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SparkFun will be closed on Tuesday, November 5th to support our team in being able to go out and vote! Orders placed after 2 pm MT Monday, November 4th will ship on Wednesday, November 6th. Thanks for your patience and understanding.
We're back, and we have some new goodies for you. Check them out. We also have a nice instructional video for anyone wanting to drive high-powered LEDs.
Now get out there and use some 3W LEDs! It's fun to get a bunch of them together and light up a whole room.
The FemtoBuck is like a single channel version of the PicoBuck. It's standard configuration can drive up to 350mA, but can be modified to drive much higher current. If you didn't check out the FemotoBuck in the product video, you can see it in action here.
If you're looking to play around with WiFi, the ACKme Mackerel should be on your list. It's the newest WiFi Dev Board on the market right now. The Mackerel comes with the ACKme Wallaby module as well as access to the GPIOs, some buttons, USB and more to get you started.
If you have a new Raspberry Pi B+, you might want a case for it. We have the new version of the Pi Tins which fit the new B+ model. We have them in black and clear.
Lastly, we have some 2x8 headers which work with the 8x2 Character LCD. Of course you can use them for whatever else you want.
That's it for this week. We'll have some gripping new products next week, as well as a view into the future. Check back then for more new stuff. Thanks for reading and watching, see you then!
Note to that Nick Poole; "Show us - don't tell us!" At video time 2:17 you point to a nice lab supply, we see that it has both CC (constant current) and CV (constant voltage) modes, and can deliver approximately 80W (16V @ 5A). So why not kill a few 3W LEDs? Demonstrate why they should not be force-fed too much current, or expected to operate from a constant voltage! Add a ballast resistor to a fresh 3W LED and use both a voltmeter and Ammeter to show us what happens when the power supply voltage varies from "zero" to "just enough" to "too much". Keep those Friday video's coming!
Hey Everybody!
It's worth noting that in the case of our 3W LEDs, the FemtoBuck won't drive them to their full (blinding) brightness out of the box. In default configuration, the FemtoBuck is set up to supply about 1/3 of the power that those LEDs can dissipate. You can, however, swap out the sense resistor to pump up the volume.
Check out the hookup guide for details!
Happy Hacking!
Have to be the neysayer who doesn't like the new format with the buy links. Too big and distracting, especially on the front page.
Somebody's gotta naysay, after all, or there wouldn't be any naysaying, and then where would we be?
It's a bit of a work in progress, but the images should pretty much be the same size they always were. Are the cart / wish list buttons the main source of your complaint?
At least it proves I was paying attention, lol !
The images seem a bit bigger than normal, boy is that a big 2*8 header. Then links introduce a lot of space below the item, and there isn't much description text between the items.
Overall, seem like I'm scrolling a lot to read not much text.
Maybe work a bit of CSS magic, left justify the images, and place the price and buy links to the right ? That it could be the same, or a mini version of the "add to cart" section from the regular page. Maybe even just the price and add to cart button, and have the rest pop up on a flyover with the volume pricing etc.
Also, I thought on Friday the buy links were fixed, but now seem to be on a flyover.
A wall of red boxes behind Robert would improve the audio quality of the videos. :)
Certainly something needs to be done about the audio. Close mic'ing and something to kill the reverb would help tremendously. The room is way too live.
Audio quality? More importantly, a red box wall would match his beard better.
It frustrates me that the video doesn't cut to the close up camera when Rob has clearly just put something in front of it and is talking about some feature using words like "As you can see...". We can't see. The closeup didn't happen.
Thank you Robert. The SF new products is on my list every friday around noon. Great show! please don't tell my employer...
A view into the future? Is this going to be a repeat of the Time Cube thing you folks did a while back? ;) :P
??? there is no link in the above post to the LED's.... :P
Hate to pop your bubble but read this... http://www.orc.soton.ac.uk/fileadmin/downloads/100_years_of_optoelectronics__2_.pdf
.. this blew my mind ....
That link doesn't seem to work. Googled, here's what I found:
http://www.academia.edu/7099098/100_years_of_optoelectronics_2
HTH.
A LED's light output is a function of the current flowing through it, not voltage applied to it. The voltage required to achieve a desired constant light level output from a LED varies with temperature. This is why driving them with a constant current source is a good idea.