New Product Friday: Dumpster Dive Dos
Not only do we have a lot of cool new products, we also have another SparkFun Dumpster Dive! Check it out.
We have a little something for everyone this week. We've got some new Actobotics products, a new 9DoF breakout, the Sound Detector, and other goodies. And of course, we have the second round of the SparkFun Dumpster Dive.
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The Dumpster Dive will officially go live at noon (Mountain Time Zone). We have a little over 100 'dives' this time around, and we expect them to go quickly. We have a little better system this year. Just go to this page and wait until noon. At noon, you will see stock, and the option to make a purchase (assuming they're still available). Good luck!
This week we also have the next installment of Robotics 101. This week's episode is all about control systems. We've talked about different types of motors and controls, but now we'll talk about how to use them.
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Now that we're done with the videos, let's see all the products for this week!
The Dumpster Dive is where we take stuff that we're not going to sell and we stuff it in a box and let you buy it for $10. The box contains 1.5 pounds (or about 680 grams) worth of 'stuff'. This stuff can be anything from leftovers from the pick-and-place machine, returns, discontinued product, mis-shipments, or even demos we never ended up carrying. Each box is lovingly filled with a random assortment of goods, and there's no way of knowing what you're going to get. Intrigued?
The LSM9DS0 is an all-in-one magnetometer, gryo, and accelerometer. That's right, a 9DoF in a single chip! The breakout board has all you need to get one running. It communicates over SPI or I2C, and we have a handy little guide that shows you have to get it working.
Audio can be tricky sometimes. Simply trying to figure out "how loud is this room" is not always easy. The Sound Detector makes this a pretty simple task. Using the onboard mic, it can not only give you a simple amplitude output (to tell you just how loud or quiet it is in a room), but it provides a simultaneous binary output (is there sound or not?), as well as the actual audio output. All three outputs can be read simultaneously, and independently. By adding a resistor, you can even adjust the gain, making it easy to adjust the threshold levels. Check out the guide for more information on how it works.
When we released the solderable breadboard a few weeks back, people asked for more sizes. Now we have a bigger size solderable breadboard that works with the classic breadboard.
We have several new switches and respective mounts this week. We have 4 new SPDT microswitches total, and they come in different configurations: roller lever, offset lever, standard, and straight lever. Additionally we have 3 different styles of mounts. They attach to the switches and in turn attach to Actobotics (or other) products. The switches are sold individually, and the mounts are sold in pairs.
We are now carrying the Teensy 2.0. This is a simpler and cheaper version of the Teensy++ 2.0. It's a great way to get started with the Teensy platform. Check out the quickstart guide for more information.
Lastly, we have some new bearings from Actobotics. These are standard skate bearing size, and work well with the skate wheels. They are non-flanged and have an 8mm inner bore, and a 22mm outer diameter. They're round and they spin.
This concludes another Friday New Product Post. If it's before noon, be sure to camp out at your computer to try and get one of the Dumpster Dives. Thanks for watching, reading, and buying stuff from our dumpster. See you next week.
