It's been a fun week. Not only do we have some new products, but we had quite a bit of fun making the video for this week. Most of our products don't necessarily warrant the ridiculousness found in our demonstrations, but this week was an exception.
I can't help but remember the DreadMill after watching this video. We do some silly projects around here, but Mr. Twitchy is probably my favorite. Everyone had a lot of fun trying their hand at Jenga. I've said it before, but it's probably worth repeating - I love my job.
Also, I'd like to add in a plug for the Wixel. It's an incredibly useful board and made making Mr. Twitchy a lot less painful. If you're looking to do a basic remote control project, a pair of Wixels can make your life a lot easier.
Yes, these are exactly what they look like. These self-adhesive electrodes are the same ones you saw in the video. With the aid of some electronics, you can do all sorts of fun things with these. Essentially, they are just conductive pads that can either transmit or measure electricity. Use them to stimulate muscles or measure muscle activity.
After months of redesigning and tweaking, we now have the new version of the USB Weather Board ready. We've made quite a few changes with this version. We've added an XBee footprint as well as one for a BlueSMiRF and also footprints for RJ11 jacks so you can connect our weather meters directly to the board.
A couple weeks ago we released the HMC5883L as a bare IC. This week, we have the breakout board for the IC. The HMC5883L is a replacement for the popular HMC5843 that we've used in numerous boards and projects. This new IC is quite a bit cheaper and a bit smaller. If you need an inexpensive magnetometer, the HMC5883 might be just what you're looking for.
We have a new version of the ArduiPilot Mega. This new version stays the same, but now uses the ATmega2560 in place of the ATmega1280. Now you have a little bit more memory for your code.
PICAXE is quite popular. With a free development environment, community support, and low cost, it's no wonder why. We now carry their 14M2 Microcontroller. It comes in a 14-pin DIP package so it's easy to use in a breadboard.
Here's another one of our products dressed up in retail packaging - the Bluetooth Mate Silver. Look for it in a MicroCenter near you!
We sell a LOT of the SparkFun Inventor's Kit. Many people have requested that we sell the overlays separately so they can redo circuits. Now we sell them separately so you can reuse your kit or just get them and use them with your own parts. The overlays lay on top of our clear breadboard making it easy to put together all of the projects in the SIK.
So there you have it, yet another week of new products along with a new video. I hope you enjoyed it, see you next week.
Easter egg: www.sparkfun.com/admin Just thought I would mention it.
What has IT been smoking?
Yeah! What the crap? That looks kinda like the blue elephant from games by jmtb02!
why were you typing that into you address bar in the first place :P
By the way, your link to the electrodes? It leads to your internal edit product page :P. Obviously we can't access that, but you may want to change it haha.
Ah man! I seriously just had to reload the page because of an error when I tried to post a comment just like that!!!
Odd, should work, try it now.
I friggin' love you sparkfun :)
Alright, alright. That one was actually pretty funny. Kudos for taking Drinking Jenga up a notch! And I especially like how the only related product for the self-adhesive electrodes are bandages.
I'm glad someone caught that little detail ;-)
I just found either a major flaw in the search window or a very unhelpful Easter egg!!!
Search for "resistor" and see for your self
actualy try searching anything you can think of same result... 0_o
The issue has been brought up on IRC. We have been attempting to contact stilldavid, but I believe he is busy working on a secret new Sparkfun Dating Site.
There is a misspelling in the first sentence on the back of the Bluetooth Mate. The "you project" should be "your project".
Inventor kits are so fun! I love it...the self-adhesive electrodes look cool, too.
your images load extremely slow if you don't log in. I'd check with "i2.ytimg.com" to make sure they're not shafting you on sending out the product images...
boo wont let me reply. just sends me back to the top of the page if i hit reply..............
huh, odd. try rebooting your browser? Sounds like a java error.
I've been having site problems as well.
No problems on my End, latest stable Chrome.
Me neither. Firefox 3.6 latest updates.
Soooo...what exactly is a 'magentometer'???
Is that used to detect how purple Prince's jeans are? or maybe it'll detect when Grimace is in the vicinity?
I think I like magentometer better....
Haha well-played! (and fixed - thanks!)
i am wondering which TENS unit you used. not sure if i would like to break into one and start messing around then attach it to someone. with the ones i have seen thus far just using the wireless activation as a switch to turn on and off power wouldnt work too well as they seem to have a start up and wouldnt just start pumping out the current.
Let's just say when I took it apart I wasn't exactly in awe of its complexity. The beauty of it was that all of the settings were set with potentiometers so you could just dial it in where you wanted, take the battery out then put it back in and it'd keep on just like it was before you turned it off. I don't know how legitimate it was as a therapy tool, but it makes for a great game of Jenga.
More Beer! seems to be a SparkFun tradition (I'm thinking back to the thermoelectric cooler, amongst other things)
We actually shoot the video at the end of the day Wednesday, so most people have grabbed a beer by then. At any other time of the day, there's no beer around.
Mr Twitchy???? Cant wait to make!!!!
I'm reminded of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kofSYRB-vh4
haha looks like a fun game. What voltage are you using with the electrodes?
I think the unit puts out somewhere around 100 volts.
Cool. How did you make Mr. Twitchy?
I explain it briefly in the video. Click on the link above, it goes to flickr and you can read the notes. Essentially, it's a TENS unit (what is used for controlling these) hooked up to a pair of Wixels.
I mean like a schematic for the muscle stimulator. But the pic looks pretty cool!