Weekly Roundup #07 - New Maker Products // News
This week’s Weekly Roundup we’re seeing small routers, tiny Arduinos, high resolution positioning boards, small robots, big robots, and also some creepy ones.
Crowd Funding
KickStarter
Connect. Code. Create. With SBrick Plus
First up on KickStarter there’s more educational kits.
The SBrick Plus is another LEGO compatible building block that allows you to code up in Scratch, Javascript, (for some bizarre reason), and also Apple Swift. It is programmed via bluetooth and fully supports the WeDo sensors so you can create some fun and interesting things.
Interestingly, I couldn’t find any specs on what the Plus contains, so I’m assuming that the only difference to the previous version is the bluetooth module.
PrintDry Filament Dryer
If you’re a 3D printing fiend then you’ll probably know all about moisture issues that can destroy your prints.
The PrintDry is a filament dryer that will solve this problem for you.
It’s designed to dry and feed the filament into your printer at the same time.
mimic: immersion robot
Next up on KickStarter we have robots.
The mimic immersion robot allows you to control a small robot by moving your arms around. You can see what you’re about to crash into with a VR headset.
Personally I think it’s a bit of a gimmick, but we’re going to see more of this heading our way.
Giant Piloted Walking Robot: The Big Dig Mk I
The other end of the spectrum there’s the piloted walking robot.
Hang on are they rocket launchers on the side. Looks like something from Robocop.
Anyway, this is yet another bleeding edge campaign of stuff we’re going to see more of in future.
RTK Box
If you’re looking for high precision centimeter level positioning, then check out the RTK Box.
It uses GPS, BeiDou, and Glonass satellite signals to achieve this without, surprisingly, no IMU onboard.
MUSES: The First Open Source Modulator Development Board
The Muses board is an open source transmitter board capable os supporting a whole bunch of broadcast standards. Want to start up your own digital TV channel?
Get one of these…. Oh and maybe a broadcast license…
Comes in two flavours. One that accepts an HDMI signal and another that just accepts data from a USB port.
Has a bunch of GPIO pins for additional control.
PiShield: Sensor Interface board for Raspberry Pi
The PiShield provides an 8 port analog to digital converter and 4 additional I2C ports for your PiZero.
Of course, it can also be fitted to a normal Pi as well.
IndieGoGo
VoCore2: The World’s Smallest Smart Router
Speaking of tiny. How cool is this?
The VoCore2 is a tiny board designed specifically to be a router.
It contains a MediaTek SoC with 2x 100Mbit ethernet, 802.11n WiFi, SD card and a whole bunch of GPIOs.
It runs OpenWRT as stock and is powered from either USB, LiPo, or PoE.
Ockel Sirius A: the World’s Most Versatile Mini PC
This isn’t really a Maker board per se, but I thought it was cool and something we’re also going to see a lot more of in future.
The Ockel Sirius contains an Intel X7-Z8750 quad-core CPU, supporting up to 4K video, 4G DDR3 RAM, 64G eMMC, microSD, WiFI, Bluetooth, USB3.0, 3Ah LiPo, and IMU.
Nice. I’d like to see Linux on this little baby.
Robelf - Your Moving Monitor Guardian!
What is it with robots these days? Seems there’s a whole bunch of them appearing on the market wanting to be your servant, or overlords.
The Robelf is yet another run-of-the-mill robot that claims to make your life oh so much easier. Look there he is with the family, and you can even stick post-it-notes on him, and he’ll guard your home while you’re asleep… while you’re asleep… while you’re asleep.
Ohhh. creepy.
Crowd Supply
thingSoC “Grovey”
On the Crowd Supply website we have there’s the thingSoC which claims to be the gateway between a whole bunch of peripherals and SoCs. Will be interesting to see this one go live.
NUT4NT: Four-channel, All-frequency, GNSS RF-to-Bits Receiver
The NUT4NT is another high precision navigation board similar to the RTK Box, but is a lot more expensive at US$500 for just the board.
It’s unclear just how much better it is compared to the RTK Box, but I’d guess that it wouldn’t be $300 better.
Maker Shops
Tindie
Petal
Now this is nice. It may be just another ESP8266 board, but the Petal is the smallest I’ve seen with the most features.
Contains temperature and Lux sensor, accelerometer, motor driver, LiPo battery management, and USB to serial port.
Nice.
BeanDuino Attiny85
Continuing the tiny theme we have the BeanDuino which packs an ATtiny85, and USB on to a small 11 by 20 mm package.
Supports AdaFruit’s gemaboot that you will have to load up yourself and also the Arduino IDE from version 1 onwards.
neoPLC 8-Channel High Current PWM Board
The neoPLC 8-channel high current PWM board is also the smallest I’ve seen.
Supports up to 8 channels and can sink 9A at 12V with 12 bit resolution. That’s huge!
We’re coming into Christmas, so grab a couple to control your Christmas lights.
These guys also have a bunch of other boards in the neoPLC series. Might want to check those out as well.
AdaFruit
802.3af PoE Output Data & Power Splitter - 5/9/12V
802.3af PoE Output Data & Power Splitter - 12V 1A
PoE is great if you want to deck out your house with fixed home automation devices. No more wall warts sticking into power points scattered through the house. This will split up your PoE enabled ethernet port to support a whole range of SBCs and devices.
Note that you’ll need a PoE enabled switch or PoE injector at the other end.
