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Product BOB-10859 | about 2 weeks ago

I definitely suggest making the thermal enhancements BrianD posted!

Product BOB-10859 | about 2 weeks ago

Yeah, that looks like a serious improvement. Turning off thermal breaks on parts that are supposed to dissipate heat to the board is critical, and the extra vias will really help.

I’ve designed some high brightness LED circuit boards (1.5A each through 6 LEDs – LOTS of heat) and the stuff they recommend in their datasheets really is critical to making a good board.

News - The Tricorder Project | about a month ago

Seriously. I have an Ultimaker and it is open sense only in the loosest sense of the word. There is no BOM at all except for the BOM for the PCB (ie – no BOM for screws, etc), and many of the mechanical parts have no official drawings or information at all available.

I have some friends who want to build their own UM, and I needed to repair my UM, and in each instance the lack of official documentation was really frustrating.

Product SEN-11028 | about 2 months ago

Is the operation of this thing still locked up tight, away from hobbyist access?

I recall something about the whole “capable of processing complex 9-axis MotionFusion algorithms” meaning “capable if you’re a big company and we decide to share the documentation with you”.

And hobbyists were just able to get the raw sensor data (still neat) but not access the nice algorithms? Has that been remedied? Is this a magic IMU in a chip now? (minus compass)

Because if those algorithms are still not something we can use, I think Sparkfun needs to mention that in the description.

Product BOB-11040 | about 2 months ago

I wonder if there is an easy way to put a digital pot on here (without a microcontroller) and just make this the coolest potentiometer ever.

I mean even with an MCU it would be simple, but it seems like overkill.

Product WRL-10823 | about 4 months ago

http://www.semiconductorstore.com/cart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=44689 $22.50 from there QTY 100

News - New Product Friday: A Col… | about 4 months ago

Adding headers is easy. Removing headers is a pain.

News - The Slap Method for Solde… | about 4 months ago

I think for most hobbyists, this is a non-issue.

A lot of these guys are still getting used to SMT, and don’t use fine-pitch parts, so they likely won’t really run into that issue.

I do reasonably fine pitch stuff with hot air, paste, and a microscope, but paste does the same thing – it leaves little balls of solder on the board for places where the paste was accidentally applied over the mask (I don’t use stencils).

I just make sure to clean the board with alcohol and a brush after I use it. Simple enough.

News - The Slap Method for Solde… | about 4 months ago

Great Scott!

News - The Slap Method for Solde… | about 4 months ago

I dunno, it makes sense to me.

The shopping cart is a picture of a cart, and it says “0 items” next to it. Pretty clear to me its a cart.

Once logged in, the dropdown makes sense – I’ve got my username there, next to my cart… that arrow is probably a dropdown menu that has to do with user and/or cart related stuff… and it is!

Top right is pretty common for “account stuff”, so you don’t need to click every single icon on the page – just follow your instincts and its supposed to be easy.

Where this falls apart is people who, for whatever reason, haven’t yet developed instincts when it comes to this stuff. But unfortunately, the web is moving away from being obvious towards a cleaner look, with the expectation that most people know how things tend to work.

I noticed that google is going the same thing Sparkfun has done – they show your account name in the top right, and any settings are buried in a menu instead of just being listed there. I admit I didn’t like that logging out became a two step process instead of a single click, but it seems thats the way the web is moving in terms of design, and I can’t say that I see anything particularly wrong with what Sparkfun is doing that everyone else isn’t doing.