Workbench Fume Extractor Sucks, But Has A Charming Personality

August 7, 2019 by Erin Pinheiro 10 Comments

Shop safety is important regardless of what kind of work you do. For those of us soldering, that means extracting the noxious fumes released by heating up the solder flux used in our projects. [yesnoio] brings to us his own spin on the idea of a fume extractor, and it pulls out all stops with bells and whistles to spare.

The Workbench Assistant bot, as [yesnoio] describes it, is an integrated unit mounted atop a small tripod which extends over the working area where you’re soldering. Inside the enclosure are RGBW lights, an IR camera, and an Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4 Express driving the whole show. Aside from just shining a light onto your soldering iron though, the camera senses thermal activity from it to decide when to ramp up the server-grade fan inside which powers the whole fume extraction part of the project.

But the fun doesn’t stop there, as [yesnoio] decided to go for extra style points. The bot also comes with an amplified speaker, playing soundbites whenever actions such as starting or stopping the fan are performed. These soundbites are variations on a theme, like classic Futurama quotes or R2-D2’s chattering from Star Wars. The selectable themes are dubbed “performers”, and they can be reprogrammed easily using CircuitPython. This is a neat way to give your little desktop assistant some personality, and a fun way to break up the monotony of soldering up all those tiny SMD components on your next prototype.

If even after all this you still need more than just a cute little robotic voice beeping at you to convince you to get a fume extractor for your bench, then maybe some hands-on results could give you that little push you need. And if you’re already convinced and want to build your own, there is no shortage of DIY solutions we’ve seen around here at Hackaday. Check out this one in action after the break!

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The PewPew Console Is Coming To EuroPython 2019

June 21, 2019 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

EuroPython is a community-run developer conference, which began back in Belgium in 2002. In 2019, it’s happening in Basel, Switzerland from July 8 to 14, and there’s a special surprise in store for attendees this year. Conference attendees with be provided with a PewPew console for their hacking pleasure!

An earlier version of the PewPew handheld. There have been many and varied revisions of the hardware.

We’ve featured the project before on these hallowed pages; the earlier PewPew Featherwing console was a finalist in the 2017 Hackaday Prize Best Product Competition. At EuroPython, attendees will get to tinker with a special conference edition, which is the latest version of a long line of development versions. It runs the same microcontroller – ATSAMD21E18A – as the Adafruit Trinket M0, and is programmable with CircuitPython. The conference edition comes with a large 60 mm x 60 mm LED matrix, as well as an orange PCB with blue buttons to match the color scheme of the event.

We wager that conference attendees will enjoy hacking on the handheld console, and it makes a great platform for anyone who is new to embedded development with the Python language. Similar to badges, it makes a great pack-in for patrons, and the conference should be all the more enjoyable for it!

Python And The Internet Of Things Hack Chat

April 1, 2019 by Dan Maloney 6 Comments

Join us Wednesday at noon Pacific time for the Python and the Internet of Things Hack Chat!

Opinions differ about what the most-used programming language in right now is, but it’s hard to deny both the popularity and versatility of Python. In the nearly 30 years since it was invented it has grown from niche language to full-blown development environment that seems to be everywhere these days. That includes our beloved microcontrollers now with MicroPython, and Adafruit’s CircuitPython, greatly lowering the bar for entry-level hackers and simplifying and speeding development for old hands and providing a path to a Python-powered Internet of Things.

The CircuitPython team from Adafruit Industries – Dan Halbert, Kattni Rembor, Limor “Ladyada” Fried, Phillip Torrone, and Scott Shawcroft – will drop by the Hack Chat to answer all your questions about Python and the IoT. Join us as we discuss:

How CircuitPython came to be;
The range of IoT products that support Python;
Getting started with Python on IoT devices; and
What’s on the horizon for a Python-powered IoT?

And as extra enticement, we’ll be giving away five free one-year passes to Adafruit.io! We’ll draw five names at random from the list of Hack Chat attendees. Stop by for a chance to win. And, the Adafruit team will be streaming video live during the Hack Chat as well.

You are, of course, encouraged to add your own questions to the discussion. You can do that by leaving a comment on the Python and the Internet of Things Hack Chat and we’ll put that in the queue for the Hack Chat discussion.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, April 3, at noon, Pacific time. If time zones have got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io. You don’t have to wait until Wednesday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

Want a quick peek at what’s possible with CircuitPython? Check out this PyPortal event countdown timer that just happens to be counting down the hours till the next Hack Chat.

Hacking Hackaday.io From CircuitPython

January 18, 2019 by Ted Yapo 4 Comments

If you’ve ever engaged in social media, you’re familiar with the little thrill you receive when your post, tweet, or project gets a like. But, if logging in feels like too much overhead to obtain your dopamine reward, [pt’s] CircuitPython Hackaday portal may be just what you’re looking for. This project creates a stand-alone counter to display the number of “skulls” (aka likes) received by a project on hackaday.io, and of course, it’s currently counting its own.

The code is running on a SAMD51 (Cortex M4) microcontroller and serving up the skulls on 240×320 TFT display. For WiFi connectivity, the project uses an ESP-32 controlled through the usual AT command set. All the gory details of this interaction are abstracted away by a CircuitPython library, which is great because that code really isn’t something you want to write for every project. The program accesses the hackaday.io API to retrieve the number of skulls for the project, but could be easily modified to interface with any service that returned a JSON result.

We’ve been seeing a lot of CircuitPython code lately. Just in case you’re not familiar with it, CircuitPython is Adafruit’s version of Micropython, a python language targeted at embedded processors. While it sounds like something concocted purely to make old-school embedded-C programmers grumble, it’s actually powerful and convenient for embedded prototyping and development. Fueled by the speed of the latest inexpensive microcontrollers and a rapidly growing set of libraries that take the sting out of using integrated peripherals and common hacker-friendly parts, it offers a solid alternative to older embedded frameworks. There are lots of examples around if you want to get started, and we’re maintaining our own list of CircuitPython projects over on hackaday.io that you can check out.

You can see a video of the display after the break. It’s not a live stream, so you won’t see your like appear on the display, but rest assured, [pt] will!

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Code On Your Phone With CircuitPython Editor

January 10, 2019 by Kristina Panos 17 Comments

[foamyguy] loves Python and messing around with electronics. Boards such as Adafruit’s Circuit Playground Express make it easy for him to take both anywhere. He recently found himself wanting to program Circuit Python boards in the field, but doesn’t always have a laptop on him. So he created an Android app to make on-the-go programming fast and easy.

Using CircuitPython Editor and one or two USB cables, you can program Circuit Python boards with most Android device, including Tinkerboards. It features serial communication, a basic code editor, and a REPL sandbox for code-based castle building. [foamyguy]’s most recent addition to this work in progress is a macro creation tool that lets you edit and store modular, repeatable tasks, like turning all the NeoPixels blue, or lighting them up in a smiley face pattern. The Circuit Python board will draw its power from the Android device, so keep that in mind before you program some crazy light show.

You can get the app in the Play store or download it directly from the ‘hub. If you have any trouble setting it up, check out [foamyguy]’s Adafruit guide.

Hackaday Links: December 2, 2018

December 2, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

CircuitPython is becoming a thing! CircuitPython was originally developed from MicroPython and ported to various ARM boards by Adafruit. Now, SparkFun is shipping their own CircuitPython board based on the nRF52840, giving this board an ARM Cortex-M4 and a Bluetooth radio.

You like contests, right? You like circuit boards too, right? Hackster.io now has a BadgeLove contest going on to create the Blinkiest Badge on Earth. Yes, this is a #badgelife contest, with the goal of demonstrating how much you can do in a single circuit badge. Prizes include a trip to San Francisco, a badass drone, a skateboard, a t-shirt, or socks. YES, THERE ARE SOCKS.

We have a date for the Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest 2019. It’s going down March 23 and 24 at the Living Computers Museum in Seattle. The call for exhibitors is now open so head over and check it out. So far the tentative list of exhibits and presenters include Attack of the SPARC Clones, and I must mention that SPARC systems are showing up on eBay with much higher frequency lately. I have no idea why.

Need another con? How about a KiCAD con? The inaugural conference for KiCAD users is happening next April in Chicago and the call for talk proposals just opened up. The con focuses on topics like using KiCAD in a manufacturing setting, what’s going on ‘under the hood’ of KiCAD, and how to use KiCAD to make an advanced product.

Spanish police have stopped a homemade scooter. Someone, apparently, was tearing around a public road in Galacia on a homemade scooter. From the single picture, we’re going to say ‘not bad.’ It’s a gas-powered weed wacker mounted to a homemade frame.

Every year, in December, we take a look back at what Hackaday has accomplished in the past twelve months. Sure, we gave out hundreds of thousands of dollars in awards in the Hackaday Prize, and yes, we’ve pushed our coverage of tech advancements into weird, uncharted, but awesome territory. Our biggest accomplishment, though, is always how many readers we reach. This year, we had a slight fall-off in our readership in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. We’re down from 156 views in 2017 to 75 views this year. While the year isn’t over, we don’t expect that number to change much. What was the cause of this drop-off? We’re not quite sure. Only time will tell, and we’re looking forward to serving fresh hacks every day to the DPRK in 2019.

Friday Hack Chat: Circuit Python

January 31, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 32 Comments

Back in the olden days, if you wanted to learn how to program a computer, you used the BASIC interpreter stored in ROM. This is how an entire generation of devs learned how to program. Now, home computers do not exist, there is no programming language stored in ROM, and no one should inflict JavaScript on 8-year-olds. What is the default, My First Programming Language™ today? Python. And now it’s on microcontrollers.

For this week’s Hack Chat on hackaday.io, we’re going to be talking all about Circuit Python. Circuit Python is based on the Open Source MicroPython, a Python 3 interpreter that implements a subset of the Python language on microcontrollers and other constrained environments. It is the spiritual successor of BASIC on every computer: MicroPython has an interactive prompt, arbitrary precision integers, closures, lists, and more. All of this fits on a microcontroller with 256 kB of code space and 16 k of RAM.

Our guests for this week’s Hack Chat will be [Scott Shawcroft] and [Dan Halbert] from Adafruit. [Scott] started working on MicroPython with Adafruit in September 2016 and has led the renamed CircuitPython effort ever since. [Dan] started working on CircuitPython in early 2017 and joined Adafruit in August of that year. [Dan], by the way, is the original author of the ‘more’ command in UNIX.

For this Hack Chat, we’re going to be talking about CircuitPython, its history, current boards that support the project, and the end goals for CircuitPython. We’ll be talking about future plans, what will be supported in the future, and asking any technical questions about CircuitPython.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This Hack Chat is going down Friday, February 2nd at noon, Pacific time. Time Zones got you down? Here’s a handy countdown timer!

Click that speech bubble to the left, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.