On Christmas Eve the Parker solar probe nearly kissed the sun. Breaking the previous record by over 700,000 miles the probe passed the sun at 430,000 mph. The next pass will be attempted on March 22, 2025.
From NASA:
Parker Solar Probe has spent the last six years setting up for this moment. Launched in 2018, the spacecraft used seven flybys of Venus to gravitationally direct it ever closer to the Sun. With its last Venus flyby on Nov. 6, 2024, the spacecraft reached its optimal orbit. This oval-shaped orbit brings the spacecraft an ideal distance from the Sun every three months — close enough to study our Sun’s mysterious processes but not too close to become overwhelmed by the Sun’s heat and damaging radiation. The spacecraft will remain in this orbit for the remainder of its primary mission.
Learn more about the power of the sun with Collin’s Lab: Solar
Make your own countdown to the New Year with our NYE Circuit Playground Drop guide. And, if you’d like, you could play this super synthy rendition of Auld Lang Syne while it goes down.
SekohlahRobot on Hackster.io wanted to re-live their Guitar Hero glory days. They upgraded a PS2 Guitar controller for a modern PC with bluetooth.
I found my old guitar hero controller, but now PS2 doesn’t have it anymore, so I want to transforming a PS2 Guitar Hero Controller to convert Bluetooth PC. so I can play with PC / Notebook.
If you have any extra Guitar Hero controllers handy you should also checkout John Park’s Guitar Hero MIDI Controller using an Adafruit QT Py – SAMD21 Dev Board with STEMMA QT and these items from the Adafruit shop
ADAFRUIT’S TOP TEN 3D PRINTING POSTS of 2024
IoT Doorbell Camera, Sound Reactive Paper Lanterns, Fog Machines, & more!
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.
Adafruit’s Top Ten Best Selling Products of 2024 #AdafruitTopTen
The holiday hacks continue! Use the code gibson15 for 15% off in stock items from our 2024 Holiday Gift Guide from Monday, December 9th – Monday, December 30th at 11:59 PM EST.
Check out the full post here!
Catch up with us on the blog, in the Adafruit Learning System, and on YouTube.
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During her Tiny Desk Concert, Imogen Heap demonstrated the MiMU glove. The wearable allows her to orchestrate and manipulate sound in real time for ethereal effects. You can watch the whole set above or jump to the demonstration here!
You can also check out this video from a bit ago:
Imogen Heap’s Mi.Mu gloves will “change the way we make music”
Create a MiMU inspired Circuit Playground glove with the Circuit Playground Musical Glove
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
Brian McCafferty posted this Ping Pong ball project on OpenSource.com. The ping pong balls create a lovely diffuse effect for NeoPixels so you can put together impressive large displays. You can see the github repo the project was helped along with the learn guide: NeoPixels on Raspberry Pi
I love Christmas decorations and lights, and I’d been wanting to do an programmable LED project for a long time. Recently, I built a light array made of LED lights, ping pong balls, and a Raspberry Pi Zero. I thought it was worth sharing, because it ended up being relatively easy but also educational.
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!
My third graders began their journeys with Circuit
Playground Express for Computer Science Week. It has been so awesome
watching them grow in their learning and find success! We created Kindness
Wands to go along with Kindness Week and tomorrow we are creating Michigan
themed snow globes integrating Michigan Geography!Thanks so much for creating this product!!!
We’re doing a lot of serious testing with our WLED mega-board, code-name Sparkle Motion. While doing some holiday lighting projects, we also wanted something slim enough to slip into any design. It still uses an ESP32 for the best support, with USB-serial programming, 5A fuse, 5V level shifting + 100 ohm series resistors for pixel drivers, user/reset buttons, a user LED and onboard neopixel, JST SH analog/digital connector, QT I2C connector, 4 GPIO plus power/ground breakouts, and USB type C power/data input.
However, this version is made simpler and less expensive by dropping the DC jack and USB PD support: it’s only for 5V strips if you want to power them directly (you could still drive 12V or 24V pixels, but you’ll need separate power for them). Instead of a full set of terminal blocks for 3 signals, we only have two outputs, and they have to share the power and ground pins. It could also be used for a single two-pin dotstar LED setup. We kept the built-in I2S mic but dropped the on-board IR sensor – if you want an IR sensor, you’ll be able to plug it into the JST SH port with a simple cable or solder it into the breakout pads.
The trade-off is that it’s much smaller and slimmer, especially when no terminal blocks are soldered in by default: only 1.2″ long x 0.785″ wide (~1 sq in) x 0.3″ thick vs. the original’s 2″ x 1.3″ (2.6 sq in) x 0.55″. To get it that small, we went 4-layer to give us a nice big ground and 5V plane in the middle and double-sided assembly. Coming soon.
Time to build a holiday diorama! This isn’t any old stagnant diorama. This one moves. That’s right Rudolf and his crew hop up and down through the night sky thanks to our friend CRICKIT! Along with CRICKIT and a Circuit Playground Express, we’ll use some cardboard, leds, pipe cleaners and a DC motor to bring this festive diorama to life.
Make your own festive Gingerbread Man with this cool print by inplace on Thingiverse!
Before I learned about ferrite cores I assumed those blocks were added protection or some sort of strain resistance.
Ferrite cores (or Ferrite bead) are added to cords to reduce their electromagnet interference with other electronics. They are composed of a magnetic but non conductive ferrite. Fun explainer vid from @EkinYetkinEN on YouTube
And more details form Altium:
How Do Ferrite Beads Work and How Do You Choose the Right One?
Ferrite beads (sometimes used interchangeably called a ferrite choke, ferrite clamp, ferrite collar, EMI filter bead, or even a ferrite ring filter) can be a bit of a mystery. The electrical function of a ferrite bead resembles that of an inductor, but a ferrite bead’s frequency response deviates from this functionality at high frequencies. Additionally, different types of ferrite beads and ferrite materials, such as wirewound ferrite beads and chip ferrite beads, provide different responses to noise reduction. For example, wirewound ferrite beads operate over a wide range of frequencies but offer less resistance in direct current setups.
Learn more about power supplies with the Adafruit Learning System
When you start out with electronics, you’ll hear a lot about power supplies – they’re in every electronics project and they are the backbone of everything! A good power supply will make your project hum along nicely. A bad power supply will make life frustrating: stuff will work sometimes but not others, inconsistent results, motors not working, sensor data always off. Understanding power supplies (boring though they may be) is key to making your project work!
A lot of people don’t pay much attention to power supplies until problems show up. We think you should always think about your power supply from day one – How are you going to power it? How long will the batteries last? Will it overheat? Can it get damaged by accidentally plugging in the wrong thing?
Day 21: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar – Silicon Graphics O2
The SGI O2, introduced in 1996 by Silicon Graphics (SGI), was a cutting-edge and futuristic workstation for multimedia and 3D graphics apps. It featured a modular design and the advanced Unified Memory Architecture (UMA), which allowed the CPU, GPU, and other subsystems to share memory. It was powered by MIPS RISC processors; the O2 first used the R5000 series and later supported the more powerful R10000 and R12000 series processors. Its specialized ICE (Image Compression Engine) chip provided real-time video compression and processing, making it popular in video editing and graphics-heavy industries.
The system utilized IRIX, SGI’s UNIX-based operating system, optimized for graphics and multimedia . Graphics were driven by the custom CRM graphics engine, supporting advanced features like texture mapping, anti-aliasing, and video overlay. The O2 also supported a wide range of peripherals, including SCSI-based storage, and had integrated audio, video, and imaging tools, appealing to creative professionals. Even though this monster was outstanding, the O2 was eventually overshadowed by competing platforms. Still, it remains a favorite in retrocomputing circles due to its unique architecture and contributions to multimedia computing… along with the SGI logo (the first one) and the case’s unique design.
Silicon Graphics logo, used until 1999, our post and archive.
Have first computer memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #firstcomputer #retrocomputing – See you back here tomorrow!
From the Adafruit Learning System Archives the 3D Printed Trinket-LED animated Moravian Star will shine bright.
Moravian Stars come in various sizes and number of facets… the most common is the 26-point form which is composed of eighteen square and eight triangular shaped points.
The star featured here is an adaption, using one of the points / facets to mount the star atop a tree.
See the full guide and list of parts!
Day 20: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar – Sun SPARCstation 10
The SPARCstation 10, launched in 1992 by Sun Microsystems, was a workstation known for its fast performance and modular design. Based on the SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture) architecture, specifically the Sun-4m architecture, it supported up to four processors, including SuperSPARC and hyperSPARC CPUs, which offered multiprocessing capabilities. The modular design allowed users to add components like CPUs and memory on separate boards, making upgrades easy or at least easier compared to other systems at the time.
The system’s memory was up to 512 MB, and it had 16 SIMM slots. It supported SBus expansion for peripherals. The SPARCstation 10 also used the GX and ZX framebuffer graphics accelerators, which delivered graphical performance for technical and scientific computing. Its operating system options included SunOS and Solaris, making it good for legacy and contemporary UNIX-based apps.
The SPARCstation 10 was in the “pizza box” form factor, a slim and compact design for tight spaces. Its industrial design introduced a sleek, modern appearance, part of Sun’s efforts to make its workstations visually appealing and powerful.
One of the best logos ever? Sun Microsystems’ logo was designed by Stanford University computer science professor Vaughan Pratt. The logo features an ambigram of shapes that spell out the word “SUN” in all directions.
Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010. Oracle integrated Sun’s technologies, including the SPARC architecture, Solaris operating system, and Java platform, into its portfolio.
Have first computer memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #firstcomputer #retrocomputing – See you back here tomorrow!
Create your own Simple and Beautiful NeoPixel Holiday Lights using with a few items from the shop
Get your Holiday cheer up and running with NeoPixels! Make a beautiful color shifting light strand to put on your Christmas tree, your house, or add color and light to your artwork. These weatherproof LED pixels work great indoors or outdoors. We’ve included some fancy software to run the lights in an ever-shifting and changing array of color palettes. It’s not much more work to choose and customize your own color palettes to create the exact look you want.
This project is great for beginners. There is just a little bit of easy soldering involved. Most of the challenge is in getting the software set up, but once you’ve got that working, customization is as easy as copy and paste.
