So, apparently we've been slacking lately with posting new products. We get it: 1500+ products to choose from just isn't nearly enough - you want more. We have some great new stuff that we are dying for people to use and show us what they can do. Ok, let's have a look...
How hard is it to solder without a soldering station? Very. That's why you need this 50W Analog Soldering Station. This is a great station for the beginner or anyone who hasn't yet graduated from the cheap fire-starter you've been frustrated with. It even has a SparkFun logo on it, so you can impress your friends (if they are impressed by such things). This has a great iron, solid base, and a great price!
Tired of adjusting trimpots with the screwdriver you can never find? This trimpot doesn't need a screwdriver and can be adjusted by hand. And if that wasn't enough, it even fits into a breadboard! Great for LCD contrast adjustments, volume levels, or anything else that needs easy, quick adjustment.
By popular demand, we are now carrying the stackable headers used on our Arduino shields in a handy 4-pack. Now you can use your own shields (or whatever else) with stackable headers. These will fit the Arduino Main Board and the Arduino Pro.
Speaking of Arduino, here is the new Starter Kit, now with a SoftPot and flex sensor. If you are looking to get started with Arduino, or microcontrollers in general, get this kit. NOW! You can do some pretty epic projects with the contents of this kit.
What good is a project if you don't have a good way to control it? Here is a great locking button to spice up that doomsday device you've been perfecting. Locking means that it essentially toggles 'on' and 'off' when you press it. But who really needs an 'off' for a doomsday device anyways?
If you don't need a locking switch and just need a simple rad looking momentary button, here it is! This could be perfect for making your very own history eraser button.
The LS20126 GPS module is pretty darn cool. With a built in accelerometer and magnetometer in a small package, the uses are nearly limitless! We are working on a breakout board and will have it available shortly after you actually needed it.
And now for some products from MondoMatrix. What you see above is the Displayduino controller. Think of it as modular open source hardware (like so many other things we sell). The modules all communicate over RS485 and make controlling numerous servos or LEDs easy. Check out the additional modules below.
The ServoMatrix expansion board for the Displayduino allows you to control up to 64 servos on one board. I'll let that sink in for a second. OK. It also allows for 8 different types of servos, so you can have large, small, medium, all powered separately. We are really excited to see what someone could create with one of these!
Of course you will need LEDs to go along with all those servos! The LEDMatrix gives you control over 64 RGB LEDs or 192 individual LEDs. And you can also vary the brightness of the LEDs individually to create a display that would please Franz Mesmer.
We like XBees. We can't hide it any longer! Here is a great way to get your XBee wireless project talking to your computer. With an integrated USB jack, you don't need a cable. This is great for laptops or applications where you don't want a cord hanging from your computer.
Light pipes are incredibly useful and quite common. Alarm clocks, kitchen appliances, etc all use light pipes rather than exposed LEDs. Light pipes are great at transferring light from an LED inside a case to a control panel or more useful location (think of a cluster of unfocused LEDs verses a panel of individual light pipes). This one is a great size and it's round, so it's easy to install.
Speaking of LEDS, we have answered the cries and are now carrying (so we think) a great assortment of LEDs in various quantities. We've got 100 packs, 25 packs, and good old classic singles. We have some more packs on the way, so if a color is missing, chances are we will get it soon.
These are cool. They are ultra small surface mount solar cells. With a 4V output, you can use them for power in low power applications. Use several for self-powering outdoor applications (weather stations, time lapse photography, etc).
This may look familiar to those of you who frequent Hack-a-Day. The BlueBoard is a very powerful board with a TON of great features. With 70 I/O ports, USB, a JTAG connector, and the LPC1768 cortex-M3 at its core, there's a whole host of applications for this board.
If you're itching to void the warranty on your new car for the sake of a cool project, check out the OBD-II connector. Check out this project of someone who tapped into the OBD-II for a driving simulator!
Here we have the MinM, which is the baby brother to the BlinkM. Essentially it's an I2C RGB LED. This means you can program a sequence on the LED and it will store and run this sequence without a microcontroller (as long as it's powered of course). It's tiny and has software that you can program full 24-bit color!
The LinkM is a useful tool which is made to go along with the MinM. It is essentially an I2C-to-USB interface. It allows you to communicate directly with I2C devices without the need for a microcontroller. This is a very useful tool when troubleshooting or where a microcontroller isn't necessary, but you still need to talk over I2C.
Helical GPS antennas save you the hassle of having to physically orient your antenna. Traditional antennas need to be oriented to face the sky, causing issues with mobile applications. Helical antennas, like this one from Sarantel, can be oriented in any direction and still maintain a GPS lock. Technology, isn't it grand?!
Powering a project can always be a hassle, especially if everything has a different power requirement and you are using a single supply. The LMZ14203 allows you to step down anything from 6-42V to a usable voltage of 0.8-6V. This can be quite handy if you need a higher voltage for a sensor, but lower voltage for logic and such.
I always find myself running out of communication pins. The 74HC4052 allows you to mux a single TX pin to up to four output pins (and vice-versa). Handy, very handy indeed.
The RFM22-S2 RF transceiver breakout board allows you to actually use the RFM22 without the hassle of surface mount soldering. Who even does that anymore? The RFM22 is great little transceiver with low current consumption.
And lastly (seriously, you're still reading this?) we have the VoiceGP development kits. They come in two flavors, one with a user license to QuickT2SI Lite and one without the license. These are truly advanced voice recognition modules and we hope to see some amazing uses for them.
That's all for this week folks. Check back later for even more products.
Using a DisplayDuino and a ServoBoard I built a hexapod walking robot and (later) a Delta robot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ySNng9vsg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCag65sA9IQ
Why a picture of a bar graph LED next to the writeup on the GPS receiver?
No 25 pack of RGB LEDS(non-diffused)?
They're on their way as well
"We are working on a breakout board and will have it available shortly after you actually needed it." -classic!
I love new products posts. As far as it being an extravaganza, that's helpful too, because I did not come supplied even with the standard issue vaganza.
I'm digging the profiles you have of artistes and others that use technology to do cool stuff. A lot of us do, but it is interesting to see what they are doing. The artistic types are particularly interesting, because that is so far afield of the way I usually think. Sparkfun and the greater internet community has inspired me to do more artsy-fartsy stuff.
Holy crap, this new product list is just dripping with win! Gimme one of everything...
So glad you now have the blueBoard I was gonna buy one a while back but shipping was expensive but now that you have it I think I'll take one.
The RFM22-S2 RF transceiver breakout board allows you to actually use the RFM22 without the hassle of surface mount soldering. Who even does that anymore? The RFM22 is great little transceiver with low current consumption.
Wait, what? Who do smt anymore? What?!?!?
Yes, dip-8 is so hi-tech, xbga-122 is for n00bs?
It's tongue-in-cheek. SMD isn't that hard, but it's sure easier using this with the breakout board.
Thats a good idea. It's great that those arcade buttons are cheap, everywhere else I go, they are like 20 bucks. I might have to try that. Can the mechanics of the arcade buttons really be switched to toggle on/off? I don't see much on the product page...
Change the functionality of the button in the software...
if button = low then
on_off = !on_off
end if
My point is in wondering how that would be incorporated into a pedal is that being the audiophile that I am, I don't incorporate digital circuitry into my guitar pedals, as it makes the sound dry and takes away the analog warmth. And with the switches being 20 bucks I was referring to the ones that Mouser sells. Thanks, everyone, for the great input though.
Well, you could just use a small micro and some relays, or if you don't want to get into micros, a flip-flop. You'd want a toggle (T) flip-flop, but personally I just build 'em out of a JK flip-flop, as finding T flip-flops is problematic.
In either case, it won't affect the sound quality in any way. And you don't have to deal with flaky switches causing scratching noises and other mess if you use relays and some logic - just debounce the switches with a resistor and capacitor.
Oh, and I forgot to add: Relays wreak havoc on guitar pedals. Magnetic fields of any kind can add huge amounts of hum to hi-gain pedals. And solid state relays all have some input impedance and open resistance, so they can detract from the signal strength.
Thanks for the idea. My only concern is keeping, like I said, digital circuitry out of my analog signal path. I am plenty familiar with micros to be able to implement them (can you say digitally controlled gain pedal) in my effects, it's just that I'd rather not have to, as it adds extraneous circuitry.
Yeah without some additional one-shot circuitry you'll be toggling states as fast as your code can poll as long as the button is held down. I hope you can press it pretty fast.
@Conrthomas, basic arcade pushbuttons can be found for like $3 for the translucent ones at places like Lizard Lick to under $2 for the opaque ones all over the internet.
with a reallllly long debounce....
@Sparkfun, any idea as to how sturdy the spst latching switch is? I was hoping to order a bunch to use as footswitches for my diy guitar pedals, I I need to know how tough they are...
Great question. I don't know how well they'd hold up against that. They are relatively small. You might want to look at our arcade buttons and set them up to toggle on/off?
I helped build two battery powered go karts last year and we used those locking buttons to toggle power to the controller on and off - so we were pressing them alot.
The button itself is sturdy, but make sure the wire connection doesn't have any kind of tension on it. The holes you stick the wire through(and solder of course) are really small, so you have to use some pretty thin wire. If you're moving it around a lot, the wires are prone to snapping off.
Now that I think about it, it wasn't so much the wire that was the problem. The terminals were made of pretty soft metal, and we managed to break one of them and had I had to improvise a new connection while the kart was in the pit.
Thanks for the info, thats really valuable to me.
The link to the 50W Analog Soldering Station is broken...
Fixed - thanks!
Thanks!
"And lastly (seriously, you're still reading this?)"
Well, glad you asked.