Engineering & Technology

Forget the bloodthirsty predators of summer blockbusters; the ghost shark is a real and seriously mysterious. You sure won’t find them lurking off a sunny beach.

Walk into a museum, sit down to watch "The Nutcracker," glance at a graffiti wall or flip through a graphic novel, and you'll witness the world's many different types of art.

If you're a fan of Siamese cats but wish they came with white feet and a touch more cuddliness, meet the Snowshoe cat. This rare breed is known for its striking tuxedo-like markings, white feet and generally affectionate demeanor.

When we think about royalty, we often imagine gilded thrones and ornate drawing rooms. But according to German troops in World War II, Catherine the Great's furniture went way beyond your average aristocratic flair.

Whether you're a seasoned anime lover or just dipping your toes into the animation waters for the first time, you might be surprised by the wave of high-quality Chinese anime — also known as donghua — making a splash on screens around the world.

danman’s blog discusses reusing old Cisco power supplies.

The problem is, that they don’t output any voltage until they are plugged into device. The question is, how to fool them into thinking they are plugged in.

I thought, well, maybe they just use some fixed resistor to detect the connected load so I measured the resistance and it was 7.5kOhm in both directions, so I connected corresponding resistor to pins 6 and 15.

Ta-da! Power supply started nicely delivering about 60 Watts, job’s done.

For the RPS, it’s a 10k resistor.

See the details in the post here.

Come on by for JP’s Product Pick of The Week ! A new product pick will be revealed. The show airs at 4pm ET / 1pm PT, TODAY!

Check out the livestream right here inside this product page you won’t want to miss it because there will be a HUGE DISCOUNT during the show!

Tune in for:

• • John Park’s latest product pick
  • Learn how to use it
  • Live Demo

The live video will also be on YouTube LIVE, Twitch, Periscope (Twitter) and Facebook. LIVE TEXT CHAT IS HERE in the Adafruit Discord chat! Come on into the chat to participate in the conversation!!

Every Tuesday @ 4pm ET/1pm PT!

Upgrade from a simple mallet to this soft touch Xylophone. Duruo on Instructables created this Capacitive Touch Xylophone using a Raspberry Pi Pico, a Adafruit 12-Key Capacitive Touch Sensor Breakout – MPR121 and a bunch of solenoids. This is an adaptation of Adafruit’s Robotic Xylophone

When you touch the conductive fabric on the touchpads, the corresponding solenoid hits the key on the xylophone. If you do not remove your hand from the touchpad, the solenoid continues to fire at a set interval. This design aims to adapt the xylophone to make it accessible to young students with mobility constraints.

See the full guide!

Get started with your own capacitive touch project using the 12-Key Capacitive Touch Sensor Breakout and the Adafruit Learning System

Adafruit MPR121 12-Key Capacitive Touch Sensor Breakout Tutorial

Add lots of touch sensors to your next microcontroller project with this easy-to-use 12-channel capacitive touch sensor breakout board, starring the MPR121. This chip can handle up to 12 individual touch pads.

Adafruit is expanding the methods you can ask questions for Adafruit’s Ask an Engineer show ahead of time (really anytime). Post your name/handle and question

1. Reply to this blog post
2. On the Adafruit Discord (https://adafru.it/discord) post your question in the ask-an-engineer-questions channel under General.
3. On Twitter/X, BlueSky or Mastodon, tag your question with #AskAnEngineer

We’re looking forward to seeing your questions answered on the Adafruit Ask an Engineer videocast tomorrow, Wednesday May 7, 2025.

The Python for Microcontrollers Newsletter is the place for the latest news involving Python on hardware (microcontrollers AND single board computers like Raspberry Pi).

This ad-free, spam-free weekly email is filled with CircuitPython, MicroPython, and Python information (and more) that you may have missed, all in one place!

You get a summary of all the software, events, projects, and the latest hardware worldwide once a week, no ads! You can cancel anytime.

12,168 subscribers and growing

Try our spam-free newsletter today! 

It arrives about 11 am Monday (US Eastern time) with all the week’s happenings.

And please tell your friends, colleagues, students, etc.

Please sign up > > >

ElatoAI is a realtime AI Speech solution, powered by OpenAI Realtime API, ESP32, Secure WebSockets, and Deno Edge Functions. It provides for >10-minute uninterrupted global conversations.

Or, as it’s billed:

Attach your Elato device to any toy or plushie and watch them become AI characters you can talk to!

The use cases they have thought of:

• Healthcare & Companionship
• Learning & Play
• Helpful Assistants
• Creative Applications

The hardware uses an ESP32-S3 with an Adafruit MAX98357A amplifier.

See video 1 and video 2 below and more on GitHub and the main website.

Over at Instructables, clem2k has a brilliant idea: create a piece of art infused with sound and light that celebrates their passion for Sonic the Hedgehog. Instead of making a traditional painting, clem2k leans into their skills. Wielding resin, Adafruit Neopixel code, and some familiar tools, they create a unique piece of art! Here’s more from clem2k via Instructables:

This project is a piece of art combining epoxy resin, some Arduino based electronics and my passion for SEGA Genesis and Sonic the Hedgehog. I’ve been inspired by the Nerd Forge and Martina’s epoxy resin paintings… The goal is to obtain a kind of 3D effect with multiple layers of resin. As I’m not so good in painting, “I totally suck” would be more accurate, I’ve decided to print and cut the different layers. If you’ve got a CNC cutter, or laser you can precisely cut the layers, I did it with my Brother Scan and cut (and included the files).

You can change the artworks and sounds, and use the Arduino code. The code will work and the Gerber file will be the same no matter what you decide to use as graphics and sounds.

See project

Every Tuesday is Art Tuesday here at Adafruit! Today we celebrate artists and makers from around the world who are designing innovative and creative works using technology, science, electronics and more. You can start your own career as an artist today with Adafruit’s conductive paints, art-related electronics kits, LEDs, wearables, 3D printers and more! Make your most imaginative designs come to life with our helpful tutorials from the Adafruit Learning System. And don’t forget to check in every Art Tuesday for more artistic inspiration here on the Adafruit Blog!

KeypadSim is an Arduino library for simulating a matrix keypad. It allows you to queue keypresses programmatically, making it ideal for testing, automation, or simulating user input on devices that expect a physical keypad.

Features

• Simulate keypresses for a matrix keypad
• Non-blocking operation (call loop() regularly)
• Command queue for multiple keypresses

See more on GitHub.

ECmacro is a compact USB macro pad which uses electrostatic capacitive switches (Topre/NIZ style).

It acts as a USB HID device (keyboard) using a CH552 microcontroller.

Key 1 is volume up, key 2 is volume down, both keys simultaneously is mute.

See all the details on GitHub.

On the learn more stuff blog, they have some Yamaha MusicCast speakers they’re pleased to own. The issue is one cannot add analog speakers to the mix.

…the MusicCast speakers take digital audio over I2S from their WiFi module and send it into the Yamaha YDA174 amplifier. That amplifier does not have line-level output and it does some DSP/EQ stuff to filter the audio output. The speaker box has a woofer and a tweeter and these are the only analog signals coming out of the amplifier on board.

The DSP is a problem because I want unfiltered, raw line-out audio for my stereo. I do not want to amplify the already filtered analog signals.

The solution chosen was to splice in an I2S digital to analog converter (DAC). Adafruit sells the DAC PCM5102 for exactly this purpose. The DAC receives a digital audio signal (I2S) and outputs an analog line-level signal for use with an external amplifier.

Check out how they found the required digital signals inside the speaker and spliced in the DAC to create the desired solution in the post here. Via Hackaday.

John Sobanski was cleaning out the drawers from his childhood bedroom and found a floppy disk from 1986. His friend was able to recover the files as text and it was a journey through the code from his 9 year old self.

Today’s exercise provided me with novelty and nostalgia. I had brief, subtle recollections of nearly forty-year-old memories. I got to see my first attempt at iterative loops, computer graphics, user input, and string concatenation. I also got a peek into my weird, slightly obnoxious nine-year-old sense of humor.

Read more in the post here.

Sleek, fast, and unmistakably tinted with ocean hues, the blue shark is a standout among pelagic sharks.

Graceful, vocal, and wrapped in a silky coat that flows like a ribbon — say hello to the Balinese cat, a breed that blends the elegance of long-haired cats with the spirited personality of Siamese ancestors.

Trying to navigate the car market can feel like walking into an auto showroom the size of a small planet. With so many types of cars rolling off production lines, understanding your options is key to picking the right set of wheels.

In the world of mountain climbing, few stories are as harrowing or as inspiring as that of Beck Weathers.