Smôl Packages; Big Power
We have a load of new products to show off today, and most of them are miniaturized versions of popular peripherals.
Happy Halloween weekend, everyone! It's Friday, once again, and that means more new products for you to check out. We start off with the new Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W pre-order that dropped yesterday, as well as two new versions of the Alphanumeric Displays that we showcased last week. Following that we are going to be taking a look at SparkX's new product line: smôl! These are super small boards that offer a new way to control projects with space and weight constraints. To wrap up the week, we are happy to show off some new solar options from Voltaic Systems. Now, let's jump in and take a closer look at all of these new products!
More processing power and more capabilities!
The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (now available for pre-order) is the next iteration in the Pi Zero line that remains one of the most affordable single-board computers on the market. The successor to the breakthrough Raspberry Pi Zero W, Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W is a form factor–compatible, drop-in replacement for the original board.
The board incorporates a quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A53 CPU, clocked at 1GHz. At its heart is a Raspberry Pi RP3A0 system-in-package (SiP), integrating a Broadcom BCM2710A1 die with 512MB of LPDDR2 SDRAM. The upgraded processor provides the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W with 40 percent more single-threaded performance, and five times more multi-threaded performance, than the original single-core Raspberry Pi Zero.
Double your segment game with these new Qwiic Alphanumeric Displays
We are quite familiar with 7-segment displays; we see them on our alarm clocks, ovens and microwaves. By adding more segments to each digit you can display more than just numbers! Introducing the brand new SparkFun Qwiic Alphanumeric Display. These red and blue 14-segment digits allow you to display all sorts of numbers, characters, and symbols. With Qwiic, simply plug it in and go. No soldering, no figuring out which is SDA or SCL, and no voltage regulation or translation required!
Our RedBoards are great. But don't they sometimes seem a little BIG?! Enter smôl, a new range of boards which are both small in size and small on current draw. It's a smôl world!
Is your project linked to environmental protection, awareness or study, or to protecting human life? Perhaps you are developing a wildlife tracker, ocean buoy, environmental monitoring system or need to transfer emergency medical information? Do you need to be able to transmit and receive data anywhere? If so, this is the smôl product for you! Our smôl ARTIC R2 allows you to send and receive short bursts of data via the ARGOS satellite network anywhere on Earth, including the polar regions.
The smôl ESP32 Processor Board combines Espressif's ESP32 (ESP32-D0WDQ6-V3) with our smôl FPC interconnect to bring a processor board with reliable wireless capabilities into our smôl ecosystem.
Smôl boards are designed to stack one on top of the other, using 16-way 0.5mm-pitch Flexible Printed Circuits (FPCs). We really like FPCs and we're using them on more and more of our products. But they can be a bit tricky when it comes to prototyping or if you want to connect other devices to your smôl stack. The smôl Header is here to help!
The smôl Power Board AAA is an intelligent power board for the smôl ecosystem. Designed to boost the voltage from one or two AAA or AA cells up to 3.3V, you would expect this board to have a TPS61200 regulator on it, and indeed it does (that's the same regulator we use on our LiPower - Boost Converter).
The smôl Power Board LiPo is another intelligent power board for the smôl ecosystem. You would expect this board to have an MCP73831 Li-Ion and Li-Polymer charger on it, and indeed it does, as well as a MAX17048 I2C fuel gauge.
The smôl ZOE-M8Q is a high accuracy, miniaturized GNSS board perfect for applications that don't possess a lot of space. The on-board ZOE-M8Q is a 72-channel GNSS receiver, meaning it can receive signals from the GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo constellations. This increases precision and decreases lock time.
This is the 36mm 16-way 0.5mm-pitch Flexible Printed Circuit (FPC) used to interconnect smôl boards.
These small solar panels are a lightweight, waterproof, solar panel produced by Voltaic Systems that have been designed for five to seven year outdoor applications. Each panel features high-efficiency SunPower solar cells mounted to a PCB using an SMT Process, UV- and scratch-resistant ETFE coating with UV-resistant EVA, and two solder pads.
We even carry VHB Gaskets to attach these solar panels to an enclosure or other flat surface.
That's it for this week! As always, we can't wait to see what you make! Shoot us a tweet @sparkfun, or let us know on Instagram or Facebook. We’d love to see what projects you’ve made! Please be safe out there (especially this weekend), be kind to one another, and we'll see you next week with even more new products!
