Wayne and Layne supports an open internet.
We do not support SOPA and PIPA.
If you’re in the United States, please contact your elected representatives and let them know your opinion on SOPA and PIPA.
You can learn more, and if you’re not from the United States, you can sign a petition to the US State Department, at http://americancensorship.org/.
Video Game Shield with Arduino 1.0
With the exciting release of the Arduino 1.0 software, some minor changes happened that required updates to sketches and libraries, including the code that comes with the Video Game Shield. Well, we just finished doing the minor updates required to make all the Video Game Shield code compatible with both Arduino 1.0 and the pre-1.0 Arduino software.
You can get the latest code from the Video Game Shield download page or from the Wayne and Layne GitHub repository.
We just finished working on a cool new animated guide to programming your Blinky Grid or Blinky POV kit using our programming website. Take a look and let us know what you think! Click through for the full-size, animated version.
Kicad testing PPA packages for Ubuntu
Wayne and Layne are big fans of open source, especially our favorite PCB design tool Kicad. We’ve written instructions in the past about how to compile the most recent testing version of Kicad on Ubuntu, but if you’re looking to run the latest and greatest version of Kicad on your Ubuntu computer (but don’t want to mess about with compiling it yourself) then look no further, we’ve set up a PPA for Ubuntu with the newest Kicad automatically compiled each night.
While you could update the package every time there’s a new version, keep in mind that this is the “testing” branch of kicad, meaning that things might break horribly from day to day (but should be fixed within a day or two). However, it’s pretty stable overall, and it’s really nice to have the newest features and stay on the bleeding-edge of Kicad development!
Our friends over at Solarbotics have just finished rolling out their totally awesome Solarbotics Arduino Freeduino Enclosure (SAFE), which is a nifty laser-cut enclosure for an arduino.
They’ve started making custom end plates to go with various shields, and we’re delighted that they chose our Video Game Shield as one of the first shield faceplates. They’re very reasonably priced, so you should go check them out!
The Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire is fast approaching, and we’re proud to announce that Wayne and Layne will be helping to run the Learn to Solder workshop! Layne, who lives in Pittsburgh, is heading-up the LtS station, with the gracious support of HackPittsburgh.
We’ll have cheap and easy kits for sale from Make, as well as more advanced kits for sale from Wayne and Layne, including our Tactile Metronome and Blinky Grid and Blinky POV kits. If you’re in the Western Pennsylvania area, we hope to see you there!
Bluetooth Arcade Controller released!
If you’ve been following Wayne and Layne for a while, you’ve surely noticed that we’ve been kicking around this idea of a bluetooth-connected arcade controller, we even identified a bluetooth module and made a breakout board for it. Fortunately, our friend Jeff at the Keyglove project showed us a much nice and much more flexible bluetooth module, that works much better than our original module.
In conjunction with another friend of ours, John Baichtal, we turned our penchant for bluetooth keyboards into a how-to article in Make Magazine volume 28, along with producing an actual product! We’re proud to announce the release of the Bluetooth Arcade Controller, and add-on shield for the Arduino Mega, that lets you turn some arcade joysticks and buttons into a bluetooth keyboard.
We built a small demonstration unit with one joystick and six buttons for the 2011 World Maker Faire in New York City back in September. We connected it to a tablet computer and used the bluetooth keyboard to play games.
The Bluetooth Arcade Controller can support over 52 buttons, joysticks, switches, etc. A system-level diagram on how to hook things up is shown below. More details are available from the Bluetooth Arcade Controller page.
The Bluetooth Arcade Controller is available for purchase exclusively through the Maker Shed Store.
From the mail bag: Blinky Grid
We got this lovely email a few days ago.
Hello,
I bought one of your blinky grid kits at Maker Faire a few weeks ago
and just built it yesterday. Just wanted to let you know I had a blast
doing it. I was kinda scared because I’d never done any soldering but,
after a few minutes I picked it up and was able to finish the kit in
about two hours.Thanks for the good time,
Sonny
Awesome! That’s what we’re hearing from folks. The Blinky Grid looks pretty daunting, but for folks who haven’t soldered before, it usually takes them about two hours to complete the Blinky Grid kit.
Blinky Grid and Blinky POV
We’ve released two new kits, Blinky Grid and Blinky POV. Both are little LED kits that are reprogrammed by holding them up to our web page that blinks. Those blinks are picked up by light sensors on the board, reprogramming the chip. Blinky POV is 8 LEDs and is meant to be swung through the air, like this:
It looks like this when assembled:
Blinky Grid has 56 LEDs, and is totally awesome. It looks like this when assembled:
Here’s a nifty demo video of Blinky Grid, showing the programming features near the end:
These kits were developed in a bit of a new way for us. We did an online form to apply for the beta test, and we learned a lot in that process. Beta test applicants, we will be sending you one-and-only-one email to you this week with a coupon code for these kits as a way to say thanks. After the beta test, they were soft-launched at the 2011 Bay Area Maker Faire. Hopefully, getting more feedback throughout the development process helped make a better kit.
They’re available now in our store and in the Maker Shed: Blinky Grid and Blinky POV.
Come see us at Maker Faire!
I’ll be in San Mateo this weekend, at Maker Faire. I’ll be manning the Wayne and Layne booth in the Maker Shed building. Come say hi, or take a look at our new Blinky kits!
