 This week on Maker Update, dumpster fires, circuit python 5, flying toasters, cyber santa, personal soundtracks, gift guides, turtles, and soccer tic-tac-toe. Hello and welcome to another Aida Fruit Edition of Maker Update. I'm Tyler Wangarner and this month we've got everything you need to be stay warm and busy while the temperature outside keeps dropping. So let's get right into it with the project of the month. In a while may have created the perfect desktop toy with this miniature dumpster fire. When you press the power switch, the lid lifts up, revealing a flurry of billowing flames lit by glowing LEDs. Press it again and the flames died down containing the blaze. The hull of the dumpster is 3D printed based on a design by Simon Kangester. The circuit is powered by a circuit playground express with a microserver to lift the lid up and a little hobby motor to power a fan that animates some tissue flames. The circuit playground also plays an animation on the neopixel LEDs to light up the flames. With everything programmed to make code, this is a really easy project to throw together or modify to other projects that need lights and billowing flames. And while it might not keep you warm, it's sure to bring a smile to your face every time you switch it on. I'd love to build this project and extend it with a few ifty triggers, maybe as an email alert, or when certain public figures make a tweet. And for the news, Adafruit is joining the Zephyr project and the Linux Foundation. Zephyr is a real-time operating system for resource constrained devices with a focus on IoT and security-based applications. The Linux Foundation is dedicated to building sustainable ecosystems around open source projects. To learn more about either of these ventures, check out the show notes. In the past few weeks, we've also seen the release of CircuitPython 5 Beta Zero. This is a feature-complete, but not yet fully stable release of CircuitPython. In this version, there's new features for Bluetooth low energy, random number generators, display I.O., and plenty more. Check it out. Now for more projects, if you've ever wanted to wear the flying toaster screen saver like a necklace, the Ruiz brothers have you covered. The project makes use of a small IPS display powered by an M4 itsy-bitsy express, and the housing is 3D-printed with a design that resembles Nintendo's fledgling handheld, the Game Boy. There's two different sizes you can build, and it's a great way to show off your CircuitPython skills. Literally, no one was asking for this, but John Park has gone full mad eye with this Cyber Eye Santa mask. The animation runs on a TFT gizmo for the Circuit Playground Express, and there's a design template for an eye patch style holder for the circuit and the battery. Use a number of eye animations to choose from, human, dragon, newt, or terminator. Add a beard, and you're ready to bring more terror to the holiday that even Krampus could bust her. Have you ever wished you had your own soundtrack whenever you set off for a stroll? Data Wall added a Circuit Playground Express and a STEM a speaker module to a walking stick, and then used a strip of copper tape to extend one of the capacitive touchpads to the grip of the walking stick. Touch the pad, and your favorite tune plays. The example used here is the Imperial March, but this is the perfect opportunity to express yourself with your own soundtrack. Stay in alive, ecstasy of gold, truth hurts, find your jam, and get on it. From the Adafruit community, Aaron Sateblade built these beautiful laser-cut luminary lanterns. Using the Circuit Playground Bluefruit as the brains, she's extended the circuit to additional lanterns using the Adafruit NeoPixel ring. You can change the lighting patterns by tapping these capacitive touchpads, or through the Adafruit Bluetooth LE mobile app. It's a simple project, but a great piece of decor for any holiday gathering. Time for some tips and tools. If you're struggling to think of what to get, that's certain someone who seems to have everything this holiday season, check out Adafruit's holiday gift guide. There's plenty of categories to choose from, whether you're looking for specific hardware kits, knowledge disciplines, back to school, gifts for moms, and more. Every category is broken into different price brackets to help keep your holiday budgets on track. There's nothing that gives me a warmer sense of competing nostalgia than programming and logo. It's a simple educational language from the late 60s, where you send instructions to a turtle dragging a pen, creating some rudimentary graphics. Adafruit now has a tutorial for bringing that turtle to Circuit Python via the TFT Gizmo. There's a full API here for controlling the pen, setting the head end of the turtle, plus functions for complex shapes like circles. The guide here is for the Circuit Playground Express, but you can use plenty of other combinations of Circuit Python and TFT displays if you're willing to spend some time reassigning pins. Adafruit is covering a huge number of pages in issue 25 of HackSpace Magazine. There's a fantastic tutorial by Ben Everard covering Circuit Python and Bluetooth Low Energy, so you can use your smartphone with your microcontroller to record data, send commands, and more. And there's a massive 14-page gift guide by Adafruit, covering the best maker presence you can give. HackSpace is available as a free PDF download, but if you subscribe to a hard copy for a full year, you'll get a free Circuit Playground Express. Not a bad deal. Last month, we mentioned the Take Flight with Feather Contest, which challenges everyone to design their own feather-compatible add-on board. We're starting to see entries coming in, and they're nothing short of fantastic. There's KickTackToe, which enables you to play TickTackToe by kicking a ball at a 10-foot-tall sensor grid. PewPew Lite, which combines a simple gamepad with an 8x8 LED matrix for some quick-and-dirty game dev. There's boards for sonar, quadcopters, battery power. The list goes on and on. The winner will get a run of their board produced and then stocked at DigiKey. For this month's Adafruit product highlight, we're showcasing the FT232H GPIO breakout board. While most boards are intended to be used with microcontrollers, this board lets you add SPI, I2C, and GPIO to any computer via a USB interface. If you've ever wanted to create a completely customized panel for your computer case, this is what you'll want. You can drive displays to graph CPU activity, LED indicators for email, or waggle a Serbo-driven victory flag when you get that chicken dinner in PUBG, especially since you don't need to depend on cloud-based services to drive them. And that is going to do it for this month's show. I hope you got something out of it, or just enjoyed watching it. If you did, leave us a comment or give us a thumbs up, and make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. As always, huge thanks to Lamor and Phil and everyone at Adafruit for giving this show a home. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the new year.