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SparkFun will be closed on Tuesday, November 5th to support our team in being able to go out and vote! Orders placed after 2 pm MT Monday, November 4th will ship on Wednesday, November 6th. Thanks for your patience and understanding.
Hello loyal readers, and welcome to another Friday New Product Post! It's business as usual this week with new products. We've got a few things and a video, so let's see what we've got.
Vimeo link here!
Although he might not admit as much in person, Pete has told me on several occasions that he loves seeing his face plastered on buttons. We also encourage DIY effigies. So wear them proud and show your love for SparkFun and Pete.
In addition to the 'According to Pete' button, we also have five others that come in this 6 pack of SparkFun buttons. We have the classic flame, the black RTFM, white SparkFun logo, F5, and 'let your geek shine.' Each is about the size of a quarter and fits nicely on your favorite lab coat or unmentionables.
This week we got the new (to us) Arduino Ethernet boards in. They come in two flavors, one with the PoE Module and one without it. The boards are essentially an Arduino Uno with a built-in Ethernet Shield. If you're looking to buy the two boards together, check out one of the Arduino Ethernet boards instead.
9V batteries are convenient to use because you can easily regulate them down to 5V for use with microcontrollers, but there aren't many good enclosures for them. This panel mount 9V battery holder allows you to have access to your battery from the outside of your case, eliminating the need to disassemble everything just to change the battery.
We have a new revision of the LilyPad LiPower board. It's pretty much the same, but we had to switch out the now-discontinued NCP1400 to the NCP1402. The NCP1402 takes care of converting the voltage from the battery into 5V. It's the same board layout and design as before, but with a few part changes.
Lastly, we have a new revision of 4D Systems' 0.96" Serial OLED Module. To be brutally honest, we have no idea what changed with this screen. The old version was discontinued and this is the new replacement, but on paper they're identical. Sometimes it happens, like with the LilyPad LiPower above, where a part gets discontinued and needs an update, so a new model is released that is functionally identical. In any event, we have stock of this new version.
This officially concludes another Friday New Product Post. Thanks for reading and I'll be back again next week with more new products. See you then!
I hate you, Robert.
Aaaaaargh!! Waiting for According to Pete is killing me! Are daily episodes too much to ask?!? :-P
No you don't. :-)
RE: Hate Robert... Pete it sounds like a personal problem to me... Just saying.
oh come on, the according to pete button is the best button of them all! It's awesome! How many Engineers have a button of themselves? You are a celebrity and you should ask for a raise. There's not many engineers out there who are celebrities. If you ever have to find another job you should definitely put it on your resume.
Hey Nate Pete needs a raise! I'd say 1% of total revenue is probably fair. He should definitely get a dollar for every pack of buttons sold.
Not gonna lie. I'm going to buy those buttons just for the AtP one. I like a lot of things in this site, but AtP is my favorite. If you're ever in Mpls, I'll buy you a beer. (I won't wear the button.)
August 1st came and went... wheres our ATP??? you're making us suffer by waiting....
Seriously tho.. i do enjoy them, so when can we expect a new 1 (or are you sticking with 2 a month now?)
i know!!!! a robert/Pete CROSS OVER... [sorry mindless FOX network moment there]
They occur on the first and third Mondays of each month so next week should be the first ATP of the month.
I'm selling some of Pete's hair I have collected over the last 7 months. Let's start the bidding at say...$40! Do I hear $50, now $50?
So has anyone else tried watching this with CC turned on? Youtube's speech recognition based auto-transcription seems to work decently roughly half the time. However, sprinkled through out the video are lines like:
My favorite is for the last button, which going by the CC is the "according to people which desperate battle" button.;)
On a more somber note, my most sincere sympathies to go out to the deaf that have to try to make sense of these sometimes very weird CC results on YouTube.
Yey! First comment. :)
So.... What's going on with that one box screen left? It jumps out a few inches at 1:07m, goes back to normal at 2:07m, and is replaced with something I can't identify at 4:22m.
The 9V panel mount item is pretty cool btw. :)
We got a feedback email that informed us that one of the red boxes was askew. Instead of simply fixing it, we decided to have a bit of fun.
Ha, I didn't notice anything and then when it went missing, I freaked out, screaming (in my head) WHERED IT GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!?????!??!?!!?
I think it gets replaced by the new aluminum enclosures (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11350 and https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11351).
Saw it too.
I was just about to ask that very question. Thought I was seeing things until the last change.
I want a "According to Pete" t-shirt!
me too!!! Give the fans what they want!!!!
Buttons - You should have an UV and a Friday New Product Post button. Those are really the two things that I think sparkfun are well known for. I can always count on a friday new product post and I always want to see the UV contest.
Please, God. A Robert button.
where is that red box gone?
ok... i guess it is some joke for next FPP :)
Technically speaking, there are no unused wires in CAT5 cabling. It's not commonly known, but gigabit ethernet uses all 8 wires for communication. This is why its very important to verify a positive connection for all 8 wires if you want full speed throughput on the cable.
Also, if I remember correctly, some switch manufacturers such as Cisco require you to explicitly turn on POE for the port. Also, some customers may not realize that they would need to have a POE switch to get that module to work.
Hey rob could ya add this to the next friday post???: R/C transmitter receiver and R/C Micro SpyCamHelicopter
whats up with the box??
Official POE is 48 vdc. Not sure at what current though. They went with the higher voltage to offset I squared R losses.
Real PoE, 802.3af on there is 48v up to about 13W. Looking at the schematic (and the module's data sheet), the power classification resistor is not mounted (N.M. on the schematic), so it defaults to class 0 (0.44 to 12.95W).
Love that 9V battery holder - any plans to do something like that for AA's? a 2x or 4x AA pack with a little tray like that would make my life a lot easier.
I tried to tell them...
Yes, 2xAA and 4xAA! Need! Maybe even some AAA versions would be nice. 9V is okay, but they are hard/expensive to get rechargable, and they go dead quickly when you regulate them to 5V.
Good to hear that I'm not the only one experiencing very short 9V battery life when regulating to 5V. I thought I'd miswired the regulator or something.
In addition to the losses from using a linear regulator (according to Lady Ada's Minty Boost Meta Documentation) 9V batteries have a much higher internal resistance than AAs, ~2ohms compared to ~0.3ohms. Moreover, 9V batteries have about 4.5Wh of power (9v at 500mAh) compared to 9Wh for 2 AAs (2 * 1.5V * 3000mAh).
you need to use a switched mode regulator, if you use a linear, then you blow nearly half your run-time as heat
(9 - 5) / 9 == 44% of the voltage -> heat (assuming the battery is full)
Actually, yes, it's on its way. We just didn't get it yet.