adafruit

[adafruit]

🏭 ASK AN ENGINEER 4/30/2025 LIVE! https://youtu.be/YUlqX8jo7K0

[adafruit]

✨ New this week! Keep your projects compact, and powered! 🧰 🔹 Snap-on USB enclosures 🔹 Adjustable USB-C PD cable for voltage control 🔌

https://www.adafruit.com/new/

[adafruit]

Back to some hardware… with the Sparkle Motion Stick! 🌈🪄

Over the holiday break, we designed a few Sparkle Motion (https://www.adafruit.com/search?q=sparkle+motion) ESP32 boards for use with WLED. They’ve been working well, so we decided to finish up the third version we cooked up—a USB “stick” for quick builds that you can power from a wall adapter, computer, or even a USB battery pack for portability. We managed to fit in a fuse, an I²S microphone, infrared-remote input, a mode-select button, two level-shifted outputs, and terminal blocks. It’s designed to fit inside a pre-made snap-fit case (https://www.adafruit.com/product/6176).

[adafruit]

PixLens: Reality into 8-bit 🧊📷 https://blog.adafruit.com/2025/04/25/pixlens-reality-into-8-bit/

PixLens is a little acrylic cube designed by materials engineer Hakusi Katei (Monoli) that makes 16 × 16-ish mosaic—no batteries, no-screens, or post-processing required pictures. A pair of crossed cylindrical micro-facets on the front and bkack split light into rows and columns; each facet behaves like a tiny diverging lens, so every square of the area forms a chunky “pixel”.

It's been described as a “prism that Minecrafts scenery without electricity” … retina resolution? heck no, this is deliberate degradation. It's a cute art-tool, about 34 × 34 × 16 mm and 18 × 18 effective pixels, pop in a camera bag and drops straight in front of any lens—phone, DSLR, webcam, or even your eye… Each version-1.3 piece is CNC-cut, hand-polished, engraved with the PixLens logo, and released in pre-order batches of 500-1000 units.

[adafruit]

🎉🔧💪 Adafruit has been re-certified by NYC Small Business Services as a Women-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) for 2025. While we’re not yet tapping into the program’s benefits (yet), we wanted to show it's possible to get this certification as a USA manufacturer, of electronics, doing open-source, is woman owned, in Brooklyn, and in the USA!

[adafruit]

Excellent article about Digikey - A small U.S. town grew a big company. Can it weather the tariff blizzard?

A rural Minnesota town is home to the biggest tech giant you've never heard of. Now it's riding out an unprecedented kind of storm.

"The winner of the game is the one who can manage through the conditions the best. Right now, we're in blizzard-like conditions." … If anyone is used to weathering blizzards, it's northern Minnesotans."

[adafruit]

ASK AN ENGINEER 4/23/2025 LIVE! https://youtu.be/dQKKx2My2Tg

[adafruit]

🆕 Hot off the soldering iron?! From Ladyada’s go-to toolkit to new LED matrix bonnets, Pi converters, silicone ribbon cables in many AWGs', and a USB-C fixer - currently hard to resist! Stock up now at https://adafruit.com

[adafruit]

THAT IS TOO MUCH VERMOUTH ... (2017 review - https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/10/30/machine-learning-fear-of-an-ai-planet-colossus-the-forbin-project-1970-ai-machinelearning/)

[adafruit]

ASK AN ENGINEER 4/16/2025 LIVE! https://youtu.be/OOfkCF5_uEs

[adafruit]

💡 Power up your Pi with the official 45W USB-C Power Supply ⚡, light up your next project with glowing LED number filaments 🔢, or control solenoids with ease using our I2C 8-Channel Driver. At Adafruit!

🔗 https://www.adafruit.com/new

[adafruit]

The Great Search - How to Source Tariffed & Non-Tariffed Items on DigiKey 📦🌎💸 https://youtu.be/I-eD6FSM0bU

[adafruit]

Desk of Ladyada - Tariff Talk! ASK AWAY! 📦🌎💸

We're doing the show tonight or Tues, so much is going on. Lots more questions came in too! Post yours before we go live…

This week was not a big week for engineering because we're neck-deep in tariff management! We had a video on Wednesday about the first round of tariffs announced—they have since been ratcheted up to 20% + 125% = 145% minimum on products from China and Hong Kong. "Retaliatory" tariffs on products from other countries have been paused, but there's still a 10% global tariff.

Then on Friday, it looks like some HTS codes

were "exempted" temporarily

Let's take a look at the CBP (link) and the exempt tariff codes

and see how they might apply to the kinds of stuff we use to do our electronics engineering.

The Great Search - How to Source Tariffed & Non-Tariffed Items on DigiKey

https://www.digikey.com/short/2nb7nzb3

Since this is the topic of the day, we'll be looking at how to purchase an item from DigiKey with tariffs in mind. DigiKey is a free trade zone, which means that if you're not in the USA, you will not have to pay additional tariffs on goods that are re-exported. However, for USA destinations, the new tariffs can add a significant cost if the component has its last manufacturing step in China.

Let's use the example of a simple I2C-controlled temperature sensor to see how our sourcing decisions may be impacted by tariffs.

[adafruit]

Breaking news - "Smartphones, computers and some other electronics now exempt from tariffs" We will do another #TariffTalk in the next 24 hours - Reciprocal Tariff Exclusion for Specified Products...

[adafruit]

🎉 There are over 3,000 Certified Open-Source Hardware projects, congrats to everyone for reaching 3k! Out of the 3,000+ Adafruit has certified 807 designs & products, 26.88% of all certifications! https://mastodon.social/@oshwassociation/114319796147129887 & https://certification.oshwa.org/list.html?q=adafruit - Explore our open-source designs, and join the movement!

[adafruit]

TARIFF TALK! WITH LADYADA 🌍🚢 - Ladyada as she breaks down how recent tariff shifts impact electronic component availability and pricing, reshoring trends, and what may happen to engineering/BOM and DIY project costs. Get the inside scoop on navigating supply chain challenges while keeping your builds affordable and excellent!

[adafruit]

WE ARE LIVE in BROOKLYN! ASK AN ENGINEER! https://youtu.be/fVrmZe67Xcs