Let there be light!

A bright offering of new products and a Maker Faire reminder!

First off, a reminder that this weekend is Maker Faire New York. SparkFun is already en route! We'll be holding soldering classes at our booth and would love for anyone to come by to chat, talk about your project, or just say hi! Here is a map of the event grounds with a little SparkFun flame marking where our booth will be. Hope to see you out there!

All puns aside, this is a very enlightening week for new stuff. This is by far my favorite week for new products. But before we get started on the new products, I wanted to mention that we went through and adjusted the prices in the sale category. There are some seriously discounted products in there and some new additions as well. So check it out! When it's gone, it's gone. Now for the new products...

Many of you might be excited to see the release of our driver boards for the Luxeon Rebel breakout boards. We have two flavors - a triple driver and a single driver. We also have a fancy assembly tutorial that shows you how to assemble the boards together with a lens and a heatsink.

After spending a long time on a project, wouldn't it be nice if it didn't look like a mess of wires and boards precariously perched on the precipice where you prototype projects (oops, I think my alliteration is showing)? We now have an inexpensive enclosure that houses an Arduino and a shield and even has a cutout if you're using the ethernet shield. It simply presses together and doesn't need screws, so you can open it up quickly (and often) without a screwdriver. It also works with the Arduino Mega, and any board with the same footprint and mounting holes as the Arduino.

What happens when you let Nate tinker? He comes up with the High Altitude Sensing board, which is essentially every sensor we know crammed onto one board. It has an accelerometer, magneto sensor, light sensor, and humidity, temperature, and pressure sensors. It even has a spot for an external temperature sensor and a GPS input for additional altitude information. This was the 'brains' to the High Altitude Balloon project (HAB). Check out the write-up here.

If you've been thinking about the FEZ Domino, but think it's more hardware than you can handle, you might want to look at the Netduino. The .NET platform is growing and the Netduino is a great way to get started.  

We have a couple more products to add to our large LilyPad lineup. We have two very simple, but useful boards. The LilyPad Simple Power gives you a switch and a JST connector. You can also use a resistor (SMD or PTH) in line with the output. The LilyPad Battery Connect is just a board with a JST connector. It allows you to connect to a battery and sew it into your design.

If you're itching to void the warranty on your new car for the sake of a cool project, check out the OBD-II to DB9 cable. Check out this project of someone who tapped into the OBD-II for a driving simulator!

A 5-way tactile switch can be a great way to add an easy user interface without adding a lot of real estate. It works just like a joystick and mounts directly to your board.

That's all for this week. As always, thanks for reading!