LilyPad Twinkle Constellation

In this project, we’ll create a decorative embroidery hoop using conductive thread to connect LilyPad LEDs to a LilyTiny, powered by a LilyPad battery holder.  

DIY Easy Pom Pom LED Headband

Festival season is upon us, and whether you’ll be dancing on the grounds with 30,000 others, or alone in the sanctity of your living room, we have the perfect DIY wearable project to light up the occasion (and make you a little easier to find in the crowd): the LED pom-pom headband.  

DIY Firefly LED Bracelet

Light up the party (and your wrist!) with a DIY Firefly LED Bracelet.  

LED Crystal Crown

In this project, we’ll create a wearable LED Crystal Crown using a simple circuit made of 7x Super Bright White LEDs wired in parallel and powered by two coin cell batteries wired in series.  

Party Bag

The Marquee Party Bag is a purse embedded with several LED Matrices and a Lilypad Microcontroller. The LEDs are easily programmable for the user to convey marquee messages or to simply make beautiful patterns. In this tutorial we will go through the step by step process of making this project.  

Fellowship of the Things! – SparkFun’s Internet of Things Video Series

The Fellowship of the Things is SparkFun’s newest series where our team of Creative Engineers build connected ‘internet of things’ or IoT projects. IoT is a broad category that is becoming much more popular, it basically entails any kind of wireless connect device which could be used for home automation, healthcare, smart grids, as well as wearables to name a few categories.   In this episode, Sarah and Shawn tackle some home automation with an interesting twist on front door security.  

SparkFun Fellowship of the Things #2 – Weight for Treats

SparkFun Fellowship of the Things #3 – Cloud Clouds

SparkFun Internet of Things Apartment #4 – Raspberry Pi Camera Refrigerator

Episode #4 of our IoT apartment tackles the age old problem of remembering what’s in your fridge while you’re at the store. Here, Sarah and Nick strap a Raspberry Pi camera module to a pair of Actobotics sliders to create the ultimate fridge o’ the future!  

SparkFun Fellowship of the Things Apartment #5 – Smart Mirror

Sarah and Shawn build a smart mirror using the Intel® Edison, an LCD, and a little bit of elbow grease. The mirror displays real-time weather data from openweathermap.org, and the information shown can be changed simply by swiping a hand in front of the gesture sensor! Make your own by following the tutorial we created.  

SparkFun Internet of Things Apartment #6 – Simblee Fitness Bracer

IoT Connected Chess Boards from SparkFun!

In this episode of the Fellowship of the things Creative Engineer Sarah builds two Chess boards that play over WiFi, so you can play someone on the other board from anywhere on a physical Chess board.  

Build a Connected Bear with SparkFun!

Happy IoTuesday! In this week’s edition, I build a connected stuffed bunny for my newborn niece (and yes, even though we refer to it as a bear for title purposes, we realize it has decidedly lagomorphic qualities).   Having recently moved to Colorado, I’ve been dealing with the challenges of living far away from family for the first time. This drove me to design a special method of communication for just my niece and myself—a stuffed animal that would alert me, all the way in Colorado, any time she played with it back in New York.  

Valentine’s Day Box of Talk-lates!

It’s Valentine’s Day, and we know you are ready to pull out all the stops to impress that special someone. Finding the perfectly sweet and personalized gift can be a challenge and outright anxiety inducing. Fret no more! This box of chocolates will send your Valentine sweet nothings via text message as they eat.  

Remote Smoke Machine

Check out our blog post on how to build this tiny, remote activated smoke machine made from an e-cigarette tank and a vacuum pump. Simply fill the tank with glycerin and you can make convincing smoke for cosplay, theater or pranking your coworkers!  

Project Showcase: IoT Weather Visualizer

Check out this IoT LED weather visualizer inspired by the Rocky Mountains! Made using a Particle Photon and Weather Underground data via IFTTT.  

Get Ready For Safe Cracking with SparkX

Explanation of Combination Safe Cracking

See how the insides of a common combination fire safe work. We also show a method we call Set Testing to reduce the time needed to crack the safe. The discs have a tolerance of +/- 1 digit.  

Licking a 9 Volt Battery with SparkFun!

SparkFun engineer Shawn breaks down the science behind the tingling sensation you get when licking a 9 volt battery.  

Bust a Cap – Exploding Capacitors with SparkFun

In this video SparkFun engineer Shawn shows us what happens when you overload ceramic, tantalum, and electrolytic capacitors. The results are pretty explosive.