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Adafruit’s Limor Fried Wants To Make People Comfortable With Their Electronics, Inside And Out

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Recently, consumer electronics have tended to be more about closing things down then opening them up, but New York-based Adafruit is working to help reverse that trend, and to make it so that people aren’t afraid of what’s inside their devices, and instead become more comfortable with electronics components and the concepts behind how gadgets actually work. Adafruit founder and CEO Limor Fried was on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY today, and talked about how her company is going about achieving that goal.

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The mission helps the company generate revenue, by priming an audience early on to become buyers of the components, DIY kits and open-source devices Adafruit sells through its online store. The key is to start young, Fried says, and to take advantage of urges that children already have around exploring their environment and the things around them.

“At a certain age, they just want to be comfortable with it, and everyone here probably liked to take stuff apart,” he said. “That’s how we learn, we take stuff apart and then we learn from them. That’s how software works, too.” With software, we pull apart the code to find out how it’s put together, she said, and we should be doing the same thing with hardware.

“We open the box,” she said, referring to our instincts when young. “The gadgets you have now, tablets and smartphones, theyr’e not easy to open anymore, so we provide that.” The idea is to make sure that if the need to break something down and repair it does arise, we aren’t afraid of it, and we don’t feel like we need eight years of specific education just to replace a broken capacitor.

Adafruit recently launched a video series for children called Circuit Playground to help familiarize them with electronics at a very early age. The company also put out a coloring book for electronics, which you can print out and use under a creative commons license. This is designed less to provide a rigorous early-age electrical engineering education regimen, and more to help get kids comfortable with terms, designs and shapes early on so that they’ll find it easier to pursue that kind of formal training later on. Basically, it’s about planting the seed for a generation of makers to come.

Asked about Adafruit’s identity, and whether it’s an educational organization or a business, Fried said her company is an ‘educational, tutorial company” that then has essentially a gift shop at the end. The model works in the same way that art supply stores functions; you could technically make your own paint, she says, but most people don’t because it’s easier to buy. Budding electronics hobbyists can likewise build their own PCBs, but they instead turn to supply stores and pre-fab components like those supplied by Adafruit. But in the end, the emphasis is on education and open source.

Fried envisions a world where people treat hardware the same way they do software, by mostly leveraging open source tools to quickly start up their own companies. But that change represents a major shift that will require fundamental changes in how we think about hardware, and Adafruit is trying to bring that about starting as early in our educational lives as possible.

Circuit Playground Is Adafruit’s Educational Series For Helping Kids Learn About Electronics

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Author: Jon Daniels

Adafruit, the DIY electronics website and marketplace, is espousing the popular strategy of “get em’ young” with a new live action short video series broadcast on YouTube. The series, called Circuit Playground, takes an alphabetical approach to teaching kids about the basics of circuits, components and concepts that will come in handy if the tots watching have aspirations of becoming electrical engineers, or just of building their own hobby projects at home.

The inaugural episode covers amperes, the unit of measurement for electric current flowing through a circuit. The co-hosts are Adabot, an adorable robot puppet helping keep the kids entertained, and Adafruit founder Limor Fried, providing easy-to-follow, but not patronizing explanations of the concepts involved. The intro features a number of animated characters representing circuit components, and there’s even a special guest appearance from André-Marie Ampère, after whom the ampere is named, so there’s an element of science history in the mix, too.

At less than 5 minutes, you also won’t have to keep your kids focused too long to take in the message. And if you’re a big kid who might not be all that well versed in the basics of circuits and electronics, you’ll probably learn something, too.

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Adafruit’s new Internet of Things Printer goes wireless, uses Raspberry Pi (video)

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Author: Buck Howard

Adafruit’s just outed a new Internet of Things Printer kit that’s traded in its ethernet connection for WiFi. Instead of using an Arduino Uno like its wired sibling, the new DIY hardware is built with a Raspberry Pi Model B running Raspbian Linux. Programmed in Python, the software on the box wields the Python Imaging Library, which gives folks flexibility when it comes to typography and graphics, and can leverage the language’s raft of libraries. If you’re not in the mood for coding, however, the contraption brings a few sample applications that’ll print out daily weather reports, sudoku puzzles, tweets and images on 2.25-inch wide receipt paper. The project rings up at $ 189 — $ 100 above its predecessor — but it isn’t up for sale quite yet.

Filed under: Misc, Peripherals

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Source: Adafruit Blog, Adafruit

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Adafruit’s Circuit Playground show to teach kids about electronics with cute components

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Author: Randy Miller

Adafruit currently welcomes newbies to diy gadget society, however it still assumes a particular quantity of convenience with coding and soldering. The shop now wishes to accommodate one of the most basic of beginners by starting a youngsters’s internet collection that educates electronics. Circuit Play ground will offer tasks, songs and stories that place a friendly face on engineering, in some methods really directly: numerous of the programs will involve big-eyed characters (and, normally, corresponding toys) like Cappy the Capacitor. Although the series does not start until March, it could possibly be important to a generation of children expanding up immersed in modern technology– and eventually produce a bigger client base for Adafruit in the process.

Declared under: Misc, AltCommentsVia: The VergeSource: Wired

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Adafruit’s Pi Cobbler breakout kit puts Raspberry Pi’s pins to work

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Author: Buck Howard

Leave it to Adafruit to really assist an item deliver on its Do It Yourself pledge. Those pins on the Raspberry Pi taunted us from the minute we laid our hands on it, and not merely create we just weren’t sure exactly what to do with them. The board’s makers didn’t exactly make playing with them simple. In fact, prototyping a venture with a Pi rooted appeared like a logistical ordeal destined to become a mess of wires. The Pi Cobbler fixes that issue with a ribbon cable, some header pins and a custom PCB. The set lets you quickly run those 26 I/O pins to solderless breadboard … after you have actually soldered together the Cobbler, of course. The whole, unassembled package deal will set you back merely $ 7.95, which appears like a rather sweet bargain to us. Especially because each pin is wonderful and plainly classified. Hit up the source link to order yours.

Adafruit’s Pi Cobbler breakout set puts Raspberry Pi’s pins to work appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for usage of feeds.

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Adafruit’s Internet of Things Printer combines your love of information, receipts

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Author: Dave Adams

Love staying connected and using excess paper? Adafruit’s got your back with its latest project. The Internet of Things (IoT) printer goes online via an Ethernet jack, printing up data on 2.5 inch wide receipt paper. You can print things like Twitter feeds, news briefs or sports scores using its open source software. Putting the box together requires some soldering and an Arduino, but once you’re done, you’ll finally be able to live out your fantasies of becoming an old timey stock broker. Video of the printer with a slightly grating Twitter song soundtrack after the break.

Continue reading Adafruit’s Internet of Things Printer combines your love of information, receipts

Adafruit’s Internet of Things Printer combines your love of information, receipts originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Adafruit’s Monochron retro clock now on sale, changes time with every match point

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Author: Tech Blogger

You might have the vaguest of memories seeing this piece before — it made a cameo in an Engadget Show segment — but here we are with a much clearer picture of Adafruit Industries’ Monochron clock, now also on sale! As is its modus operandi, the timepiece is open source… but should you plan on sticking to default, you’ll be gifted with a great retro-style Table Tennis for two. The best part? The time changes whenever the clock “loses” — something tells us that gives one side at least a 59-to-1 advantage. See for yourself after the break.

Continue reading Adafruit’s Monochron retro clock now on sale, changes time with every match point

Adafruit’s Monochron retro clock now on sale, changes time with every match point originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Posts Tagged ‘Adafruit’s’

Adafruit’s Limor Fried Wants To Make People Comfortable With Their Electronics, Inside And Out

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Circuit Playground Is Adafruit’s Educational Series For Helping Kids Learn About Electronics

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Adafruit’s new Internet of Things Printer goes wireless, uses Raspberry Pi (video)

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Adafruit’s Circuit Playground show to teach kids about electronics with cute components

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Adafruit’s Pi Cobbler breakout kit puts Raspberry Pi’s pins to work

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Adafruit’s Internet of Things Printer combines your love of information, receipts

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Adafruit’s Monochron retro clock now on sale, changes time with every match point

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