Archive for June, 2010

New Product Goodness

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

We have been quietly adding new products and are overdue for a post. Here are some of the fun new things you will find in the store.

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The PhidgetIR

C-200-P1055The PhidgetIR is a must have for those DIY hackers building their own home automation projects.

  • Sends and Receives Consumer IR codes
  • Control your computer or any Phidgets with an old remote control
  • Control your TV, DVD, etc. with your computer
  • Connects directly to a computer’s USB Port

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PowerSwitch Tail

SF-COM-09842Another great home automation tool. Hacking together a 120V switching device is a pain in the ass. We have been looking for a device like this for 6 years. You can now safely control an outlet device without exposing any 120VAC voltages. All you need is a 5 volt signal which you can provide from an Arduino or other microcontroller or Phidget.

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Laser Module – Red

LD-250-COM-00594PEW! PEW! PEW! Every robot needs a laser. These super tiny lasers are PERFECT for robot projects. A great help for tracking where sensors are pointing, assisting visualization, or just plain adding robot bling. We were blown away by the quality and strength of dot this laser puts out. No more hacking cheapo lasers from the store. The flat rectangle form factor makes mounting this laser a dream.

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Sensor & Cable Coupler Pins

S-200-HWS3835coupler-in-use

We wanted to make it easy for our robot builders to couple together female to female sensor and cable connectors. So we sourced some extra long header rows to enable people to do just that. The pins are 5.8mm on one side and 8.6mm on the other giving plenty length to get a good lock with standard .1″ female connectors. We will start moving more of our sensors over to female connectors so that people can stop soldering all day and just plug and play!

How about some manual servo control?

Being robot nerds we sometimes forget that people want quick easy servo control solutions. So we added some good direct control solutions.

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Joystick Servo Controller

C-100-JS-200This is a great joystick servo control unit from ServoCity. Built very solid with a high quality joystick this controller is built to last. Be up and running immediatly, just add power and plug in your servos.

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Dual Servo Driver

C-100-902MSD

Similar to the Joystick Controller, but half the price. Two rotation knobs for simple fast servo control.

Servo Recorder & Playback Controller

C-100-SPC2000

Need to do some recorded playback? This is your goto device. The Servo Recorder can be used as a simple servo driver or a complete servo motion recorder. Once the motions are recorded, you can select between single or loop playback. Recording time is 3 minutes.

RFID! Run for the hills!

Friday, June 18th, 2010

RFID-amal

Our good friend Amal is at it again. This time he is spreading the good RFID word and giving news casters great content for fear mongering in Australia. Go Amal!

Featured in the story is the new and uber awesome RedBee RFID reader which has more features than a mountainside. Buy one now and inform your kids that you are implanting them all. It is a great prank that never gets old.

Australians haven’t figured out embedding yet, so here is how to watch the video. Go Here and then scroll the menu down to the bottom for “The Human Micro-chip. Is it going to far? AHHHHHH God save us from Satans army.”

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