New Product Roundup – November 27th to December 3rd

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Welcome to another edition of our weekly new product roundup! This week, as promised, we have quite a few more products to talk about. It must be the dark winter weather; we seem to be adding a lot of LED products lately. This week has a high proportion of LED related products and a few other bits and pieces – so let’s get to it!

LilyPad White LED (5pcs)

LilyPad LEDs are tiny, sew-able, circuit boards with integrated LEDs and resistors. These boards feature large connecting pads specifically designed to allow them to be sewn into clothing or other e-textile projects. This version has a bright white LED rated at 250mcd and ships as a 5 pack.

LilyPad Yellow LED (5pcs)

We also have a Yellow version of the LilyPad LED. Just like the above version, these boards feature large connecting pads specifically designed to allow them to be sewn into clothing or other e-textile projects.

LilyPad Green LED (5pcs)

And in addition to the yellow, we also have a Green version of the LillyPad.

LilyPad Red LED (5pcs)

And a finally a Red version… so you can get quite creative! We will be showcasing a cool Christmas project built here using these LEDs next week. Stay tuned for that!

Beam by Hover Labs

We were really excited to announce our Hover Labs distribution agreement this week. Their first product, Beam, is a beautiful LED matrix — 120 LEDs that displays scrolling text, animations, or custom lighting effects. These can be daisy chained easily — up to four Beams in a row to make an even larger display!

Hover by Hover Labs

Hover Labs second product, Hover, is a gesture sensor – it detects multiple gestures such as swipes and circular motion. It can also pinpoint your hand position in 3D space. Hover is perfect for building a next-gen controller or even interactive art installations that need a touch-less experience. Hover is compatible with Arduino, Particle and Raspberry Pi.

White 5mm Basic LED

We weren’t kidding when we said there were a lot of new LEDs this week. While not nearly as exiting as the Beam, we also have another 5mm White LED. This is ideally suited for basic illumination and bread boarding.

Platinum RTD Sensor – PT100

For precision temperature sensing, nothing beats a Platinum RTD. Resistance temperature detectors (RTDs) are temperature sensors that contain a resistor that changes resistance value as its temperature changes, basically a kind of thermistor. These have been used for many years to measure temperature in laboratory and industrial processes, and have developed a reputation for accuracy (better than thermocouples), repeatability, and stability.

Adafruit PT100 RTD Amplifier – MAX31865

To drive that fancy Platinum RTD you will also need a breakout board. This MAX31865 amplifier breakout board handles all of your RTD needs, and can even compensate 3 or 4 wire RTDs for better accuracy. Connect to it with any microcontroller over SPI and read out the resistance ratio from the internal ADC. The board has a 430Ω 0.1% resistor as a reference resistor on the breakout. As always, Adafruit has provided example code that will calculate the temperature based on the resistance for you.