An extremely well thought out peice on black hair in video games. Blessing Adeoye Jr of Kinda Funny Games dives into current state of representation, where it gets it right and where it doesn’t. As in all industries the way forward comes from diversity in accross development “Better representation in video games starts with having better representation in the studios who make these games.”
UPDATED GUIDE – Adafruit ESP32 Feather V2
We’ve updated the Adafruit ESP32 Feather V2 product guide to include a new “WipperSnapper Essentials” section. This section contains pages for interacting with your Adafruit ESP32 Feather V2 with Adafruit IO’s no-code interface.
Suppose you had walk across a tightrope, but you don’t happen t have any circus training. You’d be sunk. But if you happened to be the beloved cartoon hero Inspector Gadget you could just shout “Go go gadget gyroscope!” Then, suddenly, the top of your hat would flip open and out would fan a disc, and that disc would start spinning, and your balance would increase tenfold. Sadly, you are probably not Inspector Gadget. But this project from James Bruton might help. Here’s more:
It’s pretty hard to walk on a tightrope but I thought I’d have a go. I set up a bar which is a steel scaffold pole and tried my best to walk along it. Sometimes I could almost make it to the end, but most of the time I did far worse than that. It’s a bit easier if you crouch right down and use your arms to help you balance, but standing up tall makes it even harder. Standing still on the spot for any length of time is practically impossible.
But could I make a device that would help me balance?
Welcome to tim sway‘s 3rd entry in the 0% Wood instrument series, the no wood acoustic guitar! So what’s this guitar made with? Well, a laser etched acrylic fingerboard, a machined acrylic neck with kintsugi inspired accents, and of course an acrylic body.
Flying with turbulence is terrifying enough, but intentionally flying into a winter storm is indescribable. Scientists, however, know the importance of collecting data and sharing the knowledge for a better tomorrow. NPR shares their work.
High up in some ice-filled clouds, sitting inside an airplane loaded with science instruments, Christian Nairy looked at pictures flashing on his computer screen. This high-altitude slideshow is displaying real-time images of cloud particles being sampled by a device out on the plane’s wing — and some of the ice crystals looked like perfect little snowflakes.
“They’re amazing to look at. Especially when they pop up right in front of you on the screen, it’s remarkable,” said Nairy, a Ph.D. student at the University of North Dakota.
Flying with turbulence is terrifying enough, but intentionally flying into a winter storm is indescribable. Scientists, however, know the importance of collecting data and sharing the knowledge for a better tomorrow. NPR shares their work.
High up in some ice-filled clouds, sitting inside an airplane loaded with science instruments, Christian Nairy looked at pictures flashing on his computer screen. This high-altitude slideshow is displaying real-time images of cloud particles being sampled by a device out on the plane’s wing — and some of the ice crystals looked like perfect little snowflakes.
“They’re amazing to look at. Especially when they pop up right in front of you on the screen, it’s remarkable,” said Nairy, a Ph.D. student at the University of North Dakota.
Over 500 vintage Apple products are being auctioned off in Beverly Hills. If you are fan of apple or vintage computing this auction is worth checking out. Even if you don’t plan on bidding, the massive amount of listings will be worth a look. From PetaPixel
The collection comes via Apple collector Hanspeter Luzi who is a remedial teacher for children with special needs from St. Gallen, Switzerland and who developed several educational games and teaching aids for the special needs of his students which included the use of computers.
Julien’s Auctions, which will host the sale of “The Apples” collection describes Luzi as a historian and advocate of his region of Eastern Switzerland. He doesn’t just collect Apple products, as his collection of vintage sewing machines served as the foundation of the Sammlung Albrecht Mey sewing machine museum in Germany. He moved on from sewing machines to Apple computers and after 25 years of collecting, is now prepared to offer the collection for auction.
See more from PetaPixel, Julien’s Auctions and The Verge.
Over 500 vintage Apple products are being auctioned off in Beverly Hills. If you are fan of apple or vintage computing this auction is worth checking out. Even if you don’t plan on bidding, the massive amount of listings will be worth a look. From PetaPixel
The collection comes via Apple collector Hanspeter Luzi who is a remedial teacher for children with special needs from St. Gallen, Switzerland and who developed several educational games and teaching aids for the special needs of his students which included the use of computers.
Julien’s Auctions, which will host the sale of “The Apples” collection describes Luzi as a historian and advocate of his region of Eastern Switzerland. He doesn’t just collect Apple products, as his collection of vintage sewing machines served as the foundation of the Sammlung Albrecht Mey sewing machine museum in Germany. He moved on from sewing machines to Apple computers and after 25 years of collecting, is now prepared to offer the collection for auction.
See more from PetaPixel, Julien’s Auctions and The Verge.
(Video) One of our new Feather designs will sport a full-size HDMI connector that can be used to connect to DVI displays. While the RP2040 itself does not have a native DVI driver, you can sorta-bitbang your way to success using the PicoDVI library.
Like USB, there are standardized connectors, so it’s easy to find a good range of suppliers that will give us full-sized HDMI connectors. Like USB Type C, you can also use the connector in a pick and place line and with some good paste deposition, skip the wave or selective solder step for the through-hole mounting tabs.
See the chosen part on Digi-Key.
See episodes of The Desk of Ladyada in the playlist here and other Great Searches in the playlist here.
Wired takes us behind the vinyl curtain in this recent video filed at at Third Man Records in Detroit.
We visit Jack White’s Third Man Records vinyl pressing plant in Detroit, Michigan to find out exactly what goes into the creation of a vinyl record; from cutting and pressing to making sure they sound great.
Like what you see? Third Man Pressing also has an impressive FAQ on their site.
Wired takes us behind the vinyl curtain in this recent video filed at at Third Man Records in Detroit.
We visit Jack White’s Third Man Records vinyl pressing plant in Detroit, Michigan to find out exactly what goes into the creation of a vinyl record; from cutting and pressing to making sure they sound great.
Like what you see? Third Man Pressing also has an impressive FAQ on their site.
If Mario Maker doesn’t have enough levels for you this might be for you. MarioGPT is an “open-ended text2level generation through large language models” Mario level creator.
I’m sure this is just the begining of AI designed video games. Via Kotaku:
The same thing can be done for video games. Created by a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen, MarioGPT is a tool that can generate an endless supply of side-scrolling level layouts based on classic Super Mario Bros. stages. According to Sebastian Risi, an AI researcher who collaborated on the project, the trained tool uses “a fine-tuned GPT2 model” to gobble up text prompts and spit out levels that somewhat mirror what an actual human might create. Risi noted on Twitter that although MarioGPT “sometimes” fails to create levels on a given prompt, it “works well” in most other situations.
Read more and check out the full details of MarioGPT from the creators here, and the code on GitHub
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.
Engineers Week 2023: Creating the Future
Engineers Week 2023 runs from February 19 – February 25. All week long the National Society of Professional Engineers will host celebrations of engineers. The theme for 2023 is Creating the Future.
Check out the full post here and dont miss learning about Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day!
More BLOG:
Keeping with tradition, we covered quite a bit this past week. Here’s a kinda short nearing medium length list of highlights:
The Meowsic cat piano is amazing, but a bit too quiet. I knew I had to give it a line out so it could be heard meow-meow-meowing far and wide, and enhance the sounds with guitar effects pedals!
This mod is based on the circuit found here, with some adjustments to parts and techniques.
Don’t have a Meowsic Cat Piano? That’s OK, this can also be a helpful guide for anyone wanting to add a line out to other sound toys.
See the full guide here!
More new and updated LEARN:
Browse all that’s new in the Adafruit Learning System here!
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
Our first ‘RP2040 Bones’ design was the RP2040 DVI – where the 8 consecutive ‘extra’ pins became an DVI output.
Now, for a potential project, we tried swapping in an RFM module – these can be RFM69 or RFM9X LoRa modules, they’re pin compatible! Whichever we choose – the module’s CS and RST and 6 IO pins go to the RP2040’s GPIO, and the SPI port used is the main one.
For antenna, there’s a 0.1″ hole for a low cost wire, or a Hirose u.FL connector. We even managed to squish in a STEMMA QT port, but only the vertical style would fit. This will be a welcome upgrade to our current Feather M0 RFM series, since those boards are low on memory when using with CircuitPython or MicroPython. This board will do nicely with either, or use pico SDK or Arduino!
Our first ‘RP2040 Bones’ design was the RP2040 DVI – where the 8 consecutive ‘extra’ pins became an DVI output.
Now, for a potential project, we tried swapping in an RFM module – these can be RFM69 or RFM9X LoRa modules, they’re pin compatible! Whichever we choose – the module’s CS and RST and 6 IO pins go to the RP2040’s GPIO, and the SPI port used is the main one.
For antenna, there’s a 0.1″ hole for a low cost wire, or a Hirose u.FL connector. We even managed to squish in a STEMMA QT port, but only the vertical style would fit. This will be a welcome upgrade to our current Feather M0 RFM series, since those boards are low on memory when using with CircuitPython or MicroPython. This board will do nicely with either, or use pico SDK or Arduino!
Browse through all that’s new here!
AGS02MA I2C TVOC Gas Sensor: COMING SOON! The AGS02MA is a MOX-based TVOC sensor equipped with a miniature ADC chip that converts the readings into I2C for gas resistance output and parts-per-billion (ppb). This resistance can be correlated with ambient volatile organic compounds (TVOC) – higher ppb means more organic compounds in the air. It’s a simple sensor and doesn’t perform any additional filtering or calculations but it’s also inexpensive and small!
8mm 12MP Portrait Lens for M12 High-Quality Camera: This is the 8mm 12MP Portrait Lens, an essential for the M12 Raspberry Pi High-Quality Camera.
With its narrow angle-of-view and focal length, this lens is great for portraiture shots – especially to get that dramatic, blurred background composition. Includes a thumbscrew to quickly and easily assemble onto the HQ Camera Board.
Raspberry Pi Debug Probe Kit: The Raspberry Pi Debug Probe is an all-in-one USB-to-debug kit that provides all the necessary hardware and cables for easy, solderless, plug-and-play debugging. For when “printf-style-debugging” just isn’t enough, this kit which brings the power of gdb & OpenOCD step and trace debugging to the RP2040 chipset. And for those of us who do like printf-debugging, it also comes with a bonus USB-to-Serial converter. It is an inexpensive, all-in-one USB to serial debug and UART bridge, for less than the cost of two separate cables.
Clear Micro Potentiometer Knob – 4 pack: Have you found yourself in a maze of twisty-turny knobs, all alike? These micro potentiometer (or rotary encoder) knobs offer a rainbow burst of color to your synth or control panel. They are made of a hard plastic, with a grippy star shape. The shape is sometimes referred to as “Davies 1900” style, but they may not be a perfect size/color match for original Davies knobs.
Adafruit ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT Feather – 4MB Flash, 2MB PSRAM, STEMMA QT: Like Missy Elliot, we like to “put our [Feather] down, flip it and reverse it” and that’s exactly what we’ve done with this new development board. It’s basically our ESP32-S3 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 to go along. It’s like an all-in-one display interface dev board, powered by the fantastic ESP32-S3 WIFI module.
Stay in the loop at Adafruit.com/New!
Want to get this 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
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
Browse through all that’s new here!
AGS02MA I2C TVOC Gas Sensor: COMING SOON! The AGS02MA is a MOX-based TVOC sensor equipped with a miniature ADC chip that converts the readings into I2C for gas resistance output and parts-per-billion (ppb). This resistance can be correlated with ambient volatile organic compounds (TVOC) – higher ppb means more organic compounds in the air. It’s a simple sensor and doesn’t perform any additional filtering or calculations but it’s also inexpensive and small!
8mm 12MP Portrait Lens for M12 High-Quality Camera: This is the 8mm 12MP Portrait Lens, an essential for the M12 Raspberry Pi High-Quality Camera.
With its narrow angle-of-view and focal length, this lens is great for portraiture shots – especially to get that dramatic, blurred background composition. Includes a thumbscrew to quickly and easily assemble onto the HQ Camera Board.
Raspberry Pi Debug Probe Kit: The Raspberry Pi Debug Probe is an all-in-one USB-to-debug kit that provides all the necessary hardware and cables for easy, solderless, plug-and-play debugging. For when “printf-style-debugging” just isn’t enough, this kit which brings the power of gdb & OpenOCD step and trace debugging to the RP2040 chipset. And for those of us who do like printf-debugging, it also comes with a bonus USB-to-Serial converter. It is an inexpensive, all-in-one USB to serial debug and UART bridge, for less than the cost of two separate cables.
Clear Micro Potentiometer Knob – 4 pack: Have you found yourself in a maze of twisty-turny knobs, all alike? These micro potentiometer (or rotary encoder) knobs offer a rainbow burst of color to your synth or control panel. They are made of a hard plastic, with a grippy star shape. The shape is sometimes referred to as “Davies 1900” style, but they may not be a perfect size/color match for original Davies knobs.
Adafruit ESP32-S3 Reverse TFT Feather – 4MB Flash, 2MB PSRAM, STEMMA QT: Like Missy Elliot, we like to “put our [Feather] down, flip it and reverse it” and that’s exactly what we’ve done with this new development board. It’s basically our ESP32-S3 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 to go along. It’s like an all-in-one display interface dev board, powered by the fantastic ESP32-S3 WIFI module.
Stay in the loop at Adafruit.com/New!
Want to get this 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
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
It crawls, waddles, slithers, and swims! This little guy can get around. Designed by a team at BGU to be simple and 3D printable. It isn’t shocking to learn a lot of the movement capablities were inspired by insects.
The robot has potential applications in search and rescue, especially during natural disasters such as floods and tsunamis. It also has potential applications in marine agriculture and fish feeding as the robot attracts fish instead of repelling them.
Whether on land or in the water, the robot moves quite quickly. On land, the robot crawled at 1.5 body lengths per second (B/s) and swam at 0.74 B/s. It can be outfitted with legs or wheels at the front which increases its crawl speed, especially over uneven terrain.
The true champion can’t be named until it goes up against the CRICKIT WobblyBot
It crawls, waddles, slithers, and swims! This little guy can get around. Designed by a team at BGU to be simple and 3D printable. It isn’t shocking to learn a lot of the movement capablities were inspired by insects.
The robot has potential applications in search and rescue, especially during natural disasters such as floods and tsunamis. It also has potential applications in marine agriculture and fish feeding as the robot attracts fish instead of repelling them.
Whether on land or in the water, the robot moves quite quickly. On land, the robot crawled at 1.5 body lengths per second (B/s) and swam at 0.74 B/s. It can be outfitted with legs or wheels at the front which increases its crawl speed, especially over uneven terrain.
The true champion can’t be named until it goes up against the CRICKIT WobblyBot
These adorable retro tv’s are running off of the Raspberry Pi Pico’s RP2040. From Tom’s Hardware:
TinyTV 2 and TinyTV mini are tiny displays powered by the Raspberry Pi Pico’s RP2040, which can playback videos stored in the internal memory or stream video over a USB connection.
TinyTV 2 and Tiny TV Mini replicate the mid-20th century television aesthetic, but inside, they are powered by Raspberry Pi’s powerful RP2040 microcontroller. Both units offer around 8GB of internal storage, which TinyCircuit claims will provide around 10 hours of playback for TinyTV 2 and a whopping 40 hours of video for TinyTV Mini
make your own tiny tv or switch gif player right now on the Adafruit Learning System:
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Some lucky young folks got the opportunity to talk coding with astronaut Matthias Maurer! Here’s more from the Raspberry Pi Foundation:
Sending your computer program to space is amazing already, and to inspire even more young people about this opportunity, we’re sharing some of the fascinating stories European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer told last round’s Mission Space Lab team winners about his experiences on the ISS.
Last round’s winning Mission Space Lab teams were invited to a very special online session with Matthias, and he shared lots of thoughtful and surprising insights from his mission on the International Space Station.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Great design for another CR2032 Battery Storage Box for 20 Batteries
download the files on: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5779128
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
The AGS02MA is a MOX-based TVOC sensor equipped with a miniature ADC chip that converts the readings into I2C for gas resistance output and parts-per-billion (ppb). This resistance can be correlated with ambient volatile organic compounds (TVOC) – higher ppb means more organic compounds in the air. It’s a simple sensor and doesn’t perform any additional filtering or calculations but it’s also inexpensive and small!
Please note: this sensor runs at 20KHz I2C which is lower than many chipsets like to do! We successfully ran this sensor on RP2040, ESP32 and ATmega328 (UNO) processors but other chips like SAMD21 and SAMD51 didn’t work as they don’t support 20KHz clock rate. Verify your board can perform 20KHz with an oscilloscope or logic analyzer before trying this sensor out! It will not work at 100KHz or 400KHz.
Two 10K pullup resistors are also required to wire this to an I2C bus, but it will work with 3V or 5V so no level shifting is required.
We do have Arduino library and CircuitPython code you can use to get started.
It’s JOHN PARK’S WORKSHOP! — LIVE! — Coming up at 4pm ET / 1pm PT Today! LIVE TEXT CHAT IS HERE in the Adafruit Discord chat!
Today’s project: Hexpad (+ Pitch Bend Update)
Also:
The live video will be on Youtube LIVE, Twitch, Periscope (Twitter) and Facebook.
Join maker John Park in his workshop each week as he builds, demos, hacks, and mods projects live on air! “John Park’s Workshop — LIVE” is the place to see creative projects come to life, as John uses a wide variety of tools and techniques to make everything from mystery boxes to synthesizer controllers to drink robots, using digital fabrication, hand and power tools, microcontrollers, and more. Come on into the chat to participate in the fun! Every Thursday @ 4pm ET/1pm PT!
It’s JOHN PARK’S WORKSHOP! — LIVE! — Coming up at 4pm ET / 1pm PT Today! LIVE TEXT CHAT IS HERE in the Adafruit Discord chat!
Today’s project: Hexpad (+ Pitch Bend Update)
Also:
The live video will be on Youtube LIVE, Twitch, Periscope (Twitter) and Facebook.
Join maker John Park in his workshop each week as he builds, demos, hacks, and mods projects live on air! “John Park’s Workshop — LIVE” is the place to see creative projects come to life, as John uses a wide variety of tools and techniques to make everything from mystery boxes to synthesizer controllers to drink robots, using digital fabrication, hand and power tools, microcontrollers, and more. Come on into the chat to participate in the fun! Every Thursday @ 4pm ET/1pm PT!
UPDATED GUIDE – Adafruit Feather HUZZAH ESP8266
We’ve updated the Adafruit Feather ESP8266 product guide to include a new “WipperSnapper Essentials” section. This section contains pages for interacting with your Adafruit Feather HUZZAH ESP8266 with Adafruit IO’s no-code interface.
Read the updated guide here >>>
If you’re unfamiliar with Lorraine Hansberry, “Art is Energy”: Lorraine Hansberry, World Builder is a great start. Soyica Diggs Colbert curated this amazing exhibit at BAM
“Art is Energy”: Lorraine Hansberry, World Builder presents, some for the first time, photographs, letters, recordings, and published and unpublished writings by Lorraine Hansberry. The exhibition mixes mediums to evocatively capture Hansberry’s multiplicity—the world that she inhabited and the one she created in The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. The exhibition was curated by Soyica Diggs Colbert and made possible through generous partnerships with Joi Gresham and the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL); and Alison Saar and The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative.
If you’re unfamiliar with Lorraine Hansberry, “Art is Energy”: Lorraine Hansberry, World Builder is a great start. Soyica Diggs Colbert curated this amazing exhibit at BAM
“Art is Energy”: Lorraine Hansberry, World Builder presents, some for the first time, photographs, letters, recordings, and published and unpublished writings by Lorraine Hansberry. The exhibition mixes mediums to evocatively capture Hansberry’s multiplicity—the world that she inhabited and the one she created in The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window. The exhibition was curated by Soyica Diggs Colbert and made possible through generous partnerships with Joi Gresham and the Lorraine Hansberry Literary Trust; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL); and Alison Saar and The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative.