Qwiic Comes to XRP, Beagle, & Arduino
SparkFun's Qwiic Connect System has had a busy week being added to the new Experiential Robotics Platform, BeaglePlay, and Arduino Portenta C33!
Hello everyone and welcome to the first Friday Product Post of July 2023 and wow, do we have a lot to talk about! To start off, each of this week's new products is uniquely equipped with Qwiic connectors! We start the week off with the Experiential Robotics Platform (XRP) Kit, which we announced yesterday. This is a fantastic, educational robotics kit developed in collaboration with DEKA® and Worcester Polytechnic Institute® (WPI), as well as Raspberry Pi® Ltd., STMicroelectronics®, DigiKey®, and Dagurobot®! Following that, we are excited to bring you the newest development platform from BeagleBoard, the BeaglePlay! This is a kitchen sink of a dev board and, quite literally, provides so many options to build your next project. We wrap the day with a third new Arduino board, the Portenta C33, a System-on-Module designed for cost-effective IoT applications and devices. Alright, we have a lot to go over, so let's take a closer look at all of this week's new products!
Look how easy it is to build your own XRP!
The Experiential Robotics Platform (XRP) is a hands-on, comprehensive robotics platform and includes everything needed to build and program a robot to perform beginning through advanced tasks - building the foundation for innovative thinking, science, engineering, and problem solving.
At the heart of it is the XRP Controller Board, which includes an on-board Raspberry Pi® Pico W featuring the RP2040 microcontroller; low-power accelerometer + gyroscope 6-DoF IMU (LSM6DSOX from STMicroelectronics®); a Qwiic® connector for easy integration of sensors and accessories; two dual-channel motor drivers for four motors total; two servo headers; a momentary button switch; and more. The kit also includes an ultrasonic rangefinder, line follower, two motors with encoders, servo motor, Qwiic cables, chassis and plastic parts, two wheels, two casters, and battery holder. The robot is normally powered by 4xAA batteries (not included in kit), but any supply up to 11V is supported via the barrel connector.
The Experiential Robotics Platform (XRP) – Beta is available for pre-order. We are estimating to start shipping these kits by August 2023.
BeaglePlay is an open-source single board computer designed to simplify the process of adding sensors, actuators, indicators, human interfaces, and connectivity to a reliable embedded system. It features a powerful 64-bit, quad-core processor and innovative connectivity options, including WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet, sub-GHz wireless, and single-pair Ethernet with power-over-data-line. With compatibility with 1,000s of off-the-shelf add-ons and a customized Debian Linux image, BeaglePlay makes expansion and customization easy. It also includes ribbon-cable connections for cameras and touch-screen displays, and a socket for a battery-backed real-time-clock, making it ideal for human-machine interface designs.
Ideal to develop cost-effective, real-time applications, Portenta C33 features the Arm® Cortex®-M33 microcontroller by global leader Renesas and supports MicroPython and other high-level programming languages. Thanks to its onboard WiFi® and Bluetooth® Low Energy connectivity, the module stands out as an ideal solution for IoT gateways, remote control systems, fleet management and process tracking.
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, Facebook or LinkedIn. Please be safe out there, be kind to one another! We'll be back with more new products next week so make sure to check back then. Happy hacking!
