Friday Product Post: gator:boards for micro:bit
Today, we introduce four brand new accessory boards for your micro:bit and SparkFun gator:board!
Hello everyone, and welcome back to another new product Friday! This week we have four brand new boards designed specifically to expand the capabilities of your micro:bit via a SparkFun gator:bit. These four unique boards include the gator: environment, gator:particle, gator:microphone and the gator:soil. Each is different in their own way, so let's take a closer look!
Expand your micro:bit's capabilities!
The SparkFun gator:environment micro:bit Accessory Board utilizes the popular CCS811 and BME280 ICs to take care of all of your atmospheric quality readings. This sensor board can provide a variety of environmental data, including barometric pressure, humidity, temperature, TVOCs and equivalent CO2 (or eCO2) levels. The gator:environment connects to the SparkFun gator:bit via alligator-clip cables, allowing for easy access to the micro:bit's I2C pins.
The SparkFun gator:particle micro:bit Accessory Board incorporates the powerful MAX30102 sensor, enabling sensing of pulse oximetry (SpO2), heart rate (HR) monitoring and particle (PM) detection. The idea is to pulse the different LEDs and detect what shines back. Based on the reflected signature, it's possible to detect different types of particles or materials (such as oxygenated blood, or smoke from a fire).
The SparkFun gator:microphone is an accessory board that integrates an electret microphone into SparkFun's gator:bit, enabling it to be easily interfaced with the micro:bit or other microcontrollers. It provides not only an audio output, but also a binary indication of the presence of sound, and an analog representation of its amplitude.
If your plants could talk, would they call out, "water me, Seymour?" Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps) plants have yet to develop the ability to speak. But thanks to the SparkFun gator:soil micro:bit Accessory Board, you can now measure the moisture level in soil without any vocal clamoring from your leafy lads.
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 or Facebook. We’d love to see what projects you’ve made!
