New Product Friday: Pull, Stomp, Rocker, Race
Another round of new products for the week.
We're back after last week's 'demonstration', with more products and a more tame demonstration. Check out the video, and then the products below.
For those of you who can't view the video on YouTube, here's a link for it on Vimeo.
The car can be really difficult to drive, especially if you're just trying to drive it randomly for a camera. But with a proper controller, it works great. It's a good platform to work from and most of the hard work has been done for you.
If you want to build a robot or an RC vehicle, the hardest part might be making it move. You can spend a lot of time getting the thing to ambulate and then you have to work on the sensors and everything else. With the i-racer, much of the heavy-lifting has been done for you and you can start working on sensors and everything else. With the included Android app or simple Bluetooth commands, you can have it driving right away.
Round rocker switches are ideal for on/off switches. With a circular mounting hole and simple operation, they are just easy to use. But if that wasn't enough, this rocker switch even has a blue LED indicator light. Hook the switch up as normal and power the LED with 5-12V DC. You'll get a nice visual indicator that the switch is on. Neat.
Need a robust switch? These stomp switches are made for heavy use (guitar effects pedals). They are DPDT and can be panel mounted in a 1/2" diameter hole.
We're all probably familiar with pull-chain switches. They're commonly used on light fixtures. This pull-chain switch has a 10" chain connected to a SPST switch with 6" bare wire leads.
This pressure sensor is very similar to the other Flexiforce pressure sensors we have, but has a much larger sensor area. This sensor has a 1" area for detecting up to 25 pounds worth of pressure. They work just like a resistor, varying their resistance in relation to the amount of pressure being applied. The bigger surface area should open up a few new possibilities.
A potentiometer that's operated with just your thumb? WANT! Thumwheel pots are nice because they can sit relatively flush on a board and just stick out a bit, allowing adjustment just like the volume on your old Sony Walkman. This thumbwheel pot is 10k with a linear taper, so it's good for all sorts of applications.
We have the ProtoSnap LilyPad Development Board back in stock! This new version makes some changes to make it easier to make and fixes a few minor issues. The package comes with the main development board, a LilyPad FTDI, battery, conductive thread, and some needles. It's a great intro to LilyPad and has pretty much everything you'll need to get started.
We've been carrying Sugru for awhile now and it's been pretty popular. In the course of receiving, stocking, and shipping Sugru, we've ended up with some that has expired. We don't always go through our stock in time, or it's already close to expiring when we get it. We're not the types to throw stuff out, so we're offering the 'expired' Sugru at a discount. I'd like to add that many of our projects in the weekly product posts have used Sugru and we're still using the original sample we got before we even carried it. Its LONG expired and still works fine. Keep it sealed, and it should last just fine.
Well, that's all folks. This has been yet another week at SparkFun, and another week of new products. Thanks for reading (and watching) and I'll be back next week with more goodies. See you then.
