Engineering & Technology

Help ring in the new Lunar Year with Blinka! You’ll be endlessly charmed with this project from the Adafruit Learning System

This guide will show you how to build your own musical snake charmer box with Blinka, the circuit python! The materials you can find around the house and the project uses the Circuit Playground Express microcontroller programmed in Microsoft MakeCode for easy upload and changes.

See the full guide!

Hacked smartwatches are everywhere nowadays. He’s a fun one. Simon Brem has transformed the PineTime smartwatch into a MIDI controller via Bluetooth. Here’s more from hackaday:

The project is based around the capable PineTime smartwatch, which [Simon] has been using with the InfiniTime firmware. On this platform, he created an app that sends out Bluetooth MIDI commands straight from the watch. It can be used as a motion controller, where waving and angling the watch can be used to control MIDI parameters, or it can be used to sync BPM to the wearer’s heartrate. [Simon] demonstrates an example use case in a demo video, where the watch is used to control filters in pleasant ways.

See more!

What is cyberpunk? You may not have a specific definition of the word, but here in our corporatist, AI-inflected, body-modded, post-plague world, you can certainly feel a particular cyberpunkish vibe. Somewhere in the Thatcher/Reagan crucible of the 80’s a new literary worldview peeked out from between the painstakingly crafted sentences written by William Gibson in his seminal novel Neuromancer. From there, cyberpunk invaded movies, fashion, critical theory, and, of course, video games.

A couple years ago, in an extensive review of the video game Cyberpunk 2077, game designer Tim Rogers laid out the most through exploration of cyberpunk ever released on the tubes of the internet. Maybe you don’t play video games. That’s ok. This “review” is about far, far more than video games. It’s long. It’s glorious. It’s experimental. It’s essential viewing. Here’s more from Tim Rogers at Action Button:

Action Button Reviews Cyberpunk 2077. Season One Finale. Presented with an introduction and seven stories with six intermissions. This video is absolutely not intended to watch in one sitting. As always, we strongly encourage you to consider this video a mini-series. For optimal enjoyment of this review we recommend following the instructions given in this introduction chapter. We tried a more experimental structure this time–a structure so experimental no existing app properly supports it. So we deliver this review to you with the smallest possible collection of necessary compromises…

More from Tim Rogers and Action Button!

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.

Festival of Lights – Tiny Round 0.7″ TFT Display

Magical Light-up Dreidel

Testing Mini Sparkle Motion board & a WLED fix

Catch up with us on our blog, in our learn system, or on YouTube.