Prologue to the Autonomous Competition: New UAVs!
New UAV development platforms, some useful cables, and a handful of other cool stuff!
The Napkin Schematics class went extremely well last night. Thank you all for coming and to all the people that participated online with our broadcast! We really didn't know what to expect but it was phenomenal to see such a great response. We had over 50 viewers! We promise to have better video broadcast for our next class - Eagle Schematic Capture.
This is the new three-axis UAV v2 Development Platform by Bill Premerlani. Smaller and more powerful than the previous version. This guy includes a dsPIC30F4011 CPU for excellent signal processing power. A perfect start for the robotic plane you're building for the SparkFun Autonomous Vehicle contest.
Another UAV platform, this one for use with popular Arduino IDE. Slightly less powerful than the UAV above, but comes with an ATMega168 with Arduino bootloader. Very deluxe.
It's better to give than receive...right? Right?! SparkFun gift certificates are available in any value, for all those hard to shop for hobbyists.
New triple-axis accelerometer. The ADXL345 low-power accelerometer features a digital interface, is high res (as little as 0.25 degrees), and has tap sensing and free fall features.
You can probably find a million cool uses for this new product - a joystick, very similar to the one found in Sony PlayStation2 controllers.
A couple development platforms: the SAM9, a powerful ARM9 controller and the PIC32 Dev platform, a powerful PIC32 controller. Both of these boards will give you great performance.
This AVR ICSP Adapter converts 2x5 pin ICSP to 2x3 mini-ICSP. It comes with connection cables.
Here we have a breakout board for our current sensor. This is a small voltage and current sensing PCB. Another addition to our new current sensing category.
Very simple, but infinitely useful: a 2 pin jumper. Use this to modify settings on a board or device - always handy to have a few of these around.
That PS2 joystick look awesome.
Are you considering a break out board for the ADXL345?
Yep - working on it. But it'll be quite awhile before we have everything we need. Analog Devices is still in pre-production phase of the IC so we won't be able to release the breakout until we have more stock of the IC.