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Exceptional Deals on Open Hardware For Tindie’s Black Friday Sale

Open hardware is a large part of what makes Tindie and all of its products so unique. Many of the products you’ll find across the catalog are open source, allowing you to change, modify, or dive deeper into the design without fear of repercussions.

When we work together, everyone benefits from the results. This year, our Black Friday sales are hotter than ever, but let’s highlight some of the products that pride themselves on being open source.

The Best Deals on Open Hardware This Side of a Soldering Iron: Tindie.com/Sale

You can keep your eyes on all the latest deals over at tindie.com/sale, but if you’re looking for support Open Hardware, here are some of our top picks:

  • This Joule Thief can illuminate an LED with even the most drained of batteries, but for this price you’ll feel like you’re the one getting a steal!
  • Create the ideal HMI without using precious resources. The I2CNavKey is a small board that includes a joypad with 7 total functions, including four directional keys, a central button, and a rotary ring.
  • The story of Vinduino is one of my favorites in the history of Tindie, and it’s an excellent platform for anyone who wants to optimize their irrigation and save water in the process.

It’s open hardware and open season for deals here on Tindie! Show your support to fellow Tindarians for Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday as well!

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Can You Conquer This Capture The Flag SAO Challenge?

SAOs have taken on a life of their own in the badgelife phenomenon. I have seen my fair share of brilliant and artistic designs, but this one is truly diabolical.

I am, of course, referring to the ATtiny85 Capture The Flag SAO Challenge. As you can surmise from the name, it runs on an ATtiny85 and communicates via I2C.

To finish the challenge, you’ll need to complete four milestones. It begins with turning on the LED connected to pin PB1. From there, you’ll need to find the “flag,” which is a string embedded in the firmware.

Next, persist code that will blink the LED to the ATtiny’s flash, and finally replace the flag with your own name (without bricking the firmware in the process).

That may sound easy, but there are a few more rules. For starters, you can’t reprogram the ATtiny. You’re only permitted to upload the firmware if you brick it. You cannot use debugWIRE, and your solution has to be repeatable, which requires you to explain how it works.

According to the creator, the ATtiny85 datasheet will also come in handy, along with the on-board reset button. Care to take on the challenge?

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Set Your Phasers to Deals For Tindie’s Cyber Sale Week!

With the Hackaday Superconference in our rear view mirror, it’s time to shift our focus towards the season of savings. As is tradition each year, Tindarians are bringing the heat with big price drops on the kits, components, and adapters you know and love.

From November 26th to December 7th, we’re hosting our biggest sales of the year. Stay tuned to our sales page for all the latest bargains. In the meantime, let’s take a look at a few early bird specials.

The Best Sales of The Year, No Bones About It

As the week goes on, pay special attention to Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday so you don’t miss out on the year’s biggest deals.

Here are a few products we recommend you keep your eye on:

The best way to stay up-to-date on the latest product highlights is to follow us on your favorite social media platforms. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Make sure you fetch your wallet, and let us know which sales caught your eye!

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Swapping Stories and Hardware at Supercon 2019

This year’s Hackaday Superconference was our biggest yet! With a massive Hackaday Prize on the line, a larger Tindie meetup, and more attendees than ever, it was an incredible gathering of like-minded hackers and hardware enthusiasts.

There’s a lot to recap for those who weren’t able to make it this year, so let’s dive right in!

FieldKit Takes Home The Hackaday Prize 2019

First and foremost, we have to congratulate the FieldKit team for winning the grand prize this year: a sum of $125,000 to be exact. FieldKit itself is an open-source modular sensor system for conducting critical research in harsh environments.

You can check out all the other category winners here, but we would be remiss to not mention SmallKat, which took home $10,000 for winning the “Best Communication” category. It also just so happens to be a Tindie product, but who’s counting?

Tindarians Take The Stage at Supercon 2019

We had more than a few Tindie friends on stage this year. You can check out their talks online as well if you weren’t able to attend in person. While not all of the talks are online as of this writing, you can stay tuned to the Hackaday YouTube channel.

In the meantime, these are the ones we recommend:

Several more Tindarians also presented over at the Supplyframe DesignLab stage. They were recorded but need to be edited before the videos can be published. Be sure to check out their talks when the recordings go up on Hackaday’s YouTube!

What’s in the Bag?

Those who attended the Hackaday Superconference this year found something a little more substantial than the usual conference swag. This year, we partnered with multiple Tindie sellers to offer hardware that you can find right here on Tindie.

Here’s a shot of what I got in my bag, courtesy of TwinkleTwinkie:

We would like to extend an extra special thank you once again to the Tindie sellers who helped make Tindie Surprise possible:

A Tindie Panel, Meetup, and a Swap Meet

During the conference, we also had an amazing Tindie panel, hosted by our own Jasmine Brackett, which offered some excellent insight into the challenges that sellers face when they try to get their products out into the world.

After the panel came the Tindie Meetup, which this year featured a hardware swap! Here are some highlights from the event:

Bitluni stopped by to drop off some of his ESP32 VGA Shields:

Alex Glow brought a whole bunch of boards people were excited about:

Even Hackaday’s Editor in Chief, Mike Szczys took notice of the turnout:

All-in-all, this year’s supercon hosted over 40 Tindie sellers and a massive number of people from the broader community. Thank you to Hackaday, Supplyframe, the Tindie crew, and to all of the amazing people in our community for another awesome supercon!

See you all next year!

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This Pika Pin Badge is the First Step on Your Journey to Catch ‘Em All

Some of you may remember a Pika Pin Badge that came out roughly a year ago on Tindie. Well, it’s back again with a special edition 1st anniversary version!

The Pika Pin Badge SE is smaller and features an optimized circuit, improved aesthetics, and all the other features you loved about the original. With the press of a button, you can see a thunder shock effect run through the LEDs.

It also gets that golden color from the exposed copper with an ENIG finish. It looks like the Pikachu you know, but it also has a great retro pixel art look.

Pin it on your shirt, your backpack, or anywhere else, and let the world know that this maker is also a nerd, and proud of it!

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Connect Your BBC Microcomputer to The Modern Era With This Adapter

At a very young age, I learned the value of an adapter. It’s very rare that electronics easily connect to one another, doubly so when you’re working with devices from two different eras.

To this point, if you are someone who has a vintage BBC Microcomputer around, you know that its RS423 port can be cumbersome if you’re trying to interface with a modern PC.

This capable adapter lets you connect your BBC Micro’s RS423 port to a PC USB port. This allows you to transfer files from your PC to the microcomputer and vice versa at modern speeds.

It comes with a 500mm cable that leads to a 5-pin “domino” DIN plug for the BBC Micro. The other side is a mini-USB socket to receive a standard USB cable from the PC.

It also works with the full range of speeds available on the RS423 port, including 19200 baud. You can find the full manual online in PDF form as well.

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Hex-O Brings Blinky LEDs to Your Next Party

Two things any successful party requires are flashing lights and good music. Everything else is icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned. Specifically, those lights should have a pattern that matches or complements the music.

Hex-O can take care of this for you. It takes two matte black PCBs in the shape of a hexagon and adds in 8 back-soldered RGB LEDs in a circular pattern. The LEDs are driven by a programmable SAMD20 microcontroller, while the other PCB has a CR2032 battery holder.

You’ll need to assemble the device when it arrives using the M3 Hexagon spacers provided. Due to shipping restrictions, you will also need to provide the ubiquitous CR2032 coin cell battery, but these are small obstacles on your way to making some amazing LED light patterns.

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Super Sync your MFOS Sound Lab Mini-Synth!

Weird and out-there synth sounds are forever the flavour of the month in the experimental electronic world, but it’s also imperative to have an instrument play in tune when you need it to behave. Owners of the MFOS Sound Lab Mini-Synth can now convert their device into a finely tuned instrument using the newly released Sync Mod Board, adding more accurate control over the pitch playback of the synth compared to the original version.

The Sync Mod Board is a small PCB which attaches conveniently to the main board, having removed a couple of existing components. Once this is done, you have access to a tigher sync between VCO1 and VCO2, as well as a drastic improvement to the tracking ability of VCO2 – meaning the same instrument suddenly becomes a lot more playable.

The circuit is based on Ray Wilsons original modifactions to the SLMS circuit, but takes out much of the re-wiring, meaning you’re less likely to interfere with the original board and its native behaviour. This modification is compatible with all SLMS machines with the original Sync circuitry – Surface Mount/Eurorack versions between 1.0 and 1.3. See the guidelines here for all the instructions on whats required.

The SLMS Mod ships from France by Electronic Things… And Stuff, check out their store for more amazing electronic products!

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The EspRing Gives You Everything You to Create Mesmerizing Animations or Effects

In my travels I have some seen some truly amazing projects that use RGB LEDs to create incredible effects. Some are big, some small, but they always make an impression.

The EspRing is a new 12-bit neopixel ring that uses ws2812b RGB LEDs, but here’s the big news: it also includes an ESP8266 12E module built right into the design. The result is a neopixel ring with an onboard microcontroller, which removes an extra step towards your own personal light show.

The LEDs are individually addressable, so you only need one data pin from the microcontroller, along with VCC and GND to run a bunch of them. You can even control the color and brightness of each pixel.

Combine this with WiFi support from the ESP module, and you can even change effects or reprogram it remotely.

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Build a Truly Unique NES Controller With This Crazy Circuits Kit

Video game controllers started out simple, but they’ve become wide and varied over the years (Microsoft’s Kinect, anyone?). This is due to technology’s progress, of course, but it’s also a product of new and interesting ideas from the engineers who design them.

The Crazy Circuits Kit lets you bridge the gap between these two ideas by building your own NES controller that uses materials completely different from the original design.

The kit comes with everything you need to build a controller. The circuit parts are ready to use out-of-the-box, so there’s no soldering or preparation needed. The laser-cut components are a good place to start, but you can go beyond the design and turn any conductive object into a button, thanks to the included Touch Board.

When I say any conductive material, I mean it. The kit mentions many strange choices like dough, ink, or even cups of water. To make things even more interesting, the parts are compatible with LEGO and similar brick-based building blocks.

For those who want to explore circuitry, design, or even just the world of gaming controllers, this kit is a perfect fit.

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