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Arduino.cc has announced another new entry in the Genuino family, designed to combine Arduino functionality with in-built Wi-Fi connectivity. It's called the Genuino MKR1000, and to celebrate its unveiling the company is giving away a thousand of them in collaboration with Hackster.io and Microsoft. Designed to help Arduino.cc compete with devices like the Particle Photon and NodeMCU, the Genuino MKR1000 - which will launch in the US as the Arduino MKR1000, as with previous Genuino-branded products - is designed around the Atmel ATSAMW25 SmartConnect platform. The idea is that it takes away the complexities of connecting to a Wi-Fi network...

Even as the UK government looks to encourage kids to learn practical technological skills like programming, its security services have begun spreading worrying misinformation that could lead parents to intervene in their child's development: that interest in computing and electronics can lead to a life of 'cyber crime.' Even as the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport pledges £10 million to turn Manchester into the UK's official Internet of Things (IoT) demonstrator city, the National Crime Agency - formerly known as the Serious Organised Crime Agency - has issued a document warning parents, carers, and other adults to keep an...

The Arduino platform has a well-earned place at the heart of many Internet of Things (IoT) projects, but there's one hurdle to overcome: the Internet part. Most mainstream Arduino microcontroller designs do not include on-board networking, and while add-on Wi-Fi Shields can solve this they do so by dramatically increasing the overall cost of a project. Maker Bruno Portaluri has been working on a solution, though, and it's now ready for public use: an Arduino library for the popular ESP8266 Wi-Fi module. Available for under £3 in single-unit quantities, the ESP8266 can be quickly connected to any microcontroller and used...

The Department for Culture, Media, and Sport has awarded a £10 million investment to a public-private consortium which aims to make Manchester the official Internet of Things (IoT) demonstration city for the UK - cementing the UK Maker Belt as the heart of innovation in the country. A partnership between numerous private and public bodies, including Manchester City Council, the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, Cisco, BT, Future Everything, and Republic of Things, the programme will see the creation of a UK Internet of Things Centre of Excellence in the city-centre campus of Manchester Science Partnerships (MSP). As well...

We've seen how it's possible to add analogue pins to an Arduino using Paul Brown's simple MC14051B library, but there's another way to expand the number of digital pins available - and it has been wonderfully seasonally demonstrated by make and activist Pete Taylor in his latest build: an LED-based automated advent calendar. Based on the artwork of Robert Fiszer, created for charity Concern Worldwide, Pete wanted to make an automated advent calendar that would light up each day as it counted down to Christmas. There were two main issues to overcome: it had to be standalone, and a standard...