Hi I’m Kristen with Arrow.com and today we’re going to take a look at our March product picks, with an emphasis on development shields and boards. I’m featuring technology that will help to optimize your design or even inspire you for your next project build. So, let’s get started!
ATtiny Programming Shield from Arrow Labs
Have you ever wished you could shrink the Arduino to just use what you need for your project or prototype? The ATtiny Programming Kit from Arrow Labs, called the ATtinyShield1, is a shield designed to let you program a low-cost Atmel ATtiny microcontroller using the familiar Arduino IDE and your Arduino Uno. It’s for those situations where using a full Arduino for an application would be overkill or when your project requires something with a significantly smaller footprint than the Arduino board. With this shield you can load Arduino programs as simple as blinking an LED or as complicated as driving addressable LEDs.
BeagleBone® Blue from BeagleBone.org®
Are you interested in robotics? The BeagleBone® Blue is the latest single board computer release from the open source non-profit, BeagleBoard.org®. It maintains the same quick boot time and Linux support as the popular BeagleBone® Black, but also has tons of features that optimize it specifically for robotics. Beyond the standard Wi-Fi, BLE, and Bluetooth 4.0, it has dedicated headers for other interfaces like UARTs, SPI, DSM2 radio, and even GPS. The BB-Blue is battery-ready, supporting a 2-cell LiPo battery with cell balancing. It also offers dedicated hardware for motor control, accepting quadrature encoder inputs and providing several servo and DC motor outputs. The board even supports robotic-specific operating systems and languages such as ROS, ArduPilot, and Machinekit – which can be loaded via MicroSD. The BeagleBone® Blue open source board has just become the easiest and most affordable way to experiment with robotics and build your very own mobile robot.
Inertial Sensor Development Platform from NXP
If you’re currently brainstorming a product that incorporates motion control, this kit is perfect for you. During the early stages of product development, you typically need to conduct evaluation and proof of concept before moving to the full development and prototyping stages. The Sensor Toolbox from NXP, formerly Freescale, provides an ecosystem for their 9-axis Inertial Measurement solution – which includes a 3-axis gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer. Supported by NXP’s Sensor Toolbox-CE and Intelligent Sensing Framework (ISF) software, this demo kit enables a full out-of-the-box Sensor Fusion demonstration with quick and easy visualization of the sensor data and results. The evaluation shield board is pin-compatible across Arduino and most Freedom boards. The shield allows register level analysis, computation of key sensor parameters like current consumption, data logging, and debugging of communication protocols like I2C and SPI. This inertial solution from NXP is perfect for use in game controllers, electronic compass stabilization and enhanced motion control.
And there you have it! I hope this provided some prototyping inspiration for your next technology solution. Check back soon for more featured products from Arrow.com.