New Product Friday: Lightly Toggled

It's been a busy week for us all as we prepare for AVC this weekend. It's shaping up to be quite the competition. Will Team Tobor bring home the gold again, or will they be bested by one of the new eager challengers? Will the weather cooperate? Will the VSS (video scoring system) prove to be more reliable than stopwatches?

The only way you can find answers to these questions is to attend AVC and cheer for your favorite team. As a quick reminder, there is a rather large wildfire still burning north of Boulder -- we're not facing any fire danger in this area but there is the potential for some smoke in the air, so if you have asthma or are susceptible to irritation, you may want to steer clear. Also, although we love dogs and we're sure yours are exceptional specimens, we can't allow you to bring them to the AVC with so many kids and tiny robots running around of their own free will. Thanks, and we can't wait to see you all tomorrow! But until then, let's check out the new products for this week.

Vimeo Link

Sorry for the short video, I would have liked to do something with the toggle switches or the inverter, but I have been swamped with preparations for this weekend. I promise that after AVC has settled down we'll get back to some demos and shenanigans.

We've amassed quite a collection of various toggle switches. We have a standard one, 3PDT, 4PDT, and even a momentary. But what if you need a bit more pizazz? Thankfully we now have a whole line of illuminated toggle switches with matching covers. They come in white, blue, orange, green, and red. Each one has an LED in the lever and a matching plastic cover. They look slick and could be the perfect safety switch for your next project. Although they are rated at 12V, the LED can be illuminated at 3.3V and above.

EL wire and panels are pretty cool. Using some high voltage, magic, and classified Martian technology they turn power into beautiful electro-luminescence. Well, something like that anyways...Normally you need a power source, an inverter, and then some EL wire (or panels or strips). You can also add a microcontroller into the mix to flash, blink, or even fade. But what if you just want a simple glowing costume? The EL Battery Pack is just what you need. It takes 2 AA batteries and can drive two EL wires at the same time. It even has a button that cycles between on, blink, and vomit-inducing blink.

Like ultrasonic range finders but need higher resolution? Our new line of Maxbotix ultrasonic sensors feature 1mm resolution in the same size as their previous sensors. They come in 3 versions, each having a different beam width for different applications.

XBee sockets are used on a LOT of hardware today. What if you want to take advantage of the footprint, but need a bit more flexibility? The Synapse RF266PC1 module is something you might want to look at. Use them for a peer-to-peer network or a mesh network. That's nothing new. But, having an embedded Python virtual machine opens up a whole new world. Wirelessly send code and run Python scrips across a mesh network, all with a module the same size and form factor as an XBee. Neat.

And lastly, we have the FEZ Hydra. The FEZ Hydra kit combines a mainboard and various modules that are compatible with the .NET Gadgeteer toolkit. The basic kit includes all the modules you need to get up and running with the powerful prototyping platform.

Well, that's all folks! Thanks for reading and I hope to see you at AVC! If you attend, but sure to stop by and say hello. See you there or see you next week with more new products!