Hackaday Links: November 8, 2015

[Burt Rutan] is someone who needs no introduction. Apparently, he likes the look of the Icon A5 and is working on his own version.

Earlier this week, the US Air Force lost a few satellites a minute after launch from Barking Sands in Hawaii. This was the first launch of the three stage, solid fueled SPARK rocket, although earlier versions were used to launch nuclear warheads into space. There are some great Army videos for these nuclear explosions in space, by the way.

[Alexandre] is working on an Arduino compatible board that has an integrated GSM module and WiFi chip. It’s called the Red Dragon, and that means he needs some really good board art. The finished product looks good in Eagle, and something we can’t wait to see back from the board house.

The Chippocolypse! Or however you spell it! TI is declaring a lot of chips EOL, and although this includes a lot of op-amps and other analog ephemera (PDF), the hi-fi community is reeling and a lot of people are stocking up on their favorite amplifiers.

[Jeremy] got tired of plugging jumper wires into a breadboard when programming his ATMega8 (including the ‘168 and ‘328) microcontrollers. The solution? A breadboard backpack that fits right over the IC. All the files are available, and the PCB can be found on Upverter.

In case you haven’t heard, we’re having a Super Conference in San Francisco later this week. Adafruit was kind enough to plug our plug for the con on Ask an Engineer last week.

[Sophi Kravitz] On Ask An Engineer Tonight

Whew, your Wednesday night entertainment is all sorted out. Mark it in your calendar, [Sophi Kravitz] will be appearing on Adafruit’s Ask an Engineer at 8pm EDT (UTC -4).

Of course she’ll be talking about The Hackaday Prize with all of the incredible entries so far and the amazing opportunities waiting for you as THP continues through the summer. But [Sophi’s] life experience runs far-and-deep and so will the conversation. She is an Electronics Engineer, an Artist, and a huge part of the Hackaday crew. This year she landed a grant to bring one of her projects to life for Burning Man (and to document the process which we’re really excited about). She’s brewing up a new project involving Quadcopters and the technology [Alan Yates] has been working on for Valve. And [Sophi] frequently works on projects like Breathe that delight us with her creativity.

But hey, we better leave some of it for the show. The live link is above, here’s the Adafruit page as well.

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