We're rolling out another Thursday New Product Post!

Slide on over and check out our new products for this week.

Favorited Favorite 0

This post marks 8 months since my first weekly product post - and yet every time, I still get excited when I imagine what you all are going to come up with using these new products! This week we have a great batch of new products as well as one of our patented product videos. Enjoy!

I really wish we did have robot parking around here. The funny thing is that it only took us a few minutes to round up those vehicles, and there were still many more in the building. As always, it was a fun video to make, but driving mecanum robots can be a bit tricky at times. Note to self, never work with animals, children, or custom programmed robots...

The year is 2011 and robots should be able to move more freely than just forward and backward. Watson just beat up on two human contestants in Jeopardy, so why can't my robot move sideways? With mecanum wheels, your robot can now move in any direction it wants. By spinning them against themselves, you can create lateral movement in addition to traditional forward and backward movement. Give your next robot the freedom it deserves!

Let me take a moment to tell you about our next switch. This momentary toggle switch provides an 'off' normal state and two 'on' momentary states. It has heavy-duty screw terminals on the back and a threaded shaft for mounting into your next enclosure.

These 5-way selector switches might be familiar to all of you guitar players out there. They can be useful if you only have the space for a toggle switch, but need to able to select between more than just on or off. They have a nice click to each position and have easy solder lugs on the back. Rock on.

 

You've spent the last few months perfecting your last project. You had a custom enclosure made, slaved over the code, and got it working just the way you want. But the power switch is just some humble 'button'? How pedestrian of you! Make your next project stand out and use our new key switch. Now you can have a slick way to turn it on and off and even control WHO can turn it on and off. These panel-mount switches come with a set of keys and operate just like a on/off SPST toggle switch.

Our thermal printers turned out to be a lot more successful than we thought. Although thermal paper is relatively easy to find, it doesn't always come in the right size. Our thermal paper comes in a smaller roll that fits nicely into the printer. Now you don't have to hunt for a supplier of paper and buy 10 cases of it just to test out your new printer!

I'm amazed it took us this long to sell resistor packs like this. We now carry 330 ohm and 10k ohm resistors in packs of 20. These are the same packs used in a lot of our kits. They come in handy for almost every microcontroller project. A pack of resistors is always a good thing to have on your workbench.

We've been selling multiple types of conductive thread for a little while now, but haven't had any needles until now. Our needle set has large eyes for thicker threads and come in packs of five (three 48mm and two 39mm needles per pack).

The people over at 4D Systems have a new embedded graphics engine for you to play with. The µVGA-II allows you to offload your graphic processing from your microcontroller. All you need is a serial interface for commands and a VGA/SVGA display.

The 9V Wall Wart has been added to our retail product selection. This is the same 9V adapter we've sold for years, but now with more convenient packaging for all of our distributors and retailers.

Olimex's MOD-MP3-X is an update to their MOD-MP3. Now it uses the VS1053 IC and includes some new features. If you're looking to do some prototyping with the VS1053 or just playing around with an MP3 project, check out this board.

So, this ends another Thursday New Product Post. Hopefully we'll see some cool robots using the mecanum wheels soon! Thanks for reading and see you next week for more new products!


Comments 25 comments

  • mux / about 13 years ago / 2

    Hi what's the name of the song ?

  • I noticed the "RTFM" sticker on the...does the vehicle have a name?
    Anyway, I think a more fitting acronym for you guys would be RTFDS (Read The 'Full' Data Sheet) PG version.

  • TeslaFan / about 13 years ago / 2

    Those ARE the droid parts I'm looking for!
    One of the things I love about you guys is you provide all the Eagle files for the parts you sell. No mistakes like the great 80386EX miswiring back in '96... where I put pin 1 in the middle instead of the corner. All the pins were off. I still haven't gotten over that.

  • That side-to-side motion you can get using the mechanum wheels is called "crabbing". At least, in the First Robotics community thats what everybody calls it.
    And a cool note, you can crab and pivot at the same time, makes for a really cool show, but I don't know what it ever would be useful for...

    • Paradox116 / about 13 years ago / 1

      In the gaming community, it's called "strafing". And the really cool show is probably the main thing it's used for.

  • When the robot parked I thought the vehicle in front of it was a hummer at first, til I started paying attention and noticed it was a 4 door Jeep JK. Very nice. :) Whats the big RC at the end?

  • R0B0T1CS / about 13 years ago / 1

    What's with the egg on the desk in the video?

  • mitpatterson / about 13 years ago / 1

    Nice, love those wheels, and love the new post everyweek, just something I've been wondering, why was Thursday chosen? instead of any other day? just kinda "felt" right? or is there a reason?

  • REDACTED-GDPR / about 13 years ago / 1

    I never really thought I'd see Sparkfun selling needles...:-)

  • Aww...no Dave shenanigans this week? :'( I guess it's best not to overdo it.
    Always love PPT (Product Post Thursdays)!

    • balboajeff / about 13 years ago / 1

      I noticed the conspicuous lack of Dave as well.These posts make up for the lack of Andy Griffith show reruns in my life. Who needs cable.

    • Yeah, no Dave this week. Dave has a full time job in IT, so we try not to use him ALL the time.
      Plus, you're right, it could get diluted if we use him too much. So you're stuck with just me this week, sorry ;-)

  • fotoflojoe / about 13 years ago / 1

    How did you get your retail stuff distributed into Venezuela? I'd figure they'd be on some BS no-trade list somewhere.

    • The only countries that are 100% blocked are Cuba, North Korea, and Iran. If you're really interested, here's a list of countries and the various reasons goods are controlled for each:
      http://tinyurl.com/5uts6py

  • Kamiquasi / about 13 years ago / 1

    I love how pleased he looks with himself :D

  • LexanPanda / about 13 years ago / 1

    Red lights make any robot 10x cooler.

Related Posts

Go, JetBot! Go!

PIR Our Last Email

Recent Posts

Open-Source HVAC?

What is L-Band?

Tags


All Tags