We have a little something for everyone this week. We've got some new Actobotics products, a new 9DoF breakout, the Sound Detector, and other goodies. And of course, we have the second round of the SparkFun Dumpster Dive.
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The Dumpster Dive will officially go live at noon (Mountain Time Zone). We have a little over 100 'dives' this time around, and we expect them to go quickly. We have a little better system this year. Just go to this page and wait until noon. At noon, you will see stock, and the option to make a purchase (assuming they're still available). Good luck!
This week we also have the next installment of Robotics 101. This week's episode is all about control systems. We've talked about different types of motors and controls, but now we'll talk about how to use them.
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Now that we're done with the videos, let's see all the products for this week!
The Dumpster Dive is where we take stuff that we're not going to sell and we stuff it in a box and let you buy it for $10. The box contains 1.5 pounds (or about 680 grams) worth of 'stuff'. This stuff can be anything from leftovers from the pick-and-place machine, returns, discontinued product, mis-shipments, or even demos we never ended up carrying. Each box is lovingly filled with a random assortment of goods, and there's no way of knowing what you're going to get. Intrigued?
The LSM9DS0 is an all-in-one magnetometer, gryo, and accelerometer. That's right, a 9DoF in a single chip! The breakout board has all you need to get one running. It communicates over SPI or I2C, and we have a handy little guide that shows you have to get it working.
Audio can be tricky sometimes. Simply trying to figure out "how loud is this room" is not always easy. The Sound Detector makes this a pretty simple task. Using the onboard mic, it can not only give you a simple amplitude output (to tell you just how loud or quiet it is in a room), but it provides a simultaneous binary output (is there sound or not?), as well as the actual audio output. All three outputs can be read simultaneously, and independently. By adding a resistor, you can even adjust the gain, making it easy to adjust the threshold levels. Check out the guide for more information on how it works.
When we released the solderable breadboard a few weeks back, people asked for more sizes. Now we have a bigger size solderable breadboard that works with the classic breadboard.
We have several new switches and respective mounts this week. We have 4 new SPDT microswitches total, and they come in different configurations: roller lever, offset lever, standard, and straight lever. Additionally we have 3 different styles of mounts. They attach to the switches and in turn attach to Actobotics (or other) products. The switches are sold individually, and the mounts are sold in pairs.
We are now carrying the Teensy 2.0. This is a simpler and cheaper version of the Teensy++ 2.0. It's a great way to get started with the Teensy platform. Check out the quickstart guide for more information.
Lastly, we have some new bearings from Actobotics. These are standard skate bearing size, and work well with the skate wheels. They are non-flanged and have an 8mm inner bore, and a 22mm outer diameter. They're round and they spin.
This concludes another Friday New Product Post. If it's before noon, be sure to camp out at your computer to try and get one of the Dumpster Dives. Thanks for watching, reading, and buying stuff from our dumpster. See you next week.
Did someone accidently the new product RSS feed? https://www.sparkfun.com/feeds/products
I don't use RSS any moe when google close the RSS feed.
Not sure what you mean exactly, but I do subscribe to the RSS feed. I have it posted on my webpage: http://www.dagobah-system.com It's all mixed in there on the right side with the other company (that starts with an A and ends in dafruit), Woot, Thinkgeek and various other sources of nerdy goodness.
The latest 'new product' in the feed is "Timing Belt - XL (per foot) (ROB-12156)" - the feed hasn't been updated since Feb 21st.
We recently changed up how we're handling product images. It kind of looks like there's a subtle-ish bug here where the new products feed is dependent on a
JOIN product_images, but we're no longer actually storing the product images as rows in PostgreSQL, so the only things showing up in the feed are products old enough to have had images defined in the old system. Automated testing didn't catch this 'cause we left the old table in place, so the feed still runs fine and comes out valid and whatnot; it just isn't up-to-date.Nice catch. We'll get a fix up in the next day or two.
Edit: Should be fixed now.
Awesome - seems fixed to me using Feedly.
OH! I'll have to see if I'm seeing the same thing.
Ah well, missed it again. Nuts I had to work today... but by hook or by crook, some day my timing will be right and I shall obtain a red box of dumpsterness!
And to the folks truly griping/slamming they didnt get one? Get over it, you would be the type that would gripe about the contents if you did get one. ;)
When do you think you will do this again?
The first one was 7 months ago...it seems Sparkfun might be able to pull this off 2x a year if we are lucky!
Woo! Just a heads up about the dumpster dive... Last time SparkFun did this they sold out in less than 2 minutes if I remember correctly. Also. make sure you know exactly how to check out AND pay in under 10 seconds in order to have a decent chance at one. :P
SO bummed out, all stock disapeared while i was typing in my credit card number! Sold out in 15 seconds!
Yup. Added to my cart, then realized i wasn't logged in. By the time I was, they were gone...
Can We have another dumpster Dive soon?
For those who read this page as opposed to the Dumpster Dive page, here's the contents of my box which i received Saturday afternoon: https://plus.google.com/112889495015752015404/posts/9BHNF61J7yF
Sparkfun oh how I love those nice red boxes. I just cut two holes for 12v pc fans, hooked them all up to a atmega328 and put a soda inside. Shazam. Ice cold soda
Totally got one of the dumpster dive boxes. I was at work, shhhh... Came back from lunch, and kept refreshing the page and watching the clock. As soon as I saw it was available, bang, in the cart it went. click, click, paypal, click click. Done! My order time was something like 2m:34s, by the time I got back to the page it was sold out. Cah-RAY-Zeee fast. Then I get the confirmation email. Uh oh. UH OH! Shipping/Billing were wrong... Crap. Popped into the order system, paused the order, sent a note "I'm a jackass, here's the correct address". Couple minutes later I get a follow up, "Yes you are, but we fixed it. Enjoy." So that was cool. Thanks Sparkfun! Hopefully nothing in the box is going to be temperature sensitive. I'm speaking at a conference this week, so the box will be sitting outside in sub-zero temps for a few days till I get back. Really hoping to get a ton of SMD parts so I can have something to ruin in my toaster oven.
It would be great if you could talk about the torque output of brushless motors and how to make them usable in wheeled robots.
Next time can there be some kind of lottery/chance system to let a wider spread of customers have a chance at purchasing these? I saw the green dot last night in the ding and dent section and got excited (since I check often), but the dumpster dives were not available yet. Then I found out this morning that it was available at 12 PST, but since I am on EST time I was at work when they were made available. I missed this ...again...
I had it in my cart and there were 150 left. By the time I hit checkout it was gone from my cart. What kind of a stupid purchase system lets someone else reach into your cart and grab things out of it? Whoever set the purchasing part of the website up needs a new job. At real companies, once it's in the cart it stays there until purchased, you leave the store site or some reasonable length of time passes, say 10 minutes or so.
Sparkfun may have sold out on the dumpster dive, but they lost the other $50 of my order and a hell of a lot of good will.
A bit of misunderstanding. I meant a store where you really walk in, pick up a real item and put it in a real cart. Guess I should have said something like "brick and mortar company". I still think that the unreserved cart system sucks, especially since there's nothing that warns you about it, but no insult meant by the "real company" phrase. Sorry, it was an English as a 2nd language thing.
"Real Companies" as you define them, would probably not be doing Dumpster Dive, and probably would constantly appear out of stock on even large stock items because the items would not be available.
Or worse, someone with hostile intent could abuse the system to make sure no items are available.
No online business does reserved item carts because it can be abused, many don't show inventory, and just mark the items 'backorder' without a timeframe for reorder, or quantity ordered.
Airline tickets. They do business exactly that way. You select your seat, it puts a time-based hold on them that lets you hang onto the seat until you've paid, left the site or the hold expires.
I've never had a seat evaporate on me between selection and paying for it.
I've had numerous times where I would book a flight, reserve my seat, and by the time I checked out it was gone and I had to pick a different seat. Or worse, the reservation doesn't stick and when you check in at the gate they tell you sorry, that seat isn't available anymore. The ONLY time where my reservation stuck was when I actually paid an additional $35 for a specific seat. Even then they tried to have me switch and I said either give me the seat I reserved, or you're refunding me that cost plus a visit with my attorney. I got my seat.
You're lucky then, I've had my seat evaporate several times when booking. I add to cart and by the time I get to checkout, it's gone.
I guess I really was lucky.
But surely Sparkfun can aim higher than airline standards, right?
Boo! It sold out in like 10 seconds
Yeah, I feel better when I don't try, otherwise I get my hopes up and its just a recipe for frustration and disappointment, but I keep trying and missing :(. I'd much rather Sparkfun had a waiting list and they would send an email that gave you a code to order the dumpster box in the next 24 or 48 hours and if you didn't, the box would go to the next person on the waiting list, at least then I might eventually get to the top of this list. Hint, hint. hint. (Really, I think that Sparkfun likes doing it the way they do, it keeps all of us electronic crack addicts coming back every day to look for the next hit, I don't blame them).
YES! I got one! To all of those who tried but received errors-- I had received an error in shipping calculation and the web-page did not refresh, so I had to go back and forward again to get it going... Don't feel too bad! this is my second time trying and my first success!
Cheers!
w00t! I do believe I got one this time.
Aw, man, is it over already?!
grrr... The order systems error out on me on the submit order page not once but twice. :(
Sorry MathMyfanwy! Unfortunately that error was seen by a few who were in the checkout process after it had already sold out. The entire stock only lasted 2m10s, so the window to get your order in was rather small.
So.... Is it safe to assume that the page isn't going to self-refresh and that F5 mashing will be required?
I need to get going on my finger stretches...
Whats the cost of the Dumpster dive?
what's the cost of gas to get to sf hq? at this point, i think you're better off actually diving in sf's dumpster then ever trying to get one of these packages...
$10. plus shipping.
The videos being playlists is really annoying, especially when you have 2 videos in one post.
That's true. Fixed now!
The dumpster dive has an "in stock" green dot on the Ding and Dent category page: https://www.sparkfun.com/categories/100
...But doesn't seem to be "add to cart-able" on the product page: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12012
Am I missing something obvious?
yes, it won't be available for actual purchase until noon.
Whoops. Just read the whole new product post as you replied. My bad.
...Thanks for the quick reply though.
I guess the ding and dent is from Bob's butt.