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Adafruit Shrinks a Wearable Arduino Platform Down to One Inch

Don’t you hate it when you’re building the arc reactor for your Iron Man costume, but the Arduino powered circuit board you’re using is just too big? Well friend, it sounds like you could use the Adafruit Gemma! It packs most of the wearable computing power you love about Adafruit’s larger Flora model into to a one-inch disc. Perfect for all your arc reactor needs. Sure, the Adafruit Gemma could probably be used for a lot of different projects, but if I had one, I’d totally use it to build an arc reactor.

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The specs of the Gemma are a little lighter than the bigger Flora, but it still has the potential to power a lot of cool designs. It has a micro USB connection used to program the onboard ATtiny85 microcontroller. Gemma can be used with other Adafruit products including their Flora NeoPixel lights, but its limited RAM means it can only control “about a dozen” of them, according to Adafruit’s product page.

Gemma isn’t available just yet, but interested parties can go to Adafruit’s site to sign up to be notified when it is. There’s not a price listed on the product page either, but the Flora model costs $24.95, so Gemma probably costs slightly less than that.

Even with its limited power, the Adafruit Gemma should be able to give any hobbyist or cosplayer the means to step up their wearable computer design game.

(Adafruit via Engadget, image via Adafruit)

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Glen Tickle
Glen is a comedian, writer, husband, and father. He won his third-grade science fair and is a former preschool science teacher, which is a real job.

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