is a starting point for that review. It won’t do the electrical checking for us. We do that in other ways, with hardware in the loop and lots of testing in general. We made 4- and 7-port super-hubs to help. This all lines up.

JLC showed CLI operations for schematics, PCBs, BOM exports, Gerbers, and placement coordinates. There’s a published skill for creating editable projects already. This is the sort of thing that makes a command prompt look suspiciously like a door into a factory.

The roadmap marks headless CLI/MCP integration as in progress. AI-assisted English translation of the original slide photo. Original photo: @akita11.

The headless CLI/MCP agent integration is still marked in progress. Public beta planned for 2026. Fully autonomous design sits farther along the roadmap as a future vision, so keep those stages separate when looking at the slides. It’s not here yet, and it’s a when, not an if.

The immediate opportunity for some folks will be scriptable, reviewable board design connected to manufacturing. Electrical checks and board checks stay in the process. So does looking at the actual files headed to the factory. Some of the future of manufacturing is already in Shenzhen, again, so ready or not, here it comes.

D-Robotics’ model-specific performance figures. AI-assisted English translation of the original slide photo. Original photo: @tks.

A couple of other things in the photos: D-Robotics reported four BPU cores, 560 TOPS, and 47.6 FPS for SmolVLA on the S600. The TOPS figure is INT8; the SmolVLA result is from the presentation, not a benchmark we’ve reproduced. More compute for robots, more chances for them to do something useful (make robot friends).

The 55 nm open PDK exhibit was an existing research project. ICsprout’s documentation calls the current status a preview for research and small-batch test tape-outs. More people drawing on silicon is an appealing prospect.

Here’s the PDF I made with translation help… it’s 45 pages, 18.4 MB, collected from conference photos and posts by @tks and @akita11. Each page links to its source post. There are translations and notes alongside the original photographs. It’s a compilation of their coverage, not an official JLC transcript. I live-watched it over X (Twitter). Not sure what that is called now. Not X, the live-watching. Live X’ing?

Related

• This PCB is brought to you by Fable 5 — A6M-Zero
• 3D PCB previews are a delight
• Works-like vs. looks-like prototypes

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Tonight is International Observe the Moon Night!

An animation of the Moon changing phases, as viewed from Earth.
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

 

Tonight is the night to look up! The annual celebration of lunar observation, science, and exploration presented by NASA with events around the globe. Of course you can also just stay home and enjoy the moon.

This September 19, observe the Moon with NASA.

Each year, observers around the world come together to celebrate Earth’s Moon through direct observations, hands-on activities, lunar-themed music, artwork, readings, and more.

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Moon Phase Clock for Adafruit Matrix Portal

An orrery for lycanthropes. Note – If you are using the Adafruit Matrix Portal M4, you must update the firmware on the AirLift co-processor on your board to version 3.0.0 or later. This is due to changes at the website the code uses for moon data. This is not an issue with the Matrix Portal S3.

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IoT Moon Phase Guide

Build an internet-connected Moon Phase clock displaying the current moon cycle on a 3D printed topographical relief of the lunar surface!
Powered by CircuitPython, this clock runs on a QT Py ESP32-S2 with a diffused, high density NeoPixel LED strip.
The NeoPixel strip cycles to show the new moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, third quarter, and waning crescent.

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Moon Flight Tracker

Track a plane when it crosses over the moon! We were inspired by the round-display flight-tracker trend and added a twist, combining a moon tracker with a flight tracker to make catching photographic shots easier.

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PyPortal Event Count-Up Clock

Want to commemorate the years, days, hours, and minutes passed since an important event? The lunar landing, an anniversary, or maybe the amount of time since the last accident in your workshop? The PyPortal Event Count-Up Clock has got you covered!

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ReBoots Animated LED Boot Laces

This guide will help you make glowing, animated boot laces. A sensor in each heel, watching you, weighing your every step, waiting for the opportune moment to light your stride and set your dance moves on fire. NeoPixels are glued to light pipe laces and programmed to animate and glow.

Zip into the ReBoots and become the cyborg you’ve always wanted to be.

Check out the full guide https://learn.adafruit.com/re-boots-animated-dancing-boot-laces/overview

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Solder Fume Extractor with Magnetic Cover #3DThursday #3DPrinting

Vinark shares:

A rechargeable, modular solder fume extractor designed for less-advanced electronics builders. Slim 80×15mm PC fan, 18650 rechargeable battery cell, TP4056 charging + MT3608 step-up modules, on/off switch. Screwless design using 16× 6×3mm round magnets — easily swappable front grille and replaceable filter sponge. 3 different print profiles. Great fresh maker-tool angle for the workshop reintroduction block. By Vinark

download the files on: https://makerworld.com/en/models/654985-solder-fume-extractor-with-magnetic-cover

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Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!

Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!

LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord

Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit

Shop for parts to build your own DIY projects http://adafru.it/3dprinting

3D Printing Projects Playlist:

3D Hangout Show Playlist:

Layer by Layer CAD Tutorials Playlist:

Timelapse Tuesday Playlist:

Connect with Noe and Pedro on Social Media:

Noe’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/ecken

Pedro’s Twitter / Instagram: http://instagram.com/videopixil

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