Who doesn’t love these GreatScott! videos where he buys, tests, and rates parts and products he purchases from AliExpress? And I can never get enough of Scott’s meticulous schematics and explainer graphics that he always draws in his videos.
In this installment (part 6) of his AliExpress gems videos, he looks at 7 different products: VFD displays, T-splitter connectors, a solar panel multimeter, a battery charger/booster, damaged screw extractors, an ESP32 LCD board, and an ATX power supply board.
The VFD displays, solar panel multimeter, battery charger, ESP32 board, and power supply board all get a thumbs up. The T-splitters and damaged screw extractors were a bust.
This video made me realize I actually had no idea what a 2 by 4 was or how it got its name. And now I’ve learned what the term rough lumber means and I cannot wait to drop it into casual conversation at the next available opportunity.
Check out this video from The Engineering Hub for more details.
Stelar (The STEM learning and research center) has compiled a few Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers to help Hispanic/Latinx youth identify their STEM passions and explore careers in STEM! Via Stelar
The Hispanic Heritage observance began in the United States in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week and was later expanded in 1988 to cover a 30-day period. National Hispanic Heritage Month kicks off every year from September 15 to October 15. It’s a time Hispanics, Latinos, Latinas and Latinx come together to celebrate the histories, cultures, and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
This year’s theme: “Unidos: Inclusivity for a Stronger Nation.” The theme encourages us to ensure that all voices are represented and welcomed to help build stronger communities and a stronger nation. Programs like NSF’s Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST), emphasize the importance of providing opportunities to motivate and inspire Hispanic/Latinx youth to pursue STEM education.
elhef shares:
A simple text keyring to label a found key
download the files on: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6200912
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
This week’s EYE ON NPI (video) stands alone as a fantastic new solution for high power charging of large battery packs and also power boosting from battery to system: it’s ADI/Maxim’s MAX77789 Standalone 3.15A Charger, an all-in-one power management IC that lets you ditch DC power plugs and simplifies your BOM, at an excellent price.
We’ll also be covering the MAX77787 which is the fraternal-twin-sister product: using I2C instead of resistor settings for configuration.
We’ve been covering USB Type C PD sinks and supplies for about a year here on EYE ON NPI & The Great Search, they’re an excellent way to ditch those DC barrel jack power supplies and allow folks to use a single connector and standard power supply for various voltages, from 5V-20V at up to 5A. There’s plenty of chips that will connect to a PD source and negotiate that voltage for you but now we can start to take advantage of USB PD for battery charging as well!
This week’s dynamic duo does pretty much everything for battery management. As devices get more complex, and battery cost goes down, the packs included in products are getting bigger. If you’re trying to charge a 5Ah battery at standard 5V/1A rates, it will take at least 5-8 hours to do so, when folks really want 1-2 hour charge rates.
The MAX77789 and MAX77787 have a buck converter that will deliver up to 3A to the battery for 3x faster charging. But, if you try to draw 3A from a USB 5V power cable, that built-in resistance will cause a voltage droop – remember we need at least 4.5V to have the headroom for charging up to 4.2V or 4.35V Lithium batteries. Thus, these chips use USB PD to request higher voltages when available: 9V or 12V means that we can draw less current to get the same amount of power, which means less resistance loss over the cabling.
For pre-C chargers, such as Samsung or Apple or Quick Charge the USB D+/D- pins are used. In such cases where you want to have the data pins available for USB data/sync, you’ll need something like the MAX20334 data line switch to flip the pins back to your MCU.
The MAX77789 uses resistors on the IFAST, ISET and INLIM lines to set the charge rate, timeout, and pack float voltage, the MAX77787 uses I2C. Both have a couple configuration pins, and LEDs for status monitoring.
Both have the ability to also be turned into a boost converter – you can’t use both charging and boosting at the same time, but since you can use the SYS voltage when connected to USB, you’ll have at least 5V either way. The booster is fixed to 5.1V output. On the ’89 the boost is enabled by GPIO, the ’87 enables it over I2C.
Both chips are available in 0.4mm pitch BGA – which means pad-in-via and multi-layer boards in order to pass the inner configuration traces out. Many of the traces are tripled-or-quadrupled to provide the current carrying capability of 3A charge and 6A peak discharge. An eval board is also available which makes quick verification easy. For the I2C configuration version there’s also desktop software to try out various settings – the standalone version has jumpers so you can attach any resistor value.
Both the ADI/Maxim MAX77789 and MAX77787 Standalone/I2C 3.15A Chargers are in stock right now at DigiKey for immediate shipment. It’s great to see forward momentum in chip design releases now that the shortages have abated: only a year ago we were scrambling for diodes and op-amps and now we have a wealth of great new products to choose from! Order one of these powerful Lithium battery management chips today and you’ll have it shipped immediately so that you can start integrating it into your new design by tomorrow afternoon.
Scientists have just published the first JWST spectrum of one of the TRAPPIST-1 planets!
Our findings could have important implications for the planets in the habitable zone.
TRAPPIST-1 is a cool red dwarf star famous for having 7 rocky planets (3 or 4 of which lie in the habitable zone). This star system (40 light years away) is one of the most promising for looking for rocky planet atmospheres.
All 7 of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are being systematically observed by JWST. Many of these observations have already been taken and are being analysed.
TRAPPIST-1b is the closest planet to its star, with a measured dayside temperature around 230 °C.
While this makes the planet too hot to be in the habitable zone, the higher temperature should make any atmosphere larger and hence easier to detect.
See much more in the thread on X (formerly Twitter) and in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Nat Meade explores the meaning of masculinity through his paintings. via Artsy
So far, Meade has mostly worked small, and his intensely colorful, dense compositions have earned him spots in notable private and public collections. “Hank Stamper’s Bones,” Meade’s second solo show at Hesse Flatow in New York, on view through October 14th, presents works from this year that all expand his exploration of masculine archetype. The title references the eldest son of the hardscrabble, Pacific Northwestern logging family from Ken Kesey’s 1964 novel Sometimes a Great Notion. The show also enlivens Meade’s narratives with new adventures, featuring, for the first time, canvases populated by numerous figures, their steeds, and the detailed landscapes they traverse.
The Liberty Science Center has a program called Big Art. It’s been going on for 30 years, and for its 30th anniversary the sculptor Dustin Yellin stepped up in excellent form. He created a piece called The Politics of Eternity it’s 10,000 pounds and explores historical time over seven columns. Here’s more from COLOSSAL:
He spent around 20,000 hours—that’s about 834 days!—painstakingly composing tiny details between sheets of laminated glass. One section portrays a fictive community gathered around an ancient totem, followed by a society of the future in which its denizens don jet packs within a “techno-metropolis” that rises up around a rocket ship. From each of these areas, waterfalls feed into a central world full of tall ships, supertankers, rafts, and drones.
Rather than a linear expression of time, a mashup of technologies, climates, and terrain merge seamlessly into one another. By portraying the past, present, and future simultaneously, Yellin prompts viewers to consider the interconnectivity of all time periods and how our actions in the past and today will continue to influence the future.
Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!
The Python on Microcontrollers newsletter is the place for the latest news involving Python on hardware (microcontrollers AND single board computers like Raspberry Pi).
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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.
BLOG
Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! Celebrated from September 15 through October 15th, the Adafruit blog will feature important stories, people, and events across the diaspora.
More BLOG:
LEARN
Guitar Synth with CircuitPython SynthIO
Build a musical Synth Guitar with Adafruit’s RP2040 PropMaker Feather and CircuitPython! This instrument uses CircuitPython SynthIO to generate musical notes that can be modulated using rotary encoders and the PropMaker Feather’s on-board accelerometer. Check out the full guide!
More 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
The aptly named Greenbelt Native Plant Center store seeds and grows native plants that are used for restoration projects across the city!
Together with our colleagues in Parks and our partners throughout the region—
local conservation, research, education, botanic, and cultural institutions—we work towards the long–term sustainability of our natural resources through programming and research to improve the conservation value of the City’s parkland.
Read more and train to volunteer
Great recent post on Grub Street that highlights the work of photographers James and Karla Murray, specifically their latest book Store Front NYC: Photographs of the City’s Independent Shops, Past and Present (you can buy the book here from Rough Trade). If you’re a tenured New Yorker, you’ll likely recognize many of these store fronts. But more importantly, New Yorker or not, you’ll be tempted to look up from your phone and notice what’s around you next time you’re out and about.
We’ve got the New nEw NEW for you right here:
Adafruit AD5693R Breakout Board – 16-Bit DAC with I2C Interface – STEMMA QT / qwiic
Which is better, less bits or more? MORE of course! So why settle for a 12-bit DAC like the MCP4725 when you can go for the 16-bits of the AD5693? OK well there may be some reason to go with 12-bits, say if you don’t need high resolution output and want to go with the more affordable DAC. But for those who like the finer things in life, the Adafruit AD5693R Breakout Board is a16-Bit DAC with I2C Interface and temperature compensated 2.5V internal reference for a compact high-precision output.
Round RGB 666 TTL TFT Display – 2.1″ 480×480 – Capacitive Touch – TL021WVC02CT-B1323
This is a screen for advanced hackers who like the look of a nice, round TFT screen with tons of pixels. The 2.1″ diagonal sized display has 480×480 16-bit full-color pixels and is an IPS display, so the color looks great up to 80 degrees off-axis in any direction.
Round RGB TTL TFT Display – 2.1″ 480×480 – No Touchscreen – TL021WVC02-B1323B
This version does not have a touchscreen. It’s exactly the same TFT display as PID 5792 but without the capacitive touch panel, so it is a little less expensive.
Ultraleap 3Di Stereo Hand Tracking Camera
The Ultraleap 3Di Stereo Hand Tracking Camera is designed to be connected to an interactive screen. Together with Ultraleap’s world-leading software, it transforms displays into touchless, three-dimensional, immersive surfaces. Ultraleap 3Di allows easy integration of Ultraleap hand tracking in a form factor ruggedized for use in permanent settings – such as self-serve kiosks, digital out-of-home installations, interactive displays in retail, museums, and theme parks, or medical/industrial uses.
Black Woven USB A to USB C Cable with 66W Watt Display – 1 meter
This Black Woven USB A to USB C Cable with 66W Watt Display makes determining the charger setup easy: look on the end of the USB C plug to read the amount of power going into your phone. ~3W is a standard 5V / 500mA draw, 5-7W is when you can get 5V / 1A and higher wattages correspond to quick-charge capable setups.
Adafruit USB Type C Power Delivery Dummy Breakout – I2C or Fixed – HUSB238
The HUSB238 USB PD sink chip is neat in that you can either use jumpers (really, resistor selection) to set the desired PD voltage and current or you can use I2C for dynamic querying and setting. We’ve build a nice Adafruit USB Type C Power Delivery Dummy Breakout board around the HUSB238 to make it very easy to configure and integrate without having to solder any tiny resistors.
Visit www.adafruit.com/new for more info.
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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
The SciShow turns its gaze at your morning brew! Making coffee is really just chemistry and the management of variables. They break down every step with science. From bean to cup, they look at different roast, brew methods and more.
If you drink coffee, you might wonder if you’re doing the most to make your absolute best cup of coffee. And fortunately for you, science has the answers, from getting the perfect grind to finding out the best beans for you. So pull up a chair and pour yourself a cup of joe!
In this Stumpy Nubs video, James demonstrates how the use of a dust extractor or shop vac attached to a disc sander can functionally cut your sanding time in half.
There are a number of other useful tips in here, too, like using a lumber crayon (or graphite) to mark a surface to be sanded so that you can see when you’ve completely sanded off the markings and it’s time to switch grits.
Want to add a free wiki that can run on your Raspberry Pi? Here’s Wiki.JS. Here’s more from PiMyLifeUp:
Wiki.JS is a powerful, free, and self-hosted wiki that you can run on your Raspberry Pi….
One of the benefits of this particular Wiki clone is that it boasts a considerable number of features and has support for a visual editor, markdown, and more. It even boasts support for 2-factor authentication, allowing you to improve the security of your setup.
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!
Join Scott tomorrow Friday, September 22nd, on Adafruit YouTube or Twitch at 2pm Pacific.
Join the Discord and ask to be added to the “Deep Divers” role to be notified of time changes or computer troubles.
The plan is to answer questions and go over the IDF 5.1 update for ESP32C6 and ESP32H2 support.
Cheff4K shared this project on Thingiverse!
Introducing the unofficial 3D-printed LTT screwdriver clone, equipped with a removable ratchet mechanism and storage for six bits. Assembly is simple, with potential for minor adjustments using glue if needed. Ongoing enhancements ensure a robust yet user-friendly ratchet, capable of tackling everyday tasks. While PETG is recommended, PLA also works well. Reach out for assistance with any issues you may encounter during assembly or use.
Download files: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6189411
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!
BeLittleMaker shares this great design for a Headset Hanger!
download the files on: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6189714
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
When you first hear about 3D printed meats your stomach might turn. And fish no less…BUT there is a high likelihood we’ll all laugh at our former naivety as we chomp down new vegan options.
This “salmon” is “printed” from a fungus. More from IFLScience:
The alternative fish fillet, dubbed “THE FILET – Inspired By Salmon” by its creator, the food tech startup Revo Foods, is thought to be the first 3D-printed food to reach supermarket shelves. In a statement seen by IFLScience, the CEO of the company Robin Simsa said, “With the milestone of industrial-scale 3D food printing, we are entering a creative food revolution, an era where food is being crafted exactly according to the customer needs.”
Professional sports have been tracking athlete’s physical performance data for years, but usually via wearables worn on the upper body. Playermaker’s AI is changing this with their new lower body wearable tracker. The tracker straps to soccer cleats to monitor technical and physical performance data including acceleration, kicking velocity, and changes of direction. Although the technology was created in 2019, FIFA recently approved its use. The Athletic shares how FIFA will put this to use.
FIFA’s innovation programme project summary commented on Playermaker’s technology: “Unlike back-mounted wearables, this product enables further-reaching insights into performance and medical disciplines due to the position on the boot generating data on the lower limbs.
Every Wednesday is Wearable Wednesday here at Adafruit! We’re bringing you the blinkiest, most fashionable, innovative, and useful wearables from around the web and in our own original projects featuring our wearable Arduino-compatible platform, FLORA. Be sure to post up your wearables projects in the forums or send us a link and you might be featured here on Wearable Wednesday!
Check out the latest Adafruit Learning System tutorial from Erin St Blaine: use NFC tags to create a scannable tap-to-pay link or social media link that’s inexpensive and easy to use. NFC tags use RFID technology, scannable and writeable by most modern smart phones. This is a very inexpensive and easy way to connect with the people around you using technology. From the guide:
Are you a connector? Are you always handing out business cards, sending people to your Etsy store, your blog, or your product? Do you meet people at festivals or conventions and need an easy way to connect, and stay connected? This tutorial is for you.
With an NFC tag and a few clicks in a smartphone app, you can create a necklace, necktie, hat or costume piece that not only makes you look sharp, but also helps you connect with your people. Simply tap your necklace to a smart phone with NFC technology (which is most of them, these days) and your contact info will appear on their screen like magic.
Or, set up a Venmo link on your NFC tag to make a tap-to-pay sign that’s even easier for your customers to use than a QR code. NFC tags offer so many possibilities.
Full tutorial: https://learn.adafruit.com/scannable-links-with-nfc/overview
A couple weeks back the folks over at Vox published this video on the history of the geographic area we now call Silicon Valley thanks to Vannevar Bush and Fred Terman.
You now can use the MPRLS Ported Pressure Sensor with Adafruit.io WipperSnapper for real-time pressure measurements, without the need for writing a single line of code!
More about the MPRLS Ported Pressure Sensor:
We stock a few barometric pressure sensors, great for altitude and weather measurements. This pressure sensor is special because it comes with a metal port! Unlike other pressure sensors, you can easily attach a tube to it, to measure air pressure inside a close space. In particular we think this would be a great sensor for use with making DIY assistive tech “Sip & Puff” interfaces, or measuring the pressure within a vacuum chamber or other pressurized container.
What is WipperSnapper?
With Adafruit.IO and WipperSnapper Firmware, you can effortlessly connect various components and sensors to any of the 20+ supported development boards to build an internet-connected electronics project. The best part is that you can configure and control these sensors from the web using Adafruit IO, all without the need for programming.
Read this guide for instructions on using a device WipperSnapper with the MPRLS Sensor>>>
Students from ETH Zurich and Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts have broken the previous world record for acceleration with their hand-built electric racing car. The vehicle accelerated from zero to 100 km/h (62.14 mph) in 0.956 seconds over a distance of 12.3 metres (40.35 feet).
Similar to the United States’ Library of Congress, the UK has the British Library. Everything that gets published in the UK is archived there. “The raw text of history” The volume of material is staggering and requires Matrix-like robots to zip around retrieving and organizing it.
The internet and digitized content adds a new wrinkle to maintaining such an archive. Tom Scott takes a tour!
The British Library is one of the six legal deposit libraries for the UK — and the only one that doesn’t pick and choose, or have to ask for copies. That’s a lot of books to store, and the internet’s only making it worse. ■ The BL: https://bl.uk ■ UK Web Archive: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/
In this fascinating video essay, Canadian architect Dami Lee takes a look at the architectural design and urban planning evident in cyberpunk sci-fi and relates it to the urban realities of today and our uncertainties about the future.
There are some fascinating insights here I’ve never thought of, like the dearth of children in almost all cyberpunk lit, and how the Brutalist architecture of the Mayan-inspired corporate pyramids in Blade Runner are also reflected in the apartment designs in both the original film and Blade Runner 2049 (symbolically showing the longh reach of the megacorps).
Many months ago, Brent of Goobertown Hobbies and Dave of MiniWarGaming announced an epic “cinematic battle report” they had recorded with a professional film studio. I was excited to see the results.
And, here they are, a 47-minute video of Dave and Brent playing a game of One Page Rules’ Grimdark Future with all of the bells and whistles of professional film-making.
As a huge fan of tabletop mini gaming, I am always looking for new and different ways of experiencing my hobby. I’d love to see more of this kind of cinematic battle reporting in the future.
For others here who play tabletop mini games, what are your thoughts?
