Neat New Products
New: A triple axis gyro, specialty IC hooks, AVC poster, bags of LEDs, Open Heart Kit, new (Sale) items, MIDI cable, and a fuse and fuse holder.
Emcee Grady does a great job of getting the new products on the homepage, so it's not all that often that I get to do one. But in this set of new stuff, I just couldn't keep my hands off. Too many cool things to talk about!
In the race for the triple-axis gyro, InvenSense and ST are in the lead. ST was the first to deliver the LYPR540AH, but they could only get us sample quantities (3pcs). Our first order of 500pcs is not supposed to arrive until September of 2010! InvenSense however has delivered us 500pcs of the ITG-3200, a triple axis gyro in one IC. Pretty crazy stuff. Both breakout boards are ready and we're ramping up production on the ITG-3200 so we should have a steady supply once we get past the homepage onslaught (please place a backorder - we should have more in a few days). What's next? Of course we're hoping for a triple accel and triple gyro built into one IC. After that, I dream of a accel/gyro/magneto combo - it must be coming! And once we have that, dead reckoning and tracking get very interesting...
I've got a set of these at home and they have already come in handy. A set of 5 IC hooks of different colors with a male pin on one end. I used the black and red pair to hook up a LiPo battery to a dead Canon camera. I really like these IC hooks because they are the finer, double hook type rather than the single sided hook type. This small difference makes these IC hooks easier to cram into small spaces and attach to very small test points.
Ok mom, stop emailing me! The AVC 2010 Poster is now available for sale - and cheap too. We failed horribly - we should have had these posted before the AVC even happened. Our apologies (mom). These are large, 18"x24" posters, full color print.
It was one of those products that once Chris (one of the engineers) recommended it, we hit our collective heads saying 'dah! yes!'. It's quite simply a bag of LEDs. Who needs just one LED? We now have super bright red, green, and blue in bags of 25 pcs each. More varieties coming.
Open Heart Kit is a pretty slick kit by Jimmie Rodgers that uses Charlieplexing to get 27 LEDs to light up under individual control, using only 6 wires. Think Zelda life force heart monitor.
We just completed a building wide inventory and counted every last widget. Once we had all the numbers, we found a surplus of some items so we're having a sale. Have a look at the Ding and Dent category or search for the term (Sale) and see if anything piques your interest.
The Arduino Inventor's Kit has been tremendously popular. We've now added a 12th circuit that shows the reader how to mix a tri-color LED to get any color your heart desires. We're also anxiously awaiting the base plate from our plastic maker. We can't wait to see this kit in its final form.
A simple 6 foot MIDI cable. We needed some of these for an upcoming music project, we figured you might need MIDI cables as well!
Fuse and fuse clip. These are fairly important when you need to protect your high-power device from dangerous situations. The fuse will blow at 5A, hopefully saving the bulk of the electronics. Fuses are good for high power devices but if you're using lower current, a PTC is also very cool and automatically resets itself when the current drops below 500mA.
i think a mixed bag of LED colours maybe cool.
also are you guys ever going to supply surface mount resistors and capacitors?
+1 to SMD components! Resistors, capacitors, various LED's...
-1 for trying to be Mouser or Digikey!
One of the things in me Eagle directory is an I2C triple board - the ADXL345 accelerometer, HMC5843 magnetometer, and the SCP-1000 baro/temp all on one board (working on keeping the analog and digital away from each other for better precision). Now it seems I'll have to add the Gyro.
Yes! Now do I bother to lay out my own 9DOF with the ITG-3200 finally rounding out the set of triaxial I2C sensors? Or will (as is usual) you guys release something better than what I come up with, just as I'm finally about to fab it? Either way... AWESOME!!!
accel/gyro/magneto combo IC = instant nerdgasm
Hello,
It's just that the 6 DoF IMU from AD is 1 cubic inch and cost more than 600?.
The ITG-3200 is about 1000 times smaller and cost about 40 times less.
I think this is more than an evolution ;-)
yeah, i've been wondering about that for a while. What's new about this whole new generation of three-axis gyros? Analog Devices has been manufacturing and selling these things (three axis gyros, three axis accelerometers, everything, really) for at least a couple of years by now. It's only that they seem to have gotten popular very recently, and other manufacturers started making them. Is it the price point? New, lower manufacturing cost three-axis gyro? What is it?
Have you guys tried out any of the the Analog Devices inertial measurement products? They make a couple of six axis sensors, and it looks like there's even a version with a triaxial mag included (ADIS16400):
http://www.analog.com/en/sensors/inertial-sensors/products/index.html#Inertial_Measurement_Units_%28IMU%29
The "bag of LEDs" is a good idea, but the best set in my collection has a resistor so it will work up to 12V - so the power and automotive projects are easy, but these still are more than bright enough to see at 3.3v directly connected to my Arduino. I have them in red, yellow, and green (no blue or white I could find), they were cheap, and they are my universal LED when I don't know or don't care about details, I just need to see if the pin is on or off.
Appears that Epson Toyocom is about to start production of a 6-axis MEMS Gyro/Accelerometer:
http://www.epsontoyocom.co.jp/english/info/2010/0223.html
Typo: "The Arudino Inventor's Kit has been tremendously popular."
Good eyes. Fixed.