Have your Arduino let you know when your package arrives

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How to program your Arduino to query the FedEx API every time someone comes to your door in order to determine whether that person was delivering a package.

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If you’re expecting a package, and can’t be bothered to go to the door to actually check and see who is bothering you, Adafruit has your solution. That’s because they’ve developed a guide, which will teach you “how to program your Arduino to query the FedEx API every time someone comes to your door in order to determine whether that person was delivering a package. Then, you’ll program the board to use the Zendesk API to alert you if a package was delivered.”

Physically, this task is fairly straightforward, involving only an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) with a Wi-Fi shield (AT32UC3) for communication, and an infrared sensor to detect whether or not someone is at your door. Setting up the software, as you might suspect, is somewhat more involved, including getting a Temboo account, a Zendesk account, and obtaining FedEx developer keys.

If you’re thinking about doing this project, it’s much easier to obtain the FedEx keys than you might suspect, and what you need to do to set everything up is laid out in a step-by-step procedure. On the other hand, if you’re expecting something from UPS or the U.S. Postal Service, you might still need to actually go to the door and see what it is. Besides, you’ll have to get the package eventually!

For another idea on how to interface devices in your house with the Internet, why not check out this Amazon Echo controlled wheelchair experiment?

Bring the weather forecast to your Chucks

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Hack a pair of Converse using an Adafruit FLORA, NeoPixels and a Bluetooth LE module that relays weather data from your phone.

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San Francisco-based creative studio Chapter, in collaboration with Converse, have hacked a pair of Chuck Taylors to bring the forecast to your feet.

The Converse Beacon consists of an Adafruit FLORA board (ATmega32U4), a Bluefruit LE module and a NeoPixel ring, which together, can alert you to custom weather conditions through IFTTT. In other words, your sneaks can let you know when rain is coming, when the surf is just right, or when conditions are perfect to take a stroll outside. Talk about walkin’ on sunshine!

What’s more, you’re not just limited to weather. Once you’ve connected IFTTT to the Adafruit channel, you open the door to hundreds of possible recipes that link various inputs to your NeoPixels.

Think you want to relay data from your smartphone to create stylish alerts on your Chucks? Then check out Chapter’s full project write-up on Hackster.io.

The Ski Buddy is a FLORA-powered coat that teaches you to ski

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A DIY wearable system that can make learning to ski fun for kids.

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As anyone who has ever hit the slopes will tell you, learning to ski can be quite challenging — especially for youngsters. Tired of seeing children be screamed at by parents trying to teach them to ski, Maker “Mkarpawich2001” decided to develop a wearable system that would make the process much more enjoyable for kids.

The Ski Buddy is an electronic jacket that helps novice skiers through the use of lights. Based on an Adafruit FLORA (ATmega32U4), the coat is equipped with an accelerometer, a AAA battery pack, and conductive thread that connects to LED sequins.

“Knowing that childhood memorizes can unintentionally affect our adult lives, I sought out to come up with a tool to help making the process of learning to ski fun for kids at young ages,” the Maker writes. “Of course, all children love light-up toys, so why not transfer that love to learning? With changeable settings, you can use this coat for a variety of lessons.”

According to Mkarpawich2001, the Ski Buddy can be used to teach linking turns, parallel skiing, hockey stops and even gradual pizza stopping (the act of pointing your skis together and pushing your heels out to form what looks like a slice of pizza).

The lights will flash once to suggest that they are working, and then guide the user along the desired path, including direction, speed and stops. While on the slopes, instruction is provided via the LEDs, depending on the particular lesson. For instance, alternating lights can let a person know to slow down, or when turned off, can mean they’re going the right way.

You can see it in action below, and head over to its page here. Those looking for a more commercial solution should check out Carv.

 

 

The Feather 32U4 FONA combines an ATmega32U4 and a GSM module

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Let your ideas fly anywhere in the world with this all-new Adafruit board.

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Another week, another Feather! Adafruit continues to expand its newest ‘all-in-one’ microcontroller family with the Feather 32U4 FONA. The latest in their constantly-growing lineup boasts the same form factor as its siblings along with a LiPo battery charger and microUSB. Unlike the others, however, this bad boy is equipped with a FONA 800 cellular module.

As you can see in the Lady Ada’s demonstration video below, the Feather 32U4 FONA can do quite a bit: make and answer calls (connect a microphone and an external speaker to make your own phone), transmit and receive GPRS data, send and get SMS messages, as well as scan and receive FM radio broadcasts. What’s more, it’s even pairable with Bluetooth, so you can connect from your computer and control data and/or have an audio link for your hands-free headset. Don’t forget, like the rest of the Feathers, you can add any of the wide range of FeatherWings to create your own unique device.

“Connect your Feather to the Internet or make phone calls with our trusted-and-tested FONA module. At the heart is a GSM cellular module (we use the latest SIM800) the size of a postage stamp. This module can do just about everything,” the crew writes.

Beyond that, the Feather 32U4 is built around an ATmega32U4 clocked at 8 MHz and at 3.3V logic. This chip packs 32K of Flash and 2K of RAM, and built-in USB.

Since you’ll be taking this on the road, Adafruit has added a connector for any 3.7V LiPo batteries and an integrated charger. It should be noted, though, that a 500mAh+ LiPo battery is required for use, as it “keeps the cellular module happy during the high current spikes.”

The board itself measures 2.4″ x 0.9” x 0.28”in size and weighs just over eight grams. It has plenty of GPIO, eight PWM pins, 10 analog inputs, a single analog output, a power/enable pin, four mounting holes and a reset button.

Intrigued? Head over to Adafruit to get your hands on this sweet $45 board!

Seeeduino Cloud is an Arduino Yún-compatible Wi-Fi board

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This new MCU is built around the Dragino HE IoT module and the ATmega32U4.

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Adafruit has announced the arrival of the Seeeduino Cloud, an Arduino Yún-compatible MCU based on the ATmega32U4 and Dragino HE IoT module.

The board features both built-in Ethernet and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi support, as well as USB-A port that makes it perfect for prototype designs requiring network connection and mass storage. The HE — which means “core” in Chinese — is a minimal system installed with OpenWrt.

The 802.11 b/g/n-capable MCU boasts a rich interface with Ethernet, USB, UART and plenty of GPIO pins, which offers compatibility with Grove shields. Makers can even use the Seeeduino Cloud as an IoT gateway.

Similar to the Arduino Yún, the Seeeduino Cloud eases the interface between Arduino firmware and complex web services. Makers can use the Yún Bridge library which delegates all network connections and processing of HTTP transactions to the Linux machine.

“Historically, interfacing Arduino with complex web services has been quite a challenge due to the limited memory available. Web services tend to use verbose text based formats like XML that require quite a lot of RAM to parse,” Adafruit explains.

What’s more, the Seeeduino Cloud can be programmed with Arduino IDE via a USB cable or over the Wi-Fi connection without the need to physically access the board. Interested? Head over to Adafruit to get your hands on one today, or delve deeper into the Cloud’s specs on Seeed Studio’s Wiki page.

‘Sup Brow? Send a message to your friend by making a muscle

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Text a friend by lifting your eyebrow using a MyoWare muscle sensor and an Adafruit Bluefruit Feather board. 

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In today’s world, there are all kinds of ways to message one another. There’s texting, emailing, Skyping, Snapchatting, and countless other forms of communication. But what if you could send a message to your friend by simply raising your eyebrow?

This was something Adafruit’s Becky Stern and Kate Hartman wanted to make a reality in their recent wearables project, ’Sup Brows. To bring this idea to life, the duo employed a MyoWare muscle sensor along with a Feather Bluefruit 32U4 LE (ATmega32U4) microcontroller to transmit a signal through the phone to Adafruit IO and then IFTTT to trigger an SMS.

“It’s really neat to use non-verbal communication like facial expressions as an interface for electronics,” Hartman explains.

As cool of a project as this may be, ‘Sup Brows is simply the beginning. Since it’s connected to IFTTT, the possibilities of what you can accomplish by creating a recipe and just raising your eyebrows are endless. Similarly, Stern and Hartman note that it can also be hooked up to a variety of other muscles to have activities prompted by other facial expressions, gestures and actions.

So whether it’s booking an appointment with your cosmetic surgeon when your Botox wears off or getting yourself out of a date with a butt dial, everything is fair game. Intrigued? Head over to Adafruit’s tutorial page to get started.

 

Adafruit Feather M0 WiFi combines a SAM D21 and ATWINC1500

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Oh my, an Adafruit Feather with Wi-Fi! 

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Makers, meet the Adafruit Feather M0 WiFi. As its name would suggest, the all-new board is Adafruit’s latest take on an Arduino-compatible, ‘all-in-one’ platform with high-speed Wi-Fi connectivity, USB support and a built-in battery charger.

Equipped with an Atmel | SMART SAM D21 and ATWINC1500 SoC at its core, Makers will find it super simple to connect their Feathers to the Internet. The 802.11bgn-capable Wi-Fi module is the ideal add-on to existing MCU solutions bringing wireless and network capabilities through UART or SPI-to-Wi-Fi interface.

“This module works with 802.11b, g, or n networks and supports WEP, WPA and WPA2 encryption,” Adafruit writes. “The datasheet says it can do Soft-AP mode but we don’t have any code to actually use that. You can clock it as fast as 12MHz for speedy, reliable packet streaming. And scanning/connecting to networks is very fast, a few seconds.”

The ATSAMD21G18 Cortex-M0+ processor at its heart — which is the same chip used in the new Arduino Zero — is clocked at 48MHz and at 3.3V logic. It boasts a whopping 256K of Flash (eight times more than the Atmega328 or 32u4) and 32K of RAM (16 times as much). The MCU comes with native USB, as well as a USB bootloader and serial port debugging.

With portability in mind, Adafruit has included a connector for any 3.7V LiPo battery along with an integrated charger. Even without a battery, it will run just fine via microUSB. The Feather will even automatically switch over to USB power when it’s available.

“We also tied the battery through a divider to an analog pin, so you can measure and monitor the battery voltage to detect when you need a recharge,” Adafruit writes.

The ‘M0 WiFi features a similar form factor as many of its other Feathers, measuring 2.1″ x 0.9″ x 0.3” in size and weighing 6.1 grams. (Note, however, that it is 0.1″ longer than its siblings.) Beyond that, the board has 20 GPIO pins with eight PWM pins, 10 analog inputs, a single analog output, a power/enable pin, four mounting holes and a reset button. Plus, there are a couple of LEDs and is compatible with a wide range of FeatherWings, including OLED, NeoPixels, servos, relays, seven-segment displays, etc.

Have any more questions? Watch below as Lady Ada herself unveils the Feather M0 WiFi, or stay tuned on its page here.

 

Adafruit’s new breakout board will connect your Arduino to the Internet

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This 802.11bgn-capable module is the best new thing for networking your devices, with SSL support and rock solid performance.

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Makers wishing to connect their Arduino Zero (or Uno) to the Internet can now do so with Adafruit’s new ATWINC1500 Wi-Fi Breakout Board.

The ATWINC1500 found at its core is the ideal add-on to existing MCU solutions bringing wireless and network capabilities through UART or SPI-to-Wi-Fi interface. The Wi-Fi module features a fully-integrated power amplifier, LNA, switch and power management, as well as internal Flash memory.

“This 802.11bgn-capable WiFi module is the best new thing for networking your devices, with SSL support and rock solid performance — running our Adafruit.io MQTT demo for a full weekend straight with no hiccups (it would have run longer but we had to go to work, so we unplugged it),” Adafruit explains. “We like these so much, they’ve completely replaced the CC3000 module on all our projects.”

The Adafruit ATWINC1500 Wi-Fi Breakout uses SPI to communicate, and supports a range of security protocols including WEP, WPA and WPA2, TLS and SSL encryption.

“Right now the Atmel-supplied library works great with Arduino Zero, and seems to work OK on Uno but may not work on other Arduinos. You can clock it as fast as 12MHz for speedy, reliable packet streaming. And scanning/connecting to networks is very fast, a few seconds,” Adafruit adds.

Since this is the Adafruit crew’s new favorite SPI-protocol Wi-Fi module, and rightfully so, they’ve gone ahead and created a little breakout for it. This 1.3″ x 1.1″ x 0.16” board comes with level shifting on all the input pins so you can use it with 3V or 5V logic, a 3.3V voltage regulator, and a trio of LEDs that can be controlled either over the SPI interface (part of the library code) or by the Arduino library. They’ll light up when hooked up to an SSID, or transmitting data.

Interested? Head over to Adafruit’s official page to get your $24.95 board today!

3D print a Daft Punk helmet with Bluetooth-controlled LEDs

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Harder, better, faster, brighter! 

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If there is one musical group that has inspired more electronics projects than any other, Daft Punk has to be it. Besides just producing awesome electronic tunes, the helmets that they wear are filled with blinking lights. Adafruit’s latest helmet build, which is the brainchild of the Ruiz brothers, features a replica of Thomas Bangalter’s helmet and uses two microcontrollers for lighting control.

Possibly the most impressive thing about this wearable is the work it takes to 3D print something like this. One not experienced with this type of machine might expect to press a button and see a shiny new headpiece to simply pop out of the machine, after printing, the three sections had to be joined together, painted, and sanded in several steps. Additionally, the visor was made separately, and heated to bend it into place.

Of course, the helmet wouldn’t be much fun without an array of blinking LEDs. The visor lights are provided by a NeoPixel strip, cut into two layers and embedded in the helmet. Animations for this portion are enabled by an Adafruit Feather 32U4 Bluefruit LE (ATmega32U4), which offers the ability to communicate over Bluetooth. This, in turn, allows animations to be controlled via a smartphone or even a smartwatch using Adafruit’s “BLE Connect” app. Meanwhile, the NeoPixel rings on the ears are managed by a 5V Trinket board (ATtiny85), with both rings sharing data, power and ground; certainly an interesting technique that one might want to keep in mind for later use.

 

This giant LED thermometer scarf shows the temp outside

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With this scarf, you’ll never have to wonder how cold it is when you step outside.

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Winter is well underway in some parts of the country, and if you have to head out into the frigid air, you’ll probably want a comfy scarf around your neck. But what about an accessory that not only keeps you warm, but looks and functions as a giant thermometer as well? That’s exactly what Instructables user “caitlinsdad” has created using an Adafruit FLORA (ATmega32U4), humidity and temperature sensor modules to detect the weather conditions, a NeoPixel ring for the bulb, and an LED strip to reveal the temp in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.