The final new product post of the year!

It's been a great year and we have just a few more products to announce before the end of the year.

Update: First order of business - SparkFun will be closed December 31st in observance of New Year's. Get the champagne and confetti ready!

It's been a good great year at SparkFun. Back in January, we had our first Free Day (and will be revisiting that concept in a couple weeks), grew tremendously, added weekly videos to the product post, and introduced a lot of new products. This product post will be the last of 2010, but don't fear, there's going to be tons of new stuff in 2011.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's look at the video for this week.

Enthralling. OK, let's see the last batch of products for 2010.

The IMU 3000 is a very interesting IC. It allows you to add an external accelerometer and 'fuse' the output with the IMU 3000's own 3-axis gyro to give you 6 degrees of freedom straight out of its own I2C output. Technology, don't you love it? The Digital IMU Breakout is a simple breakout for the IMU 3000 IC. Add your own accelerometer, or just read on...

So, you want to use the IMU 3000 but don't want to add your own accelerometer? Well, this combo board combines the IMU 3000 with an ADXL345 and some other components to give you a full 6-axis solution for all your measurement needs.

Tilt sensors are pretty useful for basic orientation sensing. This basic tilt sensor can do just that for your next project. You could make an electronic mug that when tipped over, it triggers an alarm, and then shorts itself out. Bad project, but you get the idea.

In addition to the basic tilt sensor above, we also have a 4-way tilt sensor that's a bit fancier. It uses infrared receivers internally that can detect the orientation in four directions. These come in handy if you are looking to detect multiple orientations, like making a really epic electronic Rubik's Cube  or something.

Alligator clips always come in handy, and it's nice to have a few on hand on your workbench and we have three new ones. We have a small toothless one, one with crocodile jaws, and one that looks like the little alien mouth from the movie Alien. All three are rated at 5 amps and have methods for strain relief, so you can use them with just about anything.

Super capacitors are basically normal capacitors that have been dipped in radioactive sludge, thus giving them super powers. Well, not really. Super caps are capacitors with unusually high energy density, allowing them to be used as backup batteries, solar energy storage and such. This surface mount 0.2F/3.3V super cap can keep a low-powered project running for quite a while.

That's all of the products for this week/year. However, on one last final note, many of our customers have expressed an interest in working for SparkFun. You just may be in luck because we have a new job opening. I am looking for an assistant that will help with general catalog maintenance including sale items, new products, descriptions, etc. The full job description can be found here. In addition to the normal application, we have a bit of a quiz for you to complete in order to apply for the job. Intrigued? Good! Check out our job postings for more information.

See you next year!