Weekly Roundup #27 - New Maker Products // News
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This rainy, wet week hasn’t dampened any new Maker Products, with a handful of goodies still showing up.
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Crowd Funding
KickStarter
MS5837-30BA Pressure Sensor
The first one is a simple Kickstarter providing a breakout for the MS5837 pressure sensor, which seems to be quite a nice sensor. I haven’t used one of these before, but has 0 to 30 bar range sampling at up to 500uS at 24it resolution. And only draws 0.6uA. Hmm nice. It’s an expensive sensor, but you get what you pay for.
Makeblock Neuron
Makeblock is another one of those plug and play block type connecty thingies that connect magnetically and talk to each other via small pogo pins. They have a fairly complete list of modules; from WiFi, Bluetooth, to buttons, knobs, voice recognition, to cameras, and more sensors you can poke a stick at, to motor drivers, buzzers, and displays. Programming is via Blockly, mBlock, but they have also released an open SDK which plays nice with Node and Javascript. They also offer a cloud service. Looks to be one of the better ones out there.
Kancy
Kancy is a fancy name for a WiFi based mains power controller. It’s a pretty simple concept. It sits in between the mains power and the device you want to control. So that means you can retrofit it to a light switch and have automatic control. My big concern is that their campaign assumes that you can DIY your own mains wiring, which in almost every country is illegal to do unlicensed.
Keigan Motor
Keigan is an all-in-one motor and controller with inbuilt WiFi, LiPo battery, IMU, rotary encoder, and has accurate position, speed and torque control. So you can also use it as an input device to program movement of another motor. They are pretty expensive, but pretty decent for what you’re getting.
Pebby
Pebby is… Oh great, you included another robotic pet sitter? What’s so good about this one? It’s just a ball that moves around with camera and WiFi. Oh a laser! Cute. So you can annoy your pets as well. About as useful as this weather we’re having.
IndieGoGo
OK. Then moving on to IndieGoGo. Is there anything remotely interesting. Seems to be!
LicheePi Zero
There’s the LicheePi Zero! $6! Nice! This is a very small Linux based board similar to the previous LicheePi, but has the Allwinner A3 Cortex-A7 which is capable of running from 1GHz down to 24MHz using only 0.1A. Linux kernel is at 4.10, even better, and has onboard SD slot that can also house a WiFi board. Has 27 GPIO ports with the usual compliment of UARTs, SPI, I2C, MIPI-CSI and RGB LCD. This is one nice board, but remember it one only has 64MB RAM, so like the Omega2 and several other boards; you’ll have to get used to working with low memory.
Crowd Supply
Over at Crowd Supply …
Paperino
… there’s a small ePaper display in pre-launch called Paperino. It contains an accelerometer that can wake up your MCU for ultra low power applications.
Aeroscope
Then there’s Aeroscope in pre-launch which is… oh… a bit of plastic with an alligator clip attached. Why don’t they put more information on these pages?
Honorable mentions
Embedded World 2017
There’s a whole bunch of new boards being released, but haven’t yet had any price tag attached. I tend to not put these in the weekly roundup, but a lot of these will be displayed at Embedded World 2017 in Nuremburg, Germany. So, check out their website when you get the chance.
Maker Shops
Tindie
Over at Tindie the weather hasn’t dampened anyone’s spirits.
Minstrel ZX80 Clone
There’s another blast from the past. This is probably the most accurate ZX80 clone I’ve seen in a long while. It’s pretty expensive, but if you like to reminisce, there you have it.
Screw Terminal Shield for Raspberry Pi
and sometimes you just need to have screw terminals on your PI. This one does just that for you.
WonderBeeps
Now this is an unusual, but really useful idea. WonderBeeps allows you to control up to 16 outputs based on an ordinary tone being generated. So it’s like audible frequency range wireless remote control. This means that you can control anything via anything that carries audio waves; mobile, landline telephone, or whistling if you want. An interesting idea.
AdaFruit, Seeed, SparkFun, DFRobot, DigiKey
Seems the weather hasn’t stopped AdaFruit from adding some new products although they are having shipping delays.
TPL5110 Low Power Timer Breakout
The TPL5110 is a small stand-alone power timer. So it’ll sit there drawing only 20uA until the timer kicks in and powers up whatever device you have attached. You set the wake up time from 100mS to 2 hours.
DotStar High Density 8x8 Grid
There’s also a high density 8x8 RGB LED board using the DotStar LEDs which are driven over SPI. A much better way to control LEDs than the WS2812 method.
Pimoroni Picade HAT
They also have the Pimoroni arcade hat in stock that gives you everything you need for arcade glory. It’s very similar to the Pi Zero bonnet from a couple of weeks ago.
Adafruit Perma Proto Bonnet
And something for your new Pi Zero W. Some protoboard space!
Digital Loggers PLDuino
If you have some industrial projects in mind then this product seems to have everything you need. It’s based on the ATmega2560, but also contains an ESP8266, and 2.4" TFT touch screen. It’s expensive, but you’re getting a fairly robust platform that is designed for industrial applications.
WiFiBee MT7681
Over at DFRobot there’s a small XBee module based on the MediaTek MT7681 WiFi module. Supports OTA programming and also access point mode.
The Cheap Side
Over where it’s probably sunny and dry…
X800 2.5" SATA for Raspberry Pi
Beginner Starter Kit For Arduino
This beginner kit is pretty expensive, but for what you get in it, will last you for a very long time. You get an Arduino Uno, Mega2560, Nano v3, and Uno, along with a bucket load of extras that actually ends up being pretty good value.
I2C 0.69" Blue OLED
