This Nintendo DS Screen Kit joins two of our more unique products together to provide you with an easy means to equip your next project with touchscreen functionality. Inside each kit is one Nintendo DS Touchscreen and one SparkFun Touchscreen Connector Breakout. All you need to do to set this kit up is to simply attach the touchscreen’s ribbon cable into the connectors connector, solder on some headers or wires and connect it up.
The Shadow Chassis is a marvelously durable and modular robot platform from RobotZone. The chassis plates and mounts are cut from ABS plastic and utilize the Actobotics 0.77″ and 1.50″ hub patterns for sensors, controllers, power, etc. Simply snap each panel together and you’ll be able to attach your motors and favorite robotics controller. With the included “snap on” micro-controller mounts, you can attach an Arduino, Raspberry Pi, SparkFun RedBoard, or SparkFun RedBot Mainboard! This kit even has a mounting hole for a standard size servo as well as a 4xAA battery holder with barrel jack termination.
This a quick overview of what it takes to assemble the Redbot with Shadow Chassis.
We used the new SparkFun Load Cell Amplifier to make a load sensing doggie treat dispenser! The SparkFun Load Cell Amplifier is a small breakout board for the HX711 IC that allows you to easily read load cells to measure weight. By connecting the amplifier to your microcontroller you will be able to read the changes in the resistance of the load cell and with some calibration you’ll be able to get very accurate weight measurements. This can be handy for creating your own industrial scale, process control, or simple presence detection.
The SparkFun Inventor’s Kit for LabVIEW is a great way to add real world connectivity, programming, and hardware incorporation to your LabVIEW projects. The SIK includes everything you need to complete 14 circuit experiments, created in conjunction with the LabVIEW MakerHub, that will teach you how to use the LabVIEW graphical programming environment, read sensors, drive motors, and more. Don’t worry, you won’t need any previous programming or electronics experience to use this kit.
Particle’s IoT (Internet of Things) hardware development kit, the Photon, provides everything you need to build a connected project. Particle has combined a powerful 120 Mhz ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller with a Broadcom Wifi chip in a tiny thumbnail-sized module called the PØ (P-Zero). The Photon Kit includes a Photon with headers, a shiny white mini-breadboard, a USB-micro cable, and a couple of extra surprises to help you start building right away.
Robots are fun and Arduinos are easy, so wouldn’t it be nice if there were a kit that included everything you need to get your Arduino device set up to control a simple two motor circuit buddy? The SparkFun Ardumoto Shield Kit is perfect for any interested robot enthusiasts and includes an Ardumoto Shield as well pairs of tires, motors, connectors, and wires. And, of course, it’s all stuffed in a classic SparkFun red box (which may come in handy as a robot chassis).
The ZX Distance and Gesture Sensor is a touchless sensor that is capable of looking for simple gestures. The very smart people at [XYZ Interactive](http://www.gesturesense.com/xyz/) have created a unique technology that allows for simple infrared beams to be used to detect an object’s location in two dimensions. That means that not only can you detect gestures or had movements over the board, but you can also use it to determine distance, or how far away an object is from the sensor. The board communicates over I2C or UART. Want to see it in action? Good, we have a video for…
We know you love adding color to your e-textiles, adding the LilyPad Pixel Board to your project will only make it better. The pixel board is equipped with a WS2812B which is actually an RGB LED with a WS2811 built right into the LED! Several of these breakouts can be chained together to form a display or an addressable string. LilyPad is a wearable technology developed by Leah Buechley and cooperatively designed by Leah and SparkFun. Each LilyPad was creatively designed to have large connecting pads to allow them to be sewn into clothing. Various input, output, power, and…
The SparkFun Soil Moisture Sensor is a simple breakout for measuring the moisture in soil and similar materials. The soil moisture sensor is pretty straightforward to use. The two large exposed pads function as probes for the sensor, together acting as a variable resistor. The more water that is in the soil means the better the conductivity between the pads will be and will result in a lower resistance, and a higher SIG out.
The LinkSprite Acadia is a high performance single board computer from the makers of the pcDuino. In this video we benchmark the CPU speed and power consumption of the Acadia and compare it to several other single board computers.
The SparkFun Photon RedBoard, to put it simply, is a WiFi/Microcontroller development board in the Arduino form-factor for the Photon. It’s easy to use, it’s powerful, and it’s connected to the cloud. With the best support, potential, and performance the Photon RedBoard provides you with an IoT device with a powerful 120 Mhz ARM Cortex M3 and built-in WiFi connectivity. Imagine blowing up a Photon into the shape of an Arduino and while keeping its wireless and ARM Cortex M3 capabilities, the result is this board!
We realize that Oktoberfest really starts tomorrow (not next week!), but we’ve been hard at work to create something worthy of the world’s largest beer festival. Engineer Shawn shows off our latest invention: the Beer Lager! Based on the Particle Photon, the Beer Lager alerts the user to take frequent breathalyzer tests, computes their BAC, and displays it in a most glorious fashion.