Company:Adafruit Industries

From HandWiki
Adafruit Industries, LLC
IndustryOpen-source hardware
Founded2005
FounderLimor Fried
Headquarters
New York City (Industry City, Brooklyn), New York[1]
,
United States
Number of employees
105[2] (2016)
Websitewww.adafruit.com

Adafruit Industries is an open-source hardware company based in New York, United States. It was founded by Limor Fried in 2005.[3] The company designs, manufactures and sells electronics products, electronics components, tools, and accessories. It also produces learning resources, including live and recorded videos about electronics, technology, and programming.

History

Limor Fried, then a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began selling electronic kits on her website from her own designs in 2005.[4][5] She later moved to New York City and established Adafruit Industries.[6]

In 2010, Adafruit offered a US$1,000 (equivalent to $1,442 in 2024) reward for whoever could hack Microsoft's Kinect to make its motion-sensing capabilities available for use for other projects. This reward was increased to $2,000 and then $3,000 after Microsoft said it would work to prevent such "tampering".[7][8] In November, the reward was issued to Hector Martin for his open-source Kinect driver.[9]

The company had $22 million in revenue in 2013 and $33 million in 2014.[6]

Company name

The name Adafruit comes from Fried's online moniker "Ladyada", a homage to computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace. The company aims to get more people involved in technology, science and engineering.[10]

Products

In addition to distributing third-party components and boards such as the Raspberry Pi, Adafruit develops and sells its own development boards for educational and hobbyist purposes. In 2016, the company released the Circuit Playground, a board with an Atmel ATmega32u4 microcontroller[11] and a variety of sensors, followed in 2017 by the more powerful Atmel SAMD21 based Circuit Playground Express. They, like many Adafruit products, are circular in shape for ease of use in education and wearable electronics projects,[12] along with the FLORA and Gemma, the company's wearable electronics development platforms. In 2017, Adafruit Industries' best-selling product was the Circuit Playground Express

Wearable Development Boards

Adafruit offers various electronic components designed to be used in wearable technology. In 2012, they introduced the FLORA, which was their first development board specifically designed for wearable electronics and inspired by the Arduino LilyPad. It featured a small circular shape (1.75 inch diameter), USB support, and various included sensors [13] to simplify integration with E-textiles, and pins that allow the use of conductive thread.[12] They are "Arduino-compatible", and designed to be programmable using custom board libraries for the Arduino IDE.[14] One year later, Adafruit announced the Gemma board, which had many similar features with a smaller size. In addition to its original 2012 release, the FLORA underwent several hardware revisions. FLORA v2 was introduced in May of 2015 with a micro-USB port instead of a mini-USB port and added an integrated NeoPixel LED. The FLORA v3 followed in 2016 with revised sew pads for easier connections. [15]

NeoPixel

Adafruit Mini Neopixels
Mini NeoPixels with comparison to a Canadian quarter

NeoPixel is Adafruit's brand of individually addressable red-green-blue (RGB) LED. They are based on the WS2812 LED and WS2811 driver, where the WS2811 is integrated into the LED, for reduced footprint. Adafruit manufactures several products with NeoPixels with form factors such as strips, rings, matrices, Arduino shields, traditional five-millimeter cylinder LED and individual NeoPixel with or without a PCB. The control protocol for NeoPixels is based on only one communication wire. Adafruit provides an Arduino library[16] and a Python Library[17] to help with the programming of NeoPixels. In addition to the traditional RGB technology, Adafruit manufactures a red-green-blue-white (RGBW) variant of NeoPixel for all products except those that feature a NeoPixel Mini 3535. Those integrate an additional white LED in the package for extra possible color mixes and selectable white color temperature (the company sells single NeoPixels with a 6000 K, 4500 K and 3000 K color temperature).

CircuitPython

In January, 2017, Adafruit introduced CircuitPython, a fork of the MicroPython programming language optimized to run on Adafruit and third-party products.[18] CircuitPython runs on Adafruit boards with a flash memory chip and a supported microcontroller or single-board computer.[19]

In 2019, resources for CircuitPython were moved to circuitpython.org, reflecting the appearance of non-Adafruit boards that use CircuitPython.[20] This includes CircuitPython for microcontrollers and CircuitPython on single-board computers using a compatibility layer Adafruit named "Blinka", to access general-purpose input/output functionality and compatibility.[21]

Adafruit has fostered a community which has contributed software libraries for more than 488 sensors and drivers.[22][23]

Feather development boards

Adafruit Feather M0 Basic Proto Development Board
A headerless Adafruit Feather M0 Basic Proto Development Board

Feather is Adafruit's largest brand of "Arduino-like" boards and accessories.[24] The boards share a form factor, pinouts, and lithium polymer battery charging. Certain boards add special features such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or cellular network connectivity, built-in prototyping space, or SD card communication. More features can be added with "FeatherWing" expansion cards that with an LCD or NeoPixel array, DC motor drivers, and other capabilities.

A fairly complete list of Feather form factor boards, FeatherWings and accessories has been compiled into a GitHub Awesome List.[24]


Adafruit Learning System

Adafruit publishes tutorials-nearly 3,000 as of 2024—that show how to build projects with their products, tear down wearable electronic devices, 3D printing, and more.[25] The company also hosts articles written by collaborators.

Presence on YouTube

Adafruit Industries has a substantial presence on the online video streaming website YouTube.[26] The channel has been active since April 2, 2006. The company was awarded a YouTube Silver Play Button in August 2015 when it surpassed 100,000 subscribers; as of January 2025, it had 450,000.[27] Adafruit creates different types of videos, all on electronics, with most featuring one of their products. Each week, several live shows are streamed.

Ask an Engineer

Show-and-Tell

3D Hangouts with Noe and Pedro Ruiz

John Park's Workshop

Wearable Electronics with Becky Stern

Wearable Electronics with Becky Stern was Adafruit's live show dedicated to the wearable electronics industry. It was hosted by the American artist Becky Stern. In the show, industry news, projects, techniques and materials were covered and discussed. It aired every Wednesday at 2PM ET and was produced for 122 episodes, from 2013 to 2016. The last edition was streamed on February 10, 2016.[28]

Customer support

Adafruit provides customer support via its forums.[29] Emails to their support address receive automated responses referring customers to the support forums[30] or the Adafruit Discord server.[31]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Gizmo Maker Adafruit Leaves Manhattan for 42K SF at Brooklyn's Industry City". June 5, 2024. https://industrycity.com/gizmo-maker-adafruit-leaves-manhattan-for-42k-sf-at-brooklyns-industry-city/. Retrieved July 14, 2024. 
  2. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named boing
  3. ↑ Porter, Jane (2012-09-12). "Spotlight: Adafruit Industries' Limor Fried, Entrepreneur of 2012 Finalist" (in en). https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224403. 
  4. ↑ Wang, Jennifer (18 December 2012). "Entrepreneur of 2012: Limor Fried". Entrepreneur. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225213. Retrieved February 22, 2015. 
  5. ↑ "Women Entrepreneurs to Bet On". 7 May 2014. http://www.newsweek.com/thirteen-women-entrepreneurs-bet-249959#big-shots/249959/3. Retrieved February 22, 2015. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Matt Weinberger (August 18, 2015). "How one woman turned her passion for tinkering into a $33 million business – without a dime of funding". http://www.techinsider.io/adafruit-industries-limor-fried-on-bootstrapping-a-startup-2015-8. Retrieved October 21, 2018. 
  7. ↑ "Bounty offered for open-source Kinect driver". http://www.cnet.com/news/bounty-offered-for-open-source-kinect-driver/. Retrieved December 9, 2015. 
  8. ↑ Brown, Mark. "$2,000 Bounty Put on Open-Source Kinect Drivers". Wired. https://www.wired.com/2010/11/kinect-drivers/. Retrieved December 9, 2015. 
  9. ↑ "Kinect Hack Makes Microsoft Angry, Deny its Existence". http://www.pcworld.com/article/210496/kinect_hack_makes_microsoft_angry_deny_its_existence.html. Retrieved November 23, 2015. 
  10. ↑ Rozenfeld, Monica (September 9, 2015). "How DIY Electronics Startup Adafruit Industries Became a Multimillion-Dollar Company: IEEE Member Limor Fried started the venture in her dorm room at MIT". http://theinstitute.ieee.org/technology-focus/technology-topic/how-diy-electronics-startup-adafruit-industries-became-a-multimillion-dollar-company. 
  11. ↑ Horsey, Julian (January 14, 2016). "Adafruit Unveils New Circuit Playground Board To Learn About Electronics". http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/adafruit-unveils-new-circuit-playground-board-to-learn-about-electronics-14-01-2016/. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "Adafruit's best open source wearables of 2015". https://opensource.com/life/15/12/best-open-source-wearables-2015. 
  13. ↑ "Announcing the FLORA, Adafruit's wearable electronics platform and accessories" (in en-US). Adafruit Industries - Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers!. 2012-01-20. https://blog.adafruit.com/2012/01/20/announcing-the-flora-adafruits-wearable-electronics-platform-and-accessories/. 
  14. ↑ "Unofficial list of 3rd party boards support urls" (in en). https://github.com/arduino/Arduino/wiki/Unofficial-list-of-3rd-party-boards-support-urls. 
  15. ↑ "FLORA - Wearable electronic platform: Arduino-compatible - v3". Adafruit Industries. https://www.adafruit.com/product/659. 
  16. ↑ Fried, Limor; Burgess, Phil (2019-01-17). "Adafruit NeoPixel Library". GitHub. Adafruit. https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_NeoPixel. 
  17. ↑ Fried, Limor; Burgess, Phil (2019-02-05). "Adafruit CircuitPython NeoPixel". GitHub. Adafruit. https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_CircuitPython_NeoPixel. 
  18. ↑ "Awesome CircuitPython List". https://github.com/adafruit/awesome-circuitpython. 
  19. ↑ Shawcroft, Scott. "Adafruit CircuitPython". https://github.com/adafruit/circuitpython. 
  20. ↑ "CircuitPython". https://circuitpython.org/. 
  21. ↑ "CircuitPython Blinka". https://circuitpython.org/blinka. 
  22. ↑ "Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter". https://www.adafruitdaily.com/2024/07/15/python-on-microcontrollers-newsletter-circuitpython-9-1-released-arduino-adopts-qwiic-and-so-much-more-circuitpython-python-micropython-thepsf-raspberry_pi/. 
  23. ↑ "CircuitPython Libraries". https://circuitpython.org/libraries. 
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Barela, Anne (2019-02-19). "Awesome Feather" (Markdown). GitHub. Adafruit. https://github.com/adafruit/awesome-feather/blob/master/README.md. 
  25. ↑ "Adafruit Learning System". https://learn.adafruit.com/. 
  26. ↑ "An interview with Limor Fried, Founder at Adafruit". https://theblueprint.com/stories/limor-fried/. 
  27. ↑ "Adafruit channel on YouTube.com". https://www.youtube.com/adafruit. 
  28. ↑ Stern, Becky (2016-02-10). "Jess cohosts Wearable Electronics with Becky Stern 2/10/2016 – LIVE". YouTube. Adafruit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo-SZEoWUVU. 
  29. ↑ "Contact Us : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits". https://www.adafruit.com/contact_us. 
  30. ↑ "adafruit industries - Forums Index". https://forums.adafruit.com/. 
  31. ↑ "Adafruit Discord Server". https://adafru.it/discord. 



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