 This week on Maker Update, hand-wavy details about music, open-source certification, thermal imaging, quarantine calendars, inspiration, and connecting your project anywhere on the globe. Hello, and welcome back to the Eight of Fruit Edition of Maker Update for May 2020. I'm Tyler Weingarner, and I hope you're doing okay. I gotta be honest, working on this show is really the only reason why I'm able to keep track of where I am in the week. If that's where you're at, we've got a great project for you coming up later on in the show, but in the meantime, let's check out the project of the month. The Nintendo Power Glove, the holy grail of awkward game controllers, has been given new life as a MIDI music controller courtesy of John Park. I don't think it's controversial to say it was never a good controller to begin with, but with a flex sensor in each finger, two ultrasonic emitters, and a full button pad on the wrist, it's a hardware hacker's paradise. Plus, it looks friggin' cool. John's making use of the flex sensors and wiring them to the BLE Feather Sense to use its accelerometer. All of the original PCBs are scrapped, but he's keeping the rest of the Power Glove cosmetically intact. Nintendo's engineers must have been really forward-thinking. Not only does the small Permaprodotin board fit into the palm unit, but the screw standoffs match perfectly. The Feather Sense snugs down into the wrist unit and remains accessible when you take the glove off for code updates. It's a pretty involved retrofit, but what you get is a MIDI controller full of mappable controls for pitch bending, note velocity, waveform shape, and more. If you aren't eager to go hunting for a Power Glove at your used game shop, you can build your own MIDI controller from scratch by using any glove and some flex sensors. John has his complete build notes up on Adafruit, complete with Circuit Python code. A few news items. Adafruit has been diligently submitting all of their eligible hardware for certification by the Open Source Hardware Association. As a result, they are now the number one certified open hardware company. As I record this, there are 235 boards certified. They've submitted nearly 400 boards, so that number is sure to rise. Adafruit continues to remain open as an essential COVID-19 business. If you need to place an order with them for PPE or life-saving electronics, they've set up a specific email address for this purpose. It goes without saying that they are incredibly busy, so please use this email responsibly. More projects. The Ruiz Brothers built a DIY thermal imaging camera using the PiBadge and the MLX90640 thermal sensor array in case you want to be able to take a quick read of temperatures without touching anything. The PiBadge provides a microSD card for storing images and a user interface for changing settings. Of course, there's a beautiful 3D printed enclosure, complete with a shutter button and a tripod mount. If you've spent weeks in quarantine, you can't remember the last time you left the house and the days are starting to match together. Brent Rebell has the perfect project for you. This PiPortal quarantine clock pleasantly reminds you of the current day of the week and the loose indication of the time of day. If that's too specific for you, there's some alternate code that just lets you know roughly where you are in the current month. We've got a pair of clue projects for you. The first one is a wrist-mounted step counter from Liz Clark. If you've been wanting to keep track of your walks but aren't keen on sharing that data with the greater internet, this project is for you. You can set up your own step goals and track your progress, and there's this adorable turbocharged blinker graphic. Meanwhile, Colin Cunningham created this activity generator to kick-start your idle creativity. Tap one of the face buttons and it will shuffle up a creative prompt to get you out of your rut. From the Adafruit community, Richard Albrighton created this Circuit Python connected weather cloud. It uses a fluffy cloud of cotton batting and some Neopixel LEDs to tell you the current forecast. It's a lot more fun than pulling out your phone to check the weather, and there's even a hidden speaker for some audio cues like thunderclaps or chirping birds. Now for a few tips. If you've ever wanted to have a connected IoT project that you can deploy anywhere in the world, then check out this guide to Rockblock Iridium Modems by Carter Nelson. These modems access a global satellite network, ensuring low bandwidth connectivity pretty much anywhere there's a view of the sky. At $250 for the modem plus a service charge, it's not cheap, but it's really powerful. There's setup guides for Raspberry Pi and the Feather Sense. Phil Burgess wrote up a guide for using little VGL on Adafruit boards and displays. Little VGL is a graphics library for microcontrollers that lets you generate some pretty professional looking user interfaces. If you're tired of your hardware UIs looking like they were designed as an afterthought, give this one a look. Erin St. Blaine wrote up a pair of guides to help get you started in two different project disciplines. In one, she shows how to wire up a circuit playground to this wall outlet relay module to use any one of its sensors to trigger a light. Sound, ambient light, accelerometer, there's plenty to play with here. The other is a no solder guide to NeoPixels. If you're just getting started in hardware and the learning curve is getting you down, check these out. For this month's Adafruit product spotlight, you don't need to buy anything and it's guaranteed in stock. If you're stuck at home and you want to connect with other humans, then pay a visit to the Adafruit Discord server. Whether you're looking for help with the project, chat during the latest live stream, or just connect with some cool smart people, this is the place. If you're looking to spend some money, Adafruit has been stocking up on PPE for sale. Masks, gloves, face shields, even this glowing fabric face mask. Good stuff. And that is going to do it for this month's show. Thank you so much for watching. As I mentioned earlier, this show really helps keep me grounded and I hope it's doing the same for you. As always, huge thanks to everyone at Adafruit for fighting the good COVID-19 fight and for giving this show a home. Take care and we'll see you in June.