Archive for the ‘Adacast’ Category
@ MAKE – A Maker Business: Adafruit Industries how it’s made – an open source hardware company in NYC no comments
Phil has an big article on MAKE about many of the tools we use to run Adafruit – check it out! (video above, m4v here)…
A lot of readers are likely familiar with Adafruit Industries, supplier and maker of many kits found in the Maker Shed. In addition to my role here at MAKE, as senior editor, I also work with Limor (Ladyada), helping her with the open source hardware kit business. I’ll have a few articles about general things we do around here to keep the ship afloat and charting new waters, but I thought I’d start this “Maker Business” article with an overview of how it all works and how we use many many web tools/services. One of the most asked questions I get from makers is “what shopping cart do you use?” The short answer is Zencart, and while I think it doesn’t actually matter what you use when you start out, this is what we’re using at Adafruit. A recent milestone, we just shipped our 50,000th order. We mostly create and sell open source hardware, most of the tools we use are open source — I’ve never seen an article detailing “everything” a business uses online, so here’s one. I think you’ll enjoy it. Let’s take a look…
XDALICHRON – Another great clock for the MONOCHRON no comments
XDALICHRON – We really like jwz.
“Dali Clock is a digital clock. When a digit changes, it “melts” into its new shape. The date is displayed when the mouse is pressed. The window can be made transparent, and can do funky psychedelic color cycling. ”
Firmware is on github, have fun! Another great clock for the MONOCHRON – (m4v video).
SEVENCHRON – video – MONOCHRON projects no comments
Big day for open source clocks, here’s SEVENCHRON (m4v). You can get SEVENCHRON on GitHub – just need a MONOCHRON and a programmer 
INTRUDERCHRON – photos and video – more MONOCHRON projects no comments
Here’s INTRUDERCHRON by dataman – photos and video – just one of the many projects you can do with the open source hackable MONOCHRON clock kit! The time (1:30, date 03/05)… (m4v).
Video of the MONOCHRON clock in action… no comments
Here’s a quick video of our new kit, the MONOCHRON – we’ll be posting more videos soon – here’s a taste! (HD version on Vimeo, m4v here!)…
This easy kit has an default animated display, but is easily hackable to do whatever you wish – pictured above, retro arcade style table tennis for two.
- 128×64 LCD (KS0108) – we special-ordered the black and white display
- ATmega328 processor (we even stuck an ‘arduino’ stk500 bootloader on there too)
- Laser cut enclosure in black acrylic
- Beeping/blinking alarm with 10 minute snooze
- Battery backed-up real time clock (DS1307) keeps time even when power is lost for years
- European/US 12 or 24 hour time display as well as date
- Completely open source hardware, all firmware, layout and CAD files are yours to mess with
- Plenty of space for mods, a prototyping area for soldering stuff in
- Soothing animation of retro arcade style table-tennis for two
Comes with: clock kit (includes all parts, programmed chips and LCD), coin battery, enclosure, 9VDC power supply for 220V or 110V. You’ll need some basic soldering & hand tools that are necessary to assemble it! The good news is that this is a pretty basic kit and even if its your first soldering project, it shouldn’t take more than 2 or 3 hours to put together For much more information including parts list, instructions, videos, etc. check out the MONOCHRON website and you can order one here!
We started shipping and we’ve already had customers making them, the first customer has said “Assembly was a snap and it works great.” – thanks SSquire!
Fairytale Fashion show 2010 – Diana Eng (video) no comments
Adafruit attended the Fairytale Fashion show 2010 with Diana Eng, here’s our video – above in glorious HD (m4v here).
The Fairytale Fashion Collection uses technology to create magical clothing in real life. Electronics, mechanical engineering, and mathematics are used to create clothing with blooming flowers, changing colors and transforming shapes. Research and development for the Fairytale Fashion collection are shared online at FairytaleFashion.org as an educational tool that teaches about science, math, and technology through fashion. Fairytale Fashion was created with the support of Eyebeam Art and Technology Center nonprofit. Diana Eng is a fashion designer who specializes in technology, math, and science. Her designs range from inflatable clothing to fashions inspired by mechanical engineering. She is a designer from Bravo’s Emmy nominated TV show, Project Runway season 2 and author of Fashion Geek: Clothes, Accessories, Tech. Diana is cofounder of NYC Resistor hacker group. Diana is currently a resident artist at Eyebeam.
Great show, nice to see everyone from the maker scene in NYC at the show too!