littleBits announces bitLab, an App Store for hardware

Taking one step closer to its mission of “putting the power of electronics in the hands of everyone,” litteBits has announced the launch of bitLab, a marketplace for user-generated hardware. Comparable to Apple’s App Store, bitLab allows Makers to create their own littleBits modules and share them with burgeoning DIY community. “When Apple launched the App Store, many apps were games, many were frivolous. I remember a lot […]

TomTom Runner teardown reveals ATSAM4S8C inside

Back at Maker Faire Bay Area in May, the iFixit team took a deeper dive into the technology that is powering some of today’s sports watches, like the TomTom Runner. During its teardown, the iFixit team revealed that the wearable device was powered by an Atmel ATSAM4S8C. The popular GPS sports watch is equipped with a built-in heart rate monitor, a large monochrome LCD display and one-button control. In addition, the TomTom […]

Qtechknow is on a roll with this Robot Obstacle Course

As we’re sure you already know, 13-year-old CEO and whizkid Quin Etnyre has already become quite an accomplished Maker changing the world — one Atmel powered board at a time. During Maker Faire Bay Area 2014, the young Maker hosted the “Qtechknow Olympics” robotic challenge featuring Arduino, XBee and of course, his award-winning FuzzBots. Quin’s latest project, […]

Blast your favorite tunes with the Touch Board Boombox

Our friends over at Bare Conductive recently teamed with Jude Pullen of Design Modelling to develop a trendy boombox that perfectly demonstrates the widespread capabilities of their Atmel powered Touch Board. As displayed inside our Maker Faire Bay Area booth earlier this summer, the Touch Board houses an ATmega32u4 processor clocked at 16 MHZ running at 5V — the same as […]

20 Arduino Zero available for beta testing

If you recall back at Maker Faire Bay Area, we teamed up with Arduino to debut the Zero, a 32-bit development board powered by Atmel’s ARM-based SAMD21 microcontroller. “The Zero board expands the Arduino family by providing increased performance to fuel the creativity of the Maker community,” explained Massimo Banzi, Arduino Co-Founder and CEO. Additional key hardware specs include 256kb […]

Selfie toast, anyone?

Let’s face it, the act of taking photos of oneself has never been as ubiquitous as it is today. From mirrors to drones, you’ve probably thought you had seen just about everything when it comes to snapping a quick selfie. Think again. No strangers to image-burning toasters, Vermont Novelty Toaster Corporation has debuted what they call ’selfie toast.’ Designed using custom toasters that slightly burn a person’s face onto a piece of bread, […]

What’s not quite MCU, and not quite SoC?

There has been a lot of railing lately about how we don’t have quite the right chips for the upcoming wave of wearables. Chips one would drop in a smartphone are often overkill and overpowered, burning through electrons too quickly. Chips one would use for a simple control task generally lack peripherals and performance, offsetting […]

HackADay features Atmel-powered Phoenard

Back in February, Pamungkas Sumasta’s Phoenard won Atmel’s AVR Hero design challenge. According to Sumasta, Atmel’s 8-bit AVR MCUs provide “the best small footprint controllers available in the market – especially when they are coupled with Arduino support.” Recently, the Phoenard was featured on HackADay, along with a short video interview shot at Atmel’s Maker Faire […]

HackADay talks Arduino Zero with Atmel’s Bob Martin

On May 15, Arduino and Atmel debuted the long-awaited Zero. The 32-bit development board packs Atmel’s versatile SAMD21 microcontroller (MCU), which is built around ARM’s Cortex M0+ core. Key hardware specs include 256kb of flash, 32kb SRAM in a TQFP package and compatibility with 3.3V shields that conform to the Arduino R3 layout.

 The Arduino […]

1:1 with Quin Etnyre of Qtechknow

It’s without question that 13-year-old CEO and whizkid, Quin Etnyre, has already become quite an accomplished Maker changing the world – one Atmel powered Arduino board at a time. During Maker Faire Bay Area 2014, Quin hosted the “QTechKnow Olympics” robotic challenge featuring Arduino, XBee and FuzzBots. Quin was also presented with the Maker Faire […]