Weekly Roundup #29 - New Maker Products // News
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Well, there’s a lot to get through this week with RF transceivers, Bluetooth, LoRa, (ha there’s always LoRa), test kit and only one SBC…. Sad.
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Crowd Funding
KickStarter
Starting from this week I’ll be dropping some product areas from my weekly roundup so I can focus more on electronics. So things like 3D printers, drones and robots that have no real hacking value, but are interesting anyway; I’ve put in a special section below. So check that out.
Raspberry Pi to DE0 Nano connector
If you own one of the DE0 Nanos, which is an FPGA development board there’s a new Kickstarter that provides an adaptor to connect up a Raspberry Pi. Combined with the small prototyping area it allows you to easily program the Altera Cyclone IV FPGA and gives you access to a lot more GPIO options, state machines, and everything else that the FPGA provides.
PFx Brick
PFx Brick is yet another product in the long line of modular STEM products, but this one aims to push all the components into a standard Lego brick format. Not only that but is compatible with a wide range of Lego power function accessories. It contains an IR sensor, 2 motor driver outputs, lighting connector, audio out all running from 5 to 12V DC. There’s no RF radio so everything is controlled from USB via their PFx Application. A fairly complete package, but shame there’s no OTA programming.
AmyCS RPi3 1.0
AmyCS is an alternative O/S for your Pi based on FreeBSD and contains a desktop environment, a bunch of tools like graphics and sound editors, sequencer and a complete Javascript IDE. This package comes as a PC application that will write everything you need to an SD card for a quick start. If you’re into making fancy demo graphics or retro games, then this looks good.
MAKERbuino
Speaking of games, there’s the Makerbuino, which is a DIY kit allowing to make your own game console. It’s based on the ATmega328, but also has a Nokia 5110 LCD, SD slot, LiPo battery management, audio out and a bunch of buttons. Looks pretty cool.
eDOTcore
The eDOTcore is another through-hole plated PCB containing an ATmega328, DS3231 RTC, USB and pushes out all the GPIOs from the ATmega. Can be powered from 12v DC.
Crowd Supply
A couple of things on CrowdSupply.
GnuBee
The GnuBee went live last week, which is a small NAS box based on the MediaTek MT7621A overclocked to 1.2GHz. Contains 512M DDR3, SD slot, 2 1GbE, USB 3.0 and USB2.0 ports, and 6 SATA ports. Nice. The MediaTek, of course, runs any of the Linux distros, but with Debian, openmediavault, LEDE and libreCMC being listed. This is a pretty nice unit, but seems to not be attracting much interest. Shame.
Aeroscope
The Aeroscope is another campaign that went live recently. It’s a Bluetooth scope capable of 100Msps at +/- 40v with 100mV to 10V ranges that gives you 8 hours of measuring happiness. This is one of those ideas that comes along every so often that is so obvious, but no one has made a product out of it yet. I’ll be backing this one as it’s something that is just too darn useful.
Neosegment
The Neosegment is in pre-launch which seems to be a NeoPixel based seven segment display. Not much else about it though.
UlTiM8x8
And another in pre-launch which is a small 8 by 8 RGB LED panel based on the APA102C LEDs. They can be stacked and connected without cables or soldering. Looks interesting.
Honorable mentions
SBC-B47-eNUC
This embedded NUC based board will be hitting the shelves soon. It’s based on the Snapdragon 410E SoC, with 2G DDR3, DP, LVDS, 2 lane and 4 lane MIPI-CSI, eMMC, SD, WiFi, Bluetooth, USB2.0, 100MbE and the full compliment of GPIOs. All running off a 12v DC supply.
No info on the release date for this one.
Maker Shops
Tindie
Tindie has gone made this week with products.
Dual LSM9DS1 IMU breakout
This board contains two LSM9DS1 IMUs. The theory being you can reduce sensor drift better and provide more accurate positioning. Supports the AdaFruit and SparkFun libraries.
Gamemaker
Hey, now this one looks familiar. It’s very similar to the MAKERbuino Kickstarter I mentioned earlier. In fact I’m pretty sure it’s identical.
PowerPole 5V adapter
If you’re a hammy then this one might interest you. It’s a small 5V regulator designed to connect to a power distribution block.
FRS_DEMO_B 2W UHF module
There’s also this 5W 16 channel UHF walkie-talkie transceiver controlled via USB.
SR_DMR_5WU
Or this 5W Digital Mobile Radio working in the 400 to 470MHz frequencies running off 12 volts DC.
FPV HAT for Raspberry Pi
Then there’s this analog video transmitter hat for the Raspberry Pi, capable of 640x360 @ 30FPS using the SiLabs 3363 RF transceiver. Now, that’s unusual.
RFM95 LORA Breadboard
This is a simple board that breaks out everything from your RFM95 module. Just the thing for bread-boarding.
SushiBits
If you’re a fan of the STM32, then there is a new revision of the previous SushiBits which contains several upgraded versions of the STM32 MCU as well as RTC, USB to TTL and a switch mode power supply for ultra low power.
Digipot Flex Module
There are a number of new Flex Modules on Tindie, such as the digital potentiometer based on the Microchip MCP4461T that’s controlled via I2C and is capable of handling up to 12 volts.
Cardioid Flex Module
Or Cardoid MEMs module that contains two STMicro MP34DB01 designed to allow directional noise cancelling. Both microphones are accessible via SPI.
CDM324 Doppler Speed Sensor
The CDM324 is a microwave Doppler speed sensor and comes in handy in many situations. This one runs off a 5 volt supply and pretty tiny so you can chuck it almost anywhere.
Raspberry Pi WS281X LED Shield
If you want to be able to control a bunch of RGB LEDs from your Pi, then this simple board will do the trick, but since power is drawn from the Pi I don’t think it’d be able to drive a lot of LEDs.
RPUno
RPUno is expensive, but is designed for solar powered applications. Contains an ATmega328, LT3652 solar charge controller, battery current and voltage sensing and mounting points for a DIN rail system.
ULP Weather Logger with ESP8266
The ULP weather logger is an ESP8266 based board with temperature, humidity, pressure and light sensors. It can run for 6 months on two 2.4Ah NiMH batteries by shutting down to a 20nA sleep state and waking up every hour.
AdaFruit, Seeed, SparkFun, DFRobot, DigiKey
Adafruit Feather nRF52832
Over at AdaFruit there’s a Feather containing the nRF52832 Bluetooth module, which runs the ARM Cortex-M4F and like all the Feathers has LiPo battery management.
IBM TJBot
They also have the IBM TJBot in coming soon status, but SparkFun seem to have them in stock. The TJBot is a small DIY robot that is certainly a lot cheaper than anything you’d find on Kickstarter. It’s a laser cut cardboard box with servos, speakers, microphone and Raspberry Pi 3 with 16G NOOBS SD card. Pretty good little learning product.
micro:bit
Another STEM product is the micro:bit, which was in one of my earlier roundups, but now you can get it from SparkFun. Contains a Cortex-M0 MCU, 5x5 LED array, 9DOF IMU, light and temperature sensors and LiPo battery support.
Voltage Regulator S9V11F5
Pololu have a pretty neat step-up/down regulator based on the S9V11F5 which will provide a stable 5 volts at 1.5A from a 2 to 16 volt input, but in reality won’t start up unless there’s at least 3 volts.
The Cheap Side
The cheap side has …
PowerPack HAT V3.0S
… a Pi expansion board providing LiPo battery management that can act like a UPS. It can power your Pi from the GPIO header or via USB port. This is the basic kit …
PowerPack HAT V3.0S full kit
… and this one provides all the cables and headers.
ENC28J60 ethernet module
This board provides a 100Mbit Ethernet interface that is accessible over SPI.
Geekcreit® 37 In 1 Sensor Pack
And similar to the pack from last week, this one contains 37 sensors, buttons, LEDs. all of which would cost more if bought individually.
Geekcreit® 45 In 1 Sensor Pack
and this one contains 45 boards.
Motors & actuators
ICstation have a bunch of small motors and actuators just in, such as micro stepping push rods, linear screw steppers, or you can get 10 tiny ones for just a dollar.
CH9121 Ethernet to serial
They also have a CH9121 breakout, which is a handy Ethernet to UART chip handling up to 921,600 baud rate. Sadly, there’s no PoE on-board, which would make this infinitely more useful. Also, it seems there’s only one UART made available, where this chip can handle up to four.
CC2640F128 dev board
Another board just in is the CC2640F128 Bluetooth module which contains a Cortex-M3 running at 48MHz. Supports OTA programming and has broken out the JTAG and SWD debugging pins along with all the 31 GPIOs.
Honorable mentions
Starting from this week I’ll be dropping some product areas from my weekly roundup just to give it more focus on electronics. So, things like 3D printers will end up in this section.
MONO1
Mono1 is yet another resin based 3D printer. It’s a pretty accurate printer giving you 5 micron layer thickness and 24 microns on a 96 by 56 by 130 mm print bed using a DLP based projector for curing.
Moai
The Moai is another resin printer, but this one uses a laser to cure the resin. It’s slightly more expensive than the Mono1, and can only get down to 10 microns layer thickness with 70 micron laser head. It seems to be OK, I guess.
Now, I’m not saying that this one is horrible, it actually looks fairly decent, but remember all the crowd funding sites are awash with 3D printers. So, caveat emptor.
