Yes, this is the first week (hopefully of many to come) where we will offer small giveaways to our loyal followers. We've been doing the new product post videos for awhile now, and the actual new product post for even longer. It's about time we give away some free stuff to the loyal viewers who've suffered through them. I'll let the video explain the giveaway.
So, after doing a dozen or so of these videos for the year, a trend became apparent. Basically, I saw myself saying the same handy phrases over and over. Neat. The first 5 people to successfully guess how many times I've said 'neat', 'handy', and 'basically' in all of the product videos for this year (including the video above) will get a prize pack consisting of an AVC t-shirt, poster, and whatever other swag I feel like including from around my office.
Email us with your guess and we'll announce it next week in the product post. Let's see the products for this week.
I've always been a big fan of Hakko. They make fantastic tools and their soldering irons are some of the best out there. We realize that most hobbyists and weekend tinkerers might not have the need for anything fancy, but if you are a serious hacker and want a 'top-shelf' soldering iron, check out the new Hakko FX888. With a comfortable and cool handle, sturdy metal cradle, adjustable temperature and quick temperature recovery, the FX888 is worth every penny. It also takes up much less room on your workbench.
Looking for a memento from this year's AVC? We now have all the t-shirts and poster from AVC 2011 for sale! We will have them for a limited time (until they sell out). Get them while they last!
We are in the process of beefing up our hardware category. We've now added new 10 packs nuts and screws with 4-40 thread. We have nylon insert lock nuts and regular nuts as well as 1/2", 3/4" and 1" screws, all packaged in packs of 10. Attach some to your next order, you know you'll need them.
The world of electronics can be confusing at times. It's especially hard just jump right in and get going with your first project. Thankfully, we have a couple of books that can help. First up, Make: Arduino Bots and Gadgets is a great book for people looking to design projects based around the Arduino. It is more geared towards robots and embedded gadgets.
And if you're looking for a more in-depth read, check out the Arduino Cookbook. This book is a comprehensive look at the Arduino and will teach you just about everything you need to know. It covers everything from installing the software to creating custom libraries and using wireless and Ethernet networks for communication.
And lastly, we have a new BNC connector. This one is a through-hole right-angle type. It comes with a lock washer and nut so you can secure it to the panel of your enclosure.
There you have it, another new product post. I'm curious to see how long it takes to get 5 winners for the contest. Send in your guess and we'll send you some free stuff if you're one of the first 5! As always, thanks for reading and we'll see you again next week.
OK everyone, you can guess, but PLEASE email me, not post it in the comments...
Great solder iron, I'm loving mine :) Bought it in Australia for the 220v.
Please save 5 of every shirt size for the AVC shirts. I'm a small, and small seems to be going pretty fast.
Can we get a Hakko FX-888 instead of the swag? :)
Uh, no. :-)
Aw man!
Since I use lighters for all kinds of wire work, electronic work and such I thought of a great idea, a sparkfun Zippo. hmmm hmmm
Okay, I went through all 18 videos AGAIN, some of them two or three times and I found 3 more words and sent in an update. I have to say I'm DONE and am not going to watch anymore. Hopefully I'm a winner now!
Thanks for the fun contest and I look forward to the results.
It's easy to miss them! We had to go through it many times to find them all.
I found 6 more Basicallys than before.
Is it just me, or are some of the new products (for example, BNC connector, soldering iron) not showing up for other people when you click the "New Products" button at the top of the left column of this page?
I can, FWIW, get to the catalog pages for the new parts, they just aren't showing up in the "New Products" list.
I don't know if it's relevant, but last week, things on that page appeared to be in an order other than most recent item first, despite the sort order being "Date Added." ATM, my view of the list shows the first few items as Arduino Fio, AVC poster and AVC t-shirts.
Eric
Yeah, we changed some things in the database and it messed up the feed. We're working to get it fixed.
Update: As of right now, we have 2 exact guesses. We've had almost 100 people 'enter', but only 2 correct guesses. We'll be keeping it open until the end of the week, or until we get 5 exact guesses. The highest guess we've had was around 600, and the lowest was about 30.
Hint: The correct number, when divided by itself, equals 1.
What?! "When divided by itself, it equals 1"?!?!?!?! That applies to all possible numbers!
Except for quantum numbers that are many different numbers at once (at least until the state of them is observed).
Another update:
I went back and recounted every video and there are NO winners at this moment! We've had over 100 people enter, but no one has gotten the exact number yet.
Will there be an update to let everyone know once 5 people have guessed correctly, other than on Friday?
On another note, why does Dave always get picked on in the new product videos?
Yeah, people are never very nice to him. I got my grandmother's "Can't STAND teasing" genes, so I hate sick humor like the guy on crutches getting knocked down. Umm, people who need crutches can't exactly get up very easy!
First of all, the guy on crutches volunteered. Everyone does. If you knew TJ, you'd know that he's fine with acting like he's being knocked down with crutches.
Secondly, Dave's a good friend of mine. Sure, in the videos he gets picked on, but we have a LOT of fun with it, and Dave always looks forward to doing the videos. It's all in good fun, and everyone willingly volunteers.
Was this additional usage of the magic word(s) verified by multiple people? Also, do multiples of the same video count towards the total or just each unique video? And one more for you, are you in the frame for every instance the magic words are said or do we need to recognize your voice while you are off camera for some of them?
Oh boy, this is going to be a long night.
OK. Every PRODUCT POST. Not product videos, demonstrations, etc. Just my own new product post videos, and no repeats of them. There are 18 videos total you should be looking at.
As far as me being visible, I might be off camera or something, but I clearly say each one. There's no tricks here. You can tell it's me, the camera just might be on a close-up of the product.
And the number has been verified by at least 3 people, including myself. We've had people get close, but there are some sneaky ones tucked in the videos and are easy to miss.
So, stick to those 18 videos and just count how many times I say any of those 3 words. It took me little over an hour to do it myself.
Sometimes you say "need"... especially in the 2-10 product post... this doesn't count, does it!?
it counts, just not for this contest :-)
Meh^^ I spend around 3 hours closely listening to you in the last few days... I really feel like I'd deserve a breakfast =P
Any chance you could e-mail the two correct guesses that they were right so they don't agonizingly go through every video again only to come up with the same number, or another one???
Sorry :-) I don't want people to know the correct answer until we have 5 people. Someone could sign up on multiple emails, tell their friends the number, etc. We'll let you know when it's over.
We have 3 correct answers at this moment, 2 more spots to go until Friday!
He meant email the people who were right and tell them they were right.
You should check the date the email was SENT and not RECEIVED, 'cause someone could email their guess at, say, 2 P.M., and you could receive it at 5 P.M. That could mean the difference between SAWEET(!!!!) swag and, well, a lot of Free Day-esque "WWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11!!1111!!!!!!!1!!!!!".
Ok.. I know this has nothing to do with the Product post, but since when has SparkFun become BBS Friendly!, I love the ASCII version of the product images, Brings me back!
SparkFun,
When you have a couple of minutes, you should fix the description on the nylon locknuts page. It says, in part, "A nylon nut can save you the hassle of shorting out the ground plane on a PCB without enough spacing around the mounting hole.". That's a true statement, but it doesn't apply to the locknuts with nylon inserts. The nuts described in the new product post above and shown on that page are metal nuts with a nylon insert that reduces the likelihood that the nuts will vibrate loose. However, the male thread (bolt or stud) engages with the female metal thread of these nuts, so there's a conductive path from the male thread to the surface on which the body of the nuts rests.
The described electrical isolation can be obtained by using nylon nuts, which SparkFun does offer. Unfortunately, it appears that someone copied the text for the nylon nuts and pasted it in for the metal nuts with nylon inserts. The page for the single-piece nylon-insert metal nuts has copy that reasonably describes those parts.
TIA,
Eric
Electrical isolation can also be obtained by using nylon bolts with the nylon-insert metal nuts, but the isolation in that arrangement is a function of the bolts, not the nuts.
While I'm writing, I second the request for nylon bolts. If you don't want to stock an assortment of lengths, just stock long ones. Nylon bolts are pretty easy to cut to length.
Fixed. Thanks.
Ha! I got the answer for only $34 from Amazon Mechanical Turk! Or I would have if I'd thought of it before today....
You might want to try and get your money back ;-)
I gave it my best shot, but I didn't get to see this until today, so I'm sure I am not one of the first 5.
And yeah, Robert is super sneaky with his use of the word neat!
What a neat competition, I'm basically too lazy to enter but I'm sure any swag you include will be very handy for the lucky winners. :)
I got lazy, so I just averaged the number of words from 3 videos and multiplied them by 20 (the number of videos).
666? ;)
Everyone must think Hakko is an Australian brand, because that's where most anyone heard about it.
ehh? Seems very internationally known to me. I live in Israel.
Only if the words are in the New Product Posts, right?
Correct, just the new product post videos, not any of the others.
Plus, I'm not in any of the others :-) I should make an unannounced visit to 'according to pete'.
Not true as you're in the video of the free day recap. No magic words though. Swish.
Yes you should =P
But you sometimes cut parts of the product post for another video for the product itself...
Like the "Pocket Protector" etc.
I am not able to see the video when viewing using Firefox 4.0.1.
If I use Internet Explorer then I'm able to see the video..
FYI..
This was likely due to Youtube breaking earlier today. Got some really funny error messages along the way when trying to access it directly. Try again? I'm currently using FF 4.0.1 for Ubuntu, and it works just fine.
So, which poor slob (err, highly skilled Sparkfun employee) got the assignment to review all the videos and calculate the correct answer. I wouldn't think a single viewing would be enough. It would be too easy to miss a few words, so I think that at least three viewings by different people is called for. Then if at least two of them don't agree on the correct answer, you'll need to try again. I can see SF productivity grinding to a halt over this...
That would be Rob, Gregg and myself each making counts, comparing them, and recounting if necessary... Gregg and I have already counted... and are recounting (Rob is pretty sneaky with his use of 'neat')
That's a lot of footage in one sitting, let me tell you, and I don't even get a t-shirt for doing it!
-waves hand slowly-
there are 42 instances of those words in there...
-waves hand again-
We don't need to recount them, it's accurate...
I checked, Jedi use the force for defense, never attack. It doesn't say anything about not being able to use it to score sweet swag. Remember, Age and Treachery will always overcome Youth and Skill.
If you guys came up with the same number, well, I got that same number. ;-)
Next time, can we count incidents of the word 'actually'? Bit of a personal favorite drinking game...
Ah ha! The REAL reason product posts were moved to Fridays! Product Post Friday Drinking Games!!
Post Product Post Friday Drinking Games!
How long till someone scripts a email job to send you all numbers (individually of course) between 0 and 2000?
That's probably the best way to make sure you DON'T win.
A few years ago I used a bunch of BNC that looks like the one above. Even at lead solder temperatures, the through-hole mounting pins all "eased" their way out of the plastic when they got hot and rose up on the PCBs (solder wave tank board processing). RoHS is hotter yet. If anyone has used these, please tell us about any problems.
What good is a soldering iron that doesn't get hot? :)
The tip gets hot, the wand doesn't.
Doesn't the wand choose the wizard, not the other way round?
69
Also I don't think those plastic bags were big enough to hold those 10 little pieces of hardware! Maybe you bought dog walking dookie pickup bags in bulk and figured you would multipurpose them!
we pack them smaller, i just had those sitting around for the video.
53
Was that up to and including this video?
Not that I have time to go through all of the videos at work, mind you.
Hooray for free stuff!
edit: Oops. Should have just read the article.
edit 2: Wait, do you want the sum total, or a total for each word?
Again, I don't know why I'm asking, since I'm not in the running.
I counted a total for each word, AND added all the totals then emailed both to be safe.
yes, including the video above. everything we've done so far.
Neat! That's a pretty handy comment, basically.
I am not going to go through all the videos and count those. But I'll still enter.
The answer is.... 42
Bah! I was supposed to e-mail that. Now everyone knows the correct answer!
The answer is 42 + 30 + n, allowing n to be any number from 1 to 5. EDIT: 1 to 10, not 5.
I'm pretty sure the count is 42 for this week's post! Give Robert's unoriginality some credit, how about 420!
I... um... meant 42 in dog years. Yeah, that's my story, and I'm sticking with it.
Hey, you try counting that high with four left paws. I bark that Robert said it one too many times.
Man, 42 was going to be my answer. It is always 42!