spooky season is nigh, and we will commune with the ghosts and spirits of LEDs and projects past
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adafruit
@adafruit@fosstodon.org
mastodon 4.7.3Brooklyn, NY USA - Manufacturer, open-source hardware, certified Minority and Woman-owned Business Enterprise (M/WBE) Teaching, sharing, #engineering #DIY #electronics #opensource #opensourcehardware #hardware #python #circuitpython #arduino, #raspberrypi #art #hacking... account is managed by ladyada ptorrone no bots, all toots are from either ladyada or pt, blame them :)
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Joined February 13, 2019
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Replying to
🖨️ Oregon Trail began with a school teletype in MN. Did you know Prince attended Bryant Junior High, where early versions were first created for the students.
coming soon: port authority 🚌
the best usb hub for engineers and their smart tools. 100% open source, stackable, and designed for getting real hardware into your automated test loop.
You Bought Zuck’s Ray-Bans. Now Someone in Nairobi Is Watching You Poop 💩🕶️
On Responsible Security Disclosures and Free Speech
Adafruit has worked with our longtime employment firm and team to make sure there is indemnification for all employees and contractors reporting responsible security disclosures at Adafruit. This is not any different... it only makes it more clear that the bad actors and companies that try to use responsible disclosure as a way to chill free speech will not stop us from publishing facts, or the answers to an interview. baby girls' name is zine
Chris Young (cyborg5) is retiring after 14 years and 55+ Show and Tell appearances. He built open assistive tech and documented all of it. Thank you, Chris. 💙 https://youtu.be/QaqcGCMO2rM
Family trip - got a JAŸ-Z30 library card today for the kiddo! https://www.bklynlibrary.org/jayz-library-card
Update: Jun 3, 2026 - Before issuing any public response, and before involving the press - Limor wrote directly to Flux’s founder, Matthias Wagner. Not through lawyers. Founder to founder. She proposed: a podcast of his choosing, open questions and answers ... https://adafruit.com/flux
gm about 2 feet of snow in brooklyn, backyard covered... sidewalks? we SHOVELED TONS! hot chocolate time.
Adafruit Receives Demand Letter From Fenwick Legal Counsel on Behalf of Defy Gravity, Inc. Flux. AI (“Flux”)
Tile’s Security Is So Bad It’s a Feature for Stalkers
Georgia Tech researchers reverse-engineered Life360 / Tile's protocol and found it broadcasts your location in plaintext, uses a MAC address that never changes, and the company changed their privacy policy to admit they sell your precise location data 🔓📡
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/05/tiles-security-is-so-bad-its-a-feature-for-stalkers/
ladyada & pt @ Adafruit posting an update at 5pm ET
https://adafruit.com/flux
Asimov’s three laws of robotics survived 82 years, we broke them in 30 minutes, costs 80 cents, and then remade them
🎭🤖 from a 1920 Czech play about robot uprisings to... now.
Want to Fix a Bug in Arduino? First, Agree to Qualcomm's 6,000-Word Privacy Policy 🫠
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/18/want-to-fix-a-bug-in-arduino-first-agree-to-qualcomms-6000-word-privacy-policy/
🧱 Some LEGO Smart Brick - BLE Reverse Engineering
Turns out the toy brick has better privacy defaults than many consumer IoT devices. More later...
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/06/some-lego-smart-brick-ble-reverse-engineering/
!!!!!!!!
FCC just banned the import of all new foreign-made routers... here’s what you can do about it 📡🚫
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/24/fcc-just-banned-the-import-of-all-new-foreign-made-routers-heres-what-you-can-do-about-it/
open palm (start)
✌️ peace sign
🤘 rock on
☝️ index point up
👍 thumbs up
🤟 three fingers
🤏 pinch
✊ fist
👋 finger wave (4 ripple cycles)
open palm (end)
The universe doesn’t care about your feelings
Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions (2022) by Sabine Hossenfelder opens with a warning that it might damage your mental health... wondering if the decision to pick it up had been made thirteen billion years ago. This review has been a draft post for 4 years.
We Interviewed Apple’s On-Device LLM
The model ships with the entire GPL v3 and will output that the Pledge of Allegiance is offensive. It can teach you SQL injection, but will not recite Churchill. It refused Bohemian Rhapsody, Imagine, AND Hotel California. you can check out any time you like but you can never recite 🎸
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/04/04/i-interviewed-apples-on-device-llm/
Tindie is back online… and now owned by EETree LLC, a Suzhou FPGA tutor
https://adafruit.com/tindie
Prusa’s “Open Community License” is neither open nor for the community... a lawyer explains why
The local AI stack just got its long-term home 🤗❤️
Open-source + AI: ggml joins Hugging Face, llama.cpp stays open... the people closest to the tools are governing the tools. No cloud required, no API keys, no terms that change on you overnight.
When AI becomes Pierre Menard, author of your code
The model refuses to reproduce a paragraph from a textbook (0.15% overlap). But it'll autocomplete entire source files (53% overlap) 📖🔓
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/04/03/when-ai-becomes-pierre-menard-author-of-your-code/
Supreme Court Strikes Down IEEPA Tariffs 6-3: The President Cannot Tax Imports By Declaring an Emergency ⚖️🔨 Article I, Section 8 still means what it says... Congress taxes imports, not emergencies.
The open source world can write its own rules for AI... and nobody has to ask permission
"Tell us what you used, and actually understand the code you're submitting"... you can't stop people from using AI tools, but you can make them own it. LLM-Assisted contribution policies from the EFF, and MicroPython. 🧠🔓
Colorado Wants Your Operating System to Card You
step 1: type any birthday you want. step 2: app decides you're lying based on "vibes". step 3: the app's guess is now legally binding. this is the actual plan 🪪🎂
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/23/colorado-wants-your-operating-system-to-card-you/
OpenClaw vs. a 475-page datasheet: let the robot do the transcribing 🦞🤖
The latest spectral sensor from ams-OSRAM... TCS3448 (or TCS34488)
We just wrapped up the AS7343 breakout from ams-OSRAM, with 14-channel spectral sensing, and we saw that their webpage recommended a new version of this sensor called the TCS3448. It's software compatible with the AS7343, so that's nice to not have to write a new driver! We'll figure out what the differences are, but for starters it's a little less expensive at Digi-Key so that's a good reason just on its own to carry!
Brooklyn Bagel Shop Is Using Plug-In Batteries to Lower Its Electric Bill
🔋🥯 Demand energy charges are like an everything tax on everything bagels... Black Seed Bagels in Bushwick is using plug-in batteries from David Energy to reduce peak grid draw and save 4 across its locations.
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL: The 2025 Arduino Open Source Report
Qualcomm's first full year owning Arduino and every metric went down, but at least they remembered to leave "STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL" in the PDF... 🔍📉
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/29/strictly-confidential-the-2025-arduino-open-source-report/
Martin Bishop: [re-arranging Scrabble letters] SETEC ASTRONOMY... TOO MANY SECRETS.
Tom Curtis, CEO of Burger King Downs a Whopper and Your Voice & Likeness Rights in One Big Bite
Managers can ask Patty how their location is performing on “friendliness”; the system is trained to flag words like “please,” “thank you,” and “welcome to Burger King.” Burger King says they’re also capturing the tone of conversations. BK Assistant, Patty, is planned for installation in all US restaurants.
California's New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves
Your 3D printer needs to be on a DOJ-approved list or it can't be sold in California. Disabling the surveillance software? That's a misdemeanor. 🐻
The sky is screaming, and now we can hear it better 🔭
800,000 alerts on night one... seven million per night by year's end. The universe is trying to tell us something.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/26/the-sky-is-screaming-and-now-we-can-hear-it-better/
📖 The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986) by Richard Rhodes
This is a nine-hundred-page book about what happens when physicists solve the hardest problem in nature and then watch the solution leave the laboratory on a flatbed truck.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/03/03/the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb-1986-by-richard-rhodes/
⚛️💣
Wegmans Rewrites Its Face-Scanning Statement
Trying to find-and-replaced "biometric" out of their facial recognition statement, and removed the store locations from "communities that exhibit an elevated risk" ... Cameras still on, faces still getting scanned... 🧬🛒
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/25/wegmans-rewrites-its-face-scanning-statement/
Replying to
For some reason most breakouts use SPI only, but this should work fine over I2C too, so we put breakouts for both. Verification testing should be fun... we vaguely remember folks saying that piezo-clicker lighters used for stoves are a good way to trigger it.
Replying to
Here's an oldie-but-goodie... we designed Rev A of this breakout back in 2013 but somehow never got it out the door. Well, we're doing sweeps and found it just in time for summer thunderstorm testing season! The antenna (which didn't render here) can pick up the 500 kHz electrical zap signal sent from thunderbolts and report it over I2C or SPI.
The Department of War Just Put Scouting America on Notice
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that the Department of War has put Scouting America on a six-month clock. Hegseth said he “was very seriously considering ending our support of Scouting altogether” and that the organization’s policies “violate.. Executive Order 14173.” Instead of pulling the plug, the Department brokered a deal...
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/27/the-department-of-war-just-put-scouting-america-on-notice/
gm, make the thing, document the thing, repeat, ship the thing before the thing ships you. school is back in session.
guess the adafruit board running these circuitpython demos !
Replying to
Only thing that is kinda annoying is ams-OSRAM keeps having "two" part numbers for their sensors, like the datasheet references TSL2585 but when you buy it you get TSL25853. Other than that, we're looking forward to getting this out the door before summer!
Dead letters: US Postal Service will run out of cash in less than a year
Losses are $9.5B in FY2024 and $9B in FY2025, with Q1 FY2026 already looking like s $1.3B loss, this year could be even worse 📉📬 Here is one nice thing... Ground Advantage revenue up 26.9%.
Desk of Ladyada - Cranking through a huge backlog! 🔧⚡
https://youtu.be/Ox4vutcj0BQ
Zooming through a massive pile of new boards and libraries, plus hunting for an ICS-43434 I2S mic replacement - watch to see what we find!
Desk of Ladyada – uBlox Drivers, Struct Wizardry & L5 GPS – The Future is Overhead!
https://youtu.be/692cmaCb-K0
OpenClaw wrote our 475-page uBlox GNSS library overnight. Opus suggested packed structs over byte parsing... smart. Also found new L1+L5 GPS modules on DigiKey: ~2x accuracy for $2-3 more. No RTK needed.