Maker Faire Bay Area, the largest event held worldwide for the Maker and DIY Movement is on May 20-22. Never been to a Maker Faire? Whether you’re an engineer, an educator, or just someone that appreciates hands-on fun, you’ll have a great time exploring the inventive demos and DIY projects that are scattered throughout the massive event. Maker projects can feature high technology to simple and creative solutions, which is why maker culture is so interesting.
Texas Instruments (TI) will be at the event and we can’t wait to show off new demos using our Maker-ready development systems like our TI LaunchPad™ rapid prototyping development kit, Sitara™-processor-powered BeagleBoards and the SimpleLink™ multi-standard SensorTag kit.
Aside from the hardware development kits, there are many accessories that are perfect for makers and those learning electronics. The Sidekick Basic kit, which includes handy access to resistors, capacitors, switches, LEDs, buzzer, diode, shift register, transistors, potentiometers, temperature sensors, wires, and a breadboard, paired with a LaunchPad board is the perfect way to teach circuits and entry-level programming. You can access all the documentation and 10+ circuit examples at www.energia.nu/sidekick. The Educational BoosterPack MKII adds 9 functions to your TI LaunchPad kit including accelerometer, joystick and a color LCD to create everything from a spectrum analyzer to a remote for your robot. Seeedstudio Grove modules make it easy to create prototypes with different sensors and actuators. Check out the Starter Kits for BeagleBone and TI LaunchPad.
Internet of Things has been a big theme in the maker community recently. Rapid prototyping kits, access to developer accounts on cloud services, and open source resources are letting makers have an impact on trends like home automation. Last year TI brought the Internet of Popcorn Machine, a Wi-Fi®-connected popcorn maker. This year we’re bringing the Internet of Basketball, a connected twist on the arcade Pop-A-Shot game, featuring the SimpleLink™ Wi-Fi CC3200 wireless microcontroller (MCU) LaunchPad development kit. We will also be bringing a robot arena to showcase how to build complete systems with off the shelf components and TI LaunchPad ecosystem. There will be more cool projects featuring TI processors at the BeagleBoard.org booth.
Besides our awesome demos, TI will also have multiple speaking sessions for you to learn a little more about interesting TI technology and solutions for makers. We’ll see you in San Mateo and keep you up to date with what’s happening online!
Cheers!
The LaunchPad team
Additional resources:
- Order now: SimpleLink multi-standard SensorTag.
- Learn more about our SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3200 wireless MCU.
- Order now: SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3200 wireless MCU LaunchPad development kit.
- Learn more about the BeagleBone Black.
