Another Gripping New Product Post

Yet another installment of our popular new product post where we talk about the new products for the week.

Note: Emcee Grady wanted me to let you all know there'll be freshness on the blog once everyone has returned from Maker Faire New York and settled in. — Brennen in IT

Well, it's been a month, and I'm back. I had a great time in Thailand, but it's time to get back to work. Nick did a great job in my absence and I've read all your comments and will work on the suggestions in the coming weeks. We don't have a ton of products this week, but some of them might be pretty exciting for some of you.

It seems that Dave and Nick were pretty happy to see me come back, at least on camera anyways. It's good to be back and announcing new products for all of you.

littleBits is an educational electronics kit. It features color-coded bits that magnetically snap together so there's no wiring or soldering involved. The kit includes various bits like power, input, output, and wire. Combine them in various combinations to make lights light up or buzzers buzz.

Our robotic claw has been quite popular. But if you want to add some extra functionality, you should check out the pan/tilt bracket for it. This bracket connects directly to the robotic claw. It comes with one servo, so you can tilt the bracket, but you will need to add an additional servo for panning. It is a bit tricky to assemble so check out the assembly diagram first.

This module might look identical to the RN-42 module we use on the BlueSMiRF Silver and the Bluetooth Mate Silver, but it actually has different firmware. This is actually the RN-42-HID which uses an HID protocol (or "Human Interface Device," is the communication protocol used for computer peripherals such as keyboards, mice and joysticks) instead of the standard SPI. This means that it can talk directly to your computer (or other device) through the HID protocol which is universally recognized and doesn't need special drivers or software.

We have a new version of the Danger Shield. Some of our more astute readers will know that we've already released this version, but in the retail form last month. This is the non-retail version and, aside from packaging, is the same as the retail version. It now includes a cap-sense pad and a better temperature sensor. The Danger Shield is a great little prototyping board that has a lot of features and is great for learning how to interface various hardware with the Arduino. With slide potentiometers, lights, a 7-segment LED, buzzers, buttons, and more, you can use it for just about anything.

We found a box of these RJ45 jacks that were leftovers from production. They are a bit smaller in profile than our other RJ45 jacks, but they still fit our RJ45 breakout board. Use them for PoE, your very own Ethernet board, or just something to fidget with when you're bored at work.

So there you have it, another new product post. We'll have more products trickling in over the next weeks, so check back. Thanks for reading!