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It's the end of the week and you know what that means, New Products! We're very excited to bring you these new guys this week. How excited? Well we we couldn't wait seven days so we pretty much spoiled the surprise last week. Let's dive on in and confirm your suspicions.
Thanks go out to Nick and Shawn for bringing us the good news this week!
First up this week with have the all new SparkFun Inventor’s Kit for RedBot! This kit is a great way to gain a greater appreciation about the world of robotics while still using the Arduino programming language. The SIK for RedBot includes everything you need to complete nine circuits that will teach you how to drive your RedBot, have it follow lines, control it remotely, and more. This kit doesn't require previous programming or electronics experience but it is recommended that you possess an understanding of or desire to learn about robotics.
Very similar to the kit you just saw, the RedBot Basic Kit is a simple robotic development platform capable of teaching two motor robotics and sensor integration! This kit comes with our RedBot Mainboard, the Shadow Chassis, a handful of sensors, and everything required to get it moving. We love this kit and think it is prefect for anyone looking to experiment or get started with robotics.
The Lockitron is a fantastic home security/improvement device that allows you to lock and unlock the deadbolt on your door straight from your smart phone. This specific part is the mechanical assembly that makes up the majority of the device without the electronic guts inside. This means that you get to decide and add your own unique wireless and motor control options! With a few turns of a screwdriver, the Lockitron easily fits over the deadbolt lock on the inside of your door.
The Sparkfun Big Red Box Proto Board is a large, custom made PCB that has been specifically designed to be used with and installed into our Big Red Box. Savvy? This board features a large prototyping area with exactly 1,488 solder points (yes, we counted). With this proto board you will be able to create or incorporate unique projects into a reliably weatherproof enclosure. Each SparkFun Big Red Box Proto Board is equipped with ten mounting holes to secure it inside the enclosure. The proto board can even be broken in half at the V-score that runs down the middle to use only half or, with addition of some standoffs, can be stacked on top of one another.
Last up this week we have a new revision of the RS485 Shield V2 for the Raspberry Pi. With this shield you will be able to have a communication port for your field bus directly connected to your RPi! Even though the RS485 is sometimes thought as an "archaic" protocol, it will allow up to 32 devices to communicate through the same data line over a cable length of up to 4,000ft with a maximum data rate of 10Mbit/s.
Well, that will wrap up another week of new products. We hope you enjoyed seeing the new RedBot kits as much as we did. Make sure to take a "load" off and check us out next week. We'll see you then!
It is really new to read about lock system. I was always in search of new wireless door locks. Door locks can make us safe and secure at home. It is beneficial for all of us to make a new door lock system. On doing a web search I found some similar ideas at this source. Thank you for sharing such informative ideas.
Thanks Nick & Shawn.
RS485 was used for lots of machine intercommunication in the video editing business back in the day. Worked great and long runs under the computer flooring back to machine bay never failed. To bad the 1 inch tape machines needed constant fiddling. You young pups got it so easy with digital files!
RS485 was (and often still is due to very expensive legacy equipment) using in industrial environments. Granted, floppy disks are still often used in industrial and educational labs. Why replace multi-thousand dollar (or multi-hundred thousand dollar) pieces of equipment that still works? Thus it is still important for people getting into electronics to have at very least an understanding, if not a working knowledge, of the "archaic" stuff.