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Submission + - What is this "Linux", anyhow? (adafruit.com) 2

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: If you're starting down the path to learning about electronics or computers, you may have noticed or heard about "Linux" — as in "this dev board is linux-based" or "this wearable runs linux" or "I wrote a linux script to control the barcode scanner" And you might be wondering Well, what is this "Linux" anyhow? Does it matter to me? and then maybe you asked someone and you got a long rant about stuff called kernels and bashed shells and now you're wondering if its corn-related or is some sort of crab. Being that this question and confusion is inevitable, and we're getting so many people asking about this mysterious Linux, we at Adafruit thought we'd write up a series of tutorials to help you understand what linux is, when you want linux and how to use it when you do.

Submission + - Heathkit – The electronic history mystery (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: In 2013 there was a lot of buzz in the electronics communities about Heathkit returning in some way, however it’s been exactly one year and there has not been any updates. Heathkit “came back” in 2011 too, but nothing materialized then either. Here is our attempt to help piece together some of the puzzle of what has become of Heathkit.

Submission + - Winners of Raspberry Pi Photography Award Contest 2014 (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Adafruit held a 2014 Raspberry Pi Photography contest that has completed with the winners selected. You can see the winning photographs as well as all of the entries. Andrew Mulholland, using a Raspberry Pi powered LEGO panobot, is the winning photographer. He's also provided a video of how his winning photographs were put together.

Submission + - 3D Printed PiGRRL - Raspberry Pi Gameboy

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Celebrate the 20th anniversary of the classic gaming device, Game Boy, by building your own with 3d printing and DIY electronics. This project uses a Raspberry Pi and TFT touch screen to make an epic DIY Game Girl. The 3d printed enclosure houses all of the components and can be printed in your favorite color. It's controlled with SNES gaming controller components, reusing the printed circuit board, buttons and elastomers. The 3D files can be found on Thingiverse, and a video of the finished product is provided as well.

Submission + - Unlock Your Android Phone with Open Source Wearable NFC (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Beck Stern at Adafruit has created a guide on how to create an open source NFC ring or other wearable to mod and unlock your Android phone. From the tutorial:

Unlock your phone by just picking it up! No more pesky password or gesture PIN, just scan an NFC tag! This guide covers creating an NFC ring, putting an NFC tag in your nail polish, modding your Android installation to read tags from the lockscreen, and creating an automation toolchain to unlock the phone when the desired tag is scanned.

There is also a video that demonstrates how it works.

Submission + - GlassLight - Google Glass Voice-Controlled Flashlight

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: The Google Glass voice-controlled flashlight accessory might be one of the first hardware accessories for the Google Glass, and the software controlling it is open sourced. It can be plugged into the USB port of Google Glass and stay there. Then you can use your voice command to control this little gadget to give some extra light in a dark environment. Deging Sun at Adafruit has a write-up about how to set it up, and get everything configured.

Submission + - DIY Wearable Pi with Near-Eye Video Glasses (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Noe & Pedro Ruiz at Adafruit have created a pair of open source near-eye video glasses combined with a Raspberry Pi. Their 3D Printed design turns a pair of 'private display glasses' into a "google glass"-like form factor. It easily clips to your prescription glasses, and can display any kind of device with Composite Video like a Raspberry Pi. They have a video demonstrating the glasses, a tutorial on how to build them, along with the 3d files required to print it out.

Submission + - How to make an open source soft quadruped walking robot (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: The Glaucus, named after the Blue Sea Slug (Glaucus Atlanticus), is an open source soft robotic quadruped from Super-Releaser. It is a proof of concept for a method developed at Super-Releaser that can reproduce nearly any geometry modeled on the computer as a seamless silicone skin. The company hopes to apply these same techniques to practical problems in medicine and engineering as the technology develops.

The quadruped has hollow interior chambers that interdigitate with one another. When either of these chambers is pressurized it deforms and bends the structure of the robot. This bending produces the walking motion. It is similar to how a salamander walks, by balancing itself on one pair of legs diagonal from one another while moving the opposite pair forward.

Submission + - Adafruit now accepts Bitcoin for purchases (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Adafruit, an open source hardware company, now accepts Bitcoin. They successfully soft-launched over the weekend and are now using BitPay as a payment processor. BitPay is an electronic payment processing system for the bitcoin currency. BitPay enables online merchants to accept bitcoins, as a form of payment like payments from Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Google Wallet and Paypal.

Submission + - Hardware is now open (sourced) for business (cnbc.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: An article out of CNBC discusses the state of open source hardware based businesses. "Few hardware companies would dream of giving up their design secrets, but for a growing niche of entrepreneurs, doing just that is a pillar of their business. The open-source hardware movement is migrating from the garage to the marketplace. Companies that follow an open-source philosophy make their physical designs and software code available to the public. By doing so, these companies engage a wave of makers, hobbyists and designers who don't just want to buy products, but have a hand in developing them."

Submission + - Announcing Hangout for Make the World: Prosthetics – Friday 10/4/2013 8pm (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Make The World: Prosthetics is a one month program on Google+ aimed at crowdsourcing the manufacturing and delivery of the Robohand prosthetic to people in need. The program will be hosted by Adafruit’s Limor Fried, Matt Griffin and Phillip Torrone. Key partners on the program include Robohand, MakerBot, The Open Hand Project, Anthromod, Prosthetics for Prosperity, eNABLE, The Lucky Fin Project and Hands for Africa.

Submission + - DIY Open Source LED GPS Watch Project (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Make your own open source LED timepiece! Use an Adafruit FLORA and its GPS module to tell time with a ring of pixels. A leather cuff holds the circuit and hides the battery. The watch is chunky but still looks and feels great on tiny wrists! The circuit sandwich becomes the face of the watch, and you'll use a tactile switch to make a mode selector. The watch has timekeeping (one LED for hours and one for minutes), GPS navigation (customize your waypoint in the provided Arduino sketch), and compass modes.

Submission + - Raspberry Pi as an Ad Blocking Access Point (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Adafruit has a new tutorial that will show you how to use your Raspberry Pi as a WiFi access point that blocks ads by default for any devices using it. This is really neat in that it would work for your Android or iOS device, your Xbox 360, TiVo, laptop, and more without needing to customize any of those devices other than to use your Raspberry Pi as the access point for WiFi. Using an ad-blocker can be useful for conserving bandwidth, helping out low-power devices, or for keeping your sanity while browsing the web!

Submission + - Google Glass talks to Raspberry Pi with XMPP (adafruit.com)

Submitted by coop0030
coop0030 writes: Adafruit has a guide up on how to enable Google Glass to communicate to a hardware platform, raspberry Pi, with Mirror API and XMPP protocol. Now users can access physical objects with their Google Glass via voice commands. If you have a webcam you can connect it to a Raspberry Pi and let it to take pictures for your Glass as well.

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