Weekly Roundup #01 - New Maker Products // News
Watch "Weekly Roundup #01 - New Maker Products // News" on YouTube.
This is the start of a series that I’ll be publishing every week letting you know of some interesting Maker products you can get on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Tindie, and all the popular and non-popular vendor sites and anything else I can find.
I’ll highlight some of the more interesting products in my video, and put the rest up here. My aim is to give you a heads up so you don’t have to go searching.
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Crowd Funding
KickStarter
Kickstarter: Teensy 3.5 & 3.6
So, first up Paul Stoffregen is back again with two new versions of the popular Teensy. The 3.5 version has a 120MHz Cortex-M4, and the 3.6 version a 180MHz Cortex-M4. You can pick up the 3.5 for $23 and the 3.6 for $28 US dollars. Apart from a few slight differences between the two, they both share a common set of features; such as 62 GPIO! wow! DACs, PWM, USB, ethernet, SD card slot, 6 UARTS, RTC. This really has everything a Maker needs and currently has a pledge to goal ratio of 22 to 1.
Campaign ends: 2016/09/08 16:59:00
Kickstarter: Wave
This campaign is a nice one for beginners. It’s an Arduino compatible board that controls an LED strip in response to audio coming in on a TRRS jack. It contains a Spectrum Analyzer IC, (MSGEQ7), so has more than just LED display applications. It has a pledge to goal ratio of 15 to 1.
Campaign ends: 2016/08/27 10:00:00
Kickstarter: Eleksmill
Now, CNC and 3D printers on kickstarter have always been dubious, but this creator has already produced several campaigns in the past. This is a desktop CNC mill that can operate with standard Gcode and can work on a variety of materials. Pledge to goal ratio is 10 to 1.
Campaign ends: 2016/09/17 14:00:00
Kickstarter: M3Dpro
Now this is in the bucket list of one to be cautious of. M3D had serious issues with their first 3D printer kickstarter and they seem to be at it again with an “improvement”. The original M3D was frankly a disaster, but people seem to be soaking up the pro version with a pledge to goal ratio of 4 to 1. My money is on this one going the same way as the original version.
Check out Maker’s Muse YouTube video on this.
Campaign ends: 2016/10/01 23:16:00
Kickstarter: SOLAR
SOLAR is an Arduino compatible board designed specifically for solar applications and has onboard RTC, Grove connectors and other options. Pledge to goal ratio of 3 to 1.
Campaign ends: 2016/08/29 01:26:00
Kickstarter: ButtonBoard
Seems odd to kickstart a board full of buttons, but this one seems to be gaining popularity. It’s just a board full of buttons, but has a pledge to goal ratio of 3 to 1.
Campaign ends: 2016/09/16 10:03:00
Kickstarter: HubPiWi
The HubPiWI is a nice little addon board for the Pi Zero providing WiFi, BLE and 3 USB ports. At $14 US it’s a good price, but then again you could always pick up a CHIP for cheaper. (2:1)
Campaign ends: 2016/10/04 03:02:00
Kickstarter: ReSpeaker
The ReSpeaker is a small device that connects to all the popular voice services, (Microsoft Cognitive Service, Amazon Alexa Voice Service, Google Speech API, Wit.ai and Houndify), or you can run it offline with PocketSphinx. It runs the OpenWRT firmware and supports Airplay and DLNA over WiFI. They provide a Python SDK and is also Arduino compatible. It has multiple microphones and other features that improve voice reception. They also have a Grove extension board allowing lots of cool add-ons.
Campaign ends: 2016/09/23 03:00:00
Kickstarter: ImBack
Now this is an odd one. Don’t bother watching the video as you will have no idea what’s going on due to poor audio quality. Basically it’s a Raspberry PI case that converts any analog camera into a digital one. Some of the photos actually look quite good.
Campaign ends: 2016/10/04 07:27:00
Kickstarter: DocJavaAudioShield
Do you need synthesier sounds? You can pick up the Arduino Audio shield which gives you retro gaming synth sounds. This is something for STEM students and has already reached it’s goal.
Campaign ends: 2016/09/06 23:00:00
Kickstarter: WHOA
The WHOA board allows you to turn any Electro-Luminescient material into a capacitive sensor. Really Cool and opens up a lot of great project ideas, but I’ve over on my tech budget this month and can’t afford it.
Campaign ends: 2016/09/06 14:27:00
Kickstarter: CellRobot
I’m really regretting that expense budget. Do you want a modular robotics kit that can be arranged in various ways and programmed from your smartphone? This seems to be quite a polished product and would be great in STEM education, but it seems to be struggling to get backers.
Campaign ends: 2016/09/17 01:59:00
Kickstarter: Projecta
This one is an interesting idea. Basically, this guy is using an inkjet printer to print out PCB tracks which you then can etch in an acid bath. It looks a little DIY and expensive, but the concept is great.
Campaign ends: 2016/09/19 06:03:00
Kickstarter: CulBox
The CulBox is an open source wrist watch containing an ARM Cortex MCU, BLE, 6DOF IMU, OLED display, SD card and audio in/out. They also provide an API so you can build iPhone or Android apps from the Arduino IDE. Nice. Although their altitude video looks a little setup to me.
Campaign ends: 2016/10/22 03:04:00
