Friday Product Post: Swiftly Sweep
Our last Friday post before our big Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals serves up plenty of great gift ideas for the holidays!
Well hello there, everyone! We are fresh off the release of our new SIK v4.0 last week, but we saved a ton of new "big ticket" products for this week to prepare you for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Today we are happy to bring you a massive DIY kit that turns your Scanse Sweep 2D scanner into a 3D scanner (make sure to read the product page thoroughly, as there are a few important pieces of information there), a more economical version of the new uArm, a shield that adds an IMU and motion-sensing capabilities to your ESP32 Thing, a rainbow of Fairy Lights, and a pre-order for the IBM TJBot now available to the general public! Alright, it's a big week and we don't want to waste any more time teasing you with all these new products, so let's jump in and take a closer look!
2D is too flat, but 3D is everything we know!
The Scanse Sweep 3D Scanner Kit is an advanced 60-piece DIY kit that gives you everything you need to assemble a 3D scanner using your Scanse Sweep LIDAR sensor (NOT INCLUDED). Outdoor 3D scanning has been around for decades, but has traditionally been much too expensive for home use. This kit aims to put this powerful technology into the hands of makers who want to develop and experiment with applications for long-range 3D scanning. The only tools you will need are a soldering iron, wire stripper, small Phillips-head screwdriver and 2.5mm ball-end hex key.
Please make sure you read the description on the product page all the way to the end, as there are quite a few things to know before you purchase this kit!
U can get an extra Arm with this new Swift.
The uArm Swift is a high-grade desktop robotic assistant that can be utilized in many more applications than its predecessors, the uArm Basic and the uArm Metal. Built around an Arduino Mega 2560, the uArm Swift is an open source, DIY-friendly robotic arm platform developed for makers and educational purposes. This little bot is extremely easy to use; almost anyone can learn how to play with it in a few minutes. The uArm supports visual programming as well as Arduino, Python, GrabCAD and ROS, providing plenty of options for a wide range of users. Unleash the maker inside and get uArm to make your ideas happen!
The uArm Swift has a repeatability of 5mm with a maximum payload of 500g and is one of the most affordable open source robotic arms on the market. If you are looking for a more precise version of the uArm Swift, check out the uArm Swift Pro.
Where did you come from, where did you go?
The SparkFun ESP32 Thing Motion Shield is a versatile, motion-sensing addition to our ESP32 Thing. With the Motion Shield's onboard LSM9DS1 IMU, small movement changes can easily be detected, while larger movements and time traveled can be detected with the addition of a GPS module via a large JST port. In addition, we have added breakout pins to attach any serial device, as well as a microSD card slot to log all of your data. All you need to do is solder on headers, and your ESP32 Thing Motion Shield will be ready to detect any type of movement!
Affectionately dubbed "Fairy Lights" for their similar appearance, these LED string lights are a great way to light up any project with no soldering required. The insulated strings come in 2.5m lengths with one LED every 10cm for a total of 25 LEDs. Unlike previous iterations, these LED strings come with a pre-attached battery pack with a power switch and two CR2032 batteries already installed.
We currently offer the Fairy Lights in Warm White, Cool White, Red, Green. Blue, Purple and Orange.
When the IBM TJBot originally went live, it was only available to certain individuals, with limited stock and for a short time. Now this cute little robot kit is available for pre-order to anyone who wants one! We plan to have the TJBot built up and available to ship by mid-December, just in time for the holidays.
That's it for today, everyone. There are a lot of new goodies to check out and play with or to pick up for great gifts! As always, we can't wait to see what you make with these parts! Shoot us a tweet @sparkfun, or let us know on Instagram or Facebook. We’d love to see what projects you’ve made!
Thanks for stopping by. We'll be taking a break next week due to Black Friday and will be back in two weeks with even more new products. Be sure to check our website next Friday to see our fantastic sales! We are pretty confident you'll like what we have to offer!
Nick pool, did you modify your digital caliper to use AAA batteries?
I guess the New Product Posts don't appear on the front page any more?
No blog post will automatically pop up anymore, and instead, you will see a list of our most recent blogs (that day's being the one at the top). The main reason for this is due to the fact that we require using multiple images and videos that may totally destroy someone's data limit on mobile devices. So now instead of seeing that day's post automatically, you can see a complete list of what we've worked on recently and click what you want to read.
Additionally, we can also let you know that in the near future, our homepage will be updated to better showcase these changes and even allow you to subscribe to specific blogs.
"totally destroy someone’s data limit on mobile devices"
THANK YOU! And it's not just mobile users - some of us don't have access to cheap unlimited bandwidth, and we run our whole house on a expensive cellular or satellite data plans with strict data caps. (Yes, there are supposedly "unlimited" plans out there, but they either require you to sign up for expensive partner programs, or slow you down to crawling speeds when you go over rather low limit for the month, or only include certain apps in their unlimited plan, or only include downloads in the middle of the night, or many other restrictions...)
In this day and age when web sites seem to think that everybody has cheap unlimited bandwidth, it's refreshing to see one that realizes that isn't the case for everyone. Bravo!
Honest question: is it impossible to setup your web pages such that no data is downloaded for videos until the user clicks on something? Cause it seems that would solve many problems relating to slow browsing experiences. And people like me would not have to resort to using mozilla addons like flash-blocker and so on...
I usually browse with java-script turned off as well for similar reasons.
Thanks!
There are ways to do this and one of the most-used methods is called lazy loading. This may be something we look into in the future. At this point we've yet to look into how big of an implementation it would be for our site.
Thanks!