New Product Friday: Breakthrough New Products

I'm back from vacation and we've got a wall of new products for this week.

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Hello everyone and welcome to your Friday New Product Post. I'm back from vacation and ready to talk about some new products for the week.


Vimeo version here.

So there you have it, Dave gets his revenge for all the (albeit fake) pranks we've pulled on him over the past couple of years. Yes, my door was actually completely dry-walled over to be a continuous wall. It was pretty satisfying being able to kick down a wall at work.

We've been slowly adding more cameras to our sensors category and we finally have a full HD option for you to hack on. The HackHD is essentially a stripped-down GoPro. It can do full 1080P at 30 FPS, run from a battery and is easily controlled from a microcontroller. It's got a wide-angle lens and can even be enclosed in GoPro enclosures to make it water proof. You can see some footage we took using this camera here.

Need to control a LOT of things? The 4x4 Driver Shield lets you switch DC loads (up to 30V, 5A) easily. Each shield gives you 16 channels of switching. Each shield also has shift registers so you can keep stacking shields to increase the number of possible channels, up to 400! The shield even comes with all the necessary connections you might need, or you can just use it bare, you're in control.

Arduino just came out with their own Wi-Fi Shield. It uses the Atmega 32UC3 to do the heavy lifting. It even includes an SD card socket and USB jack. If you're familiar enough with C and AVR programming, you can even use the shield as a standalone microcontroller.

XBee is switching out all their modules from a chip antenna to a PCB antenna. The most recent one to make this transition is the XBee Pro 60mW Series 1. It has the same functionality as the previous model, but has an embedded PCB antenna instead of the chip antenna.

Last week we started selling 4" x 6" static shielding bags and this week we've got them in a slightly smaller size as well. These 3" x 5" bags are the same as the others, just a bit smaller. Use them for your shields, breakout boards, or other components. They're heat-sealable and protect your parts from electrostatic discharge!

Well, that's it for this week. We'll have more stuff next week, as always. Thanks for reading and it's good to be back!


Comments 18 comments

  • Calif / about 12 years ago / 2

    Between the $159 camera & the $84 wifi shield, it looks like Bernanke was in town.

  • patrickmorrison / about 12 years ago / 2

    Can we get a tutorial on the prank?

      • Member #786515 / about 8 years ago / 1

        These video are really good

      • chartle / about 12 years ago / 1

        So they removed the door trim, studded it out, installed drywall, taped with three coats of mud, sanded, textured and painted?

        Do these people have any REAL work to do at Sparkfun? :-)

        Oh and the box is still askew!!!

        • Don't forget a strip of trim at the bottom...

          apparently, it's hard taping drywall in a sealed room with an air conditioner vent... :-)

          at least they had to work for it a bit.

        • Sneak85 / about 12 years ago / 1

          Typically you wouldn't put on three coats of mud if you were using a texture. As the texture hides the imperfect from the first two coats. Plus, walls aren't usually textured (pain in the a$# to touch up and not make it stick out) . I could see in the video the taping job wasn't that great. Props on the prank though.

          Sorry, my family is in the drywall business, it even drives me nuts walking into a house and seeing all the imperfections in the drywall from the tapers.

        • TeslaFan / about 12 years ago / 1

          Well, they didn't stud it out... Good thing, too. Robert had enough trouble breaking through it. Can you imagine if he kicked a stud? Sure, it would have been awesome entertainment value for the rest of us!

          That was a well done prank! I love the touch of the fake power outlet. Well done!

          • I thought it got through it pretty easily... it only took two kicks (after the first test with the hammer of course)

            • You should have ran into it with your shoulder and took it down with one shot!!! That would have been great too!! But I'm happy any day to see an office door get drywall-shut!!

          • I love the touch of the fake power outlet. Well done!

            If we'd been thinking a little harder about this, we would've set up a live outlet and had the Asteroids machine plugged into it or something. Still, it was a nice touch.

  • @5:23---dogs reaction!!! Haha!!! I didn't see that the first time!! He looks more surprised than Rob!!

  • When are we going to get another caption contest???? My brain wants to work on some funny captions for Sparkfun!!!!

  • scharkalvin / about 12 years ago / 1

    Hate to be the bringer of bad news to the spark fun crew but the hackhd is currently just $139.95 direct from their website (http://www.hackhd.com/) at the moment with the battery holder.

    BTW that was a good drywall job. Guess you guys are used to repairing holes in the walls.

    • yes, but that's for a very limited stock. it will be more expensive very soon. they were expected to sell out before we got stock.

    • NotDavid4JustDavid / about 12 years ago / 1

      That comes from their anti-stress plan at work. It's a sign on the wall that reads "Bang head here".... :-)

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