New Product Roundup – March 18th to March 24th

It is Saturday, and time for another edition of our weekly New Product Roundup! This week we have three new products: a new metric hardware kit, an updated version of our very popular heat shrink kit, and a new breadboard friendly potentiometer.

Two workshops have also been added – we have another Raspberry Pi Camera / Project workshop coming up on April 10th and a new workshop focusing on getting started with the tiny ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller in Arduino.

Let’s jump in and take a closer look!




Heat Shrink Kit

This is an updated version of the extremely popular heat shrink kit we have carried for many years – SparkFun has discontinued the retail packaged version of this kit. But no worry, the contents of the kit are still the same! The kit includes 95 pieces of heat shrink, all of varying colors and sizes, and comes in a clear bag. Some of the sizes have heat sensitive glue which significantly increases stress relief and water proofing. All pieces are 10cm in length.

M3 Nylon Standoff Set

This M3 Standoff Kit includes 180 Nylon nuts, screws, and standoffs. Standoffs are used to mount circuit boards and other parts inside of enclosures or on mounting plates. These are designed to space the board away from anything that may cause it to short, or allow stacking of several boards. Nylon also has the added benefit of being non-conductive. Each standoff is in a male/female configuration. The male end has 6mm of threaded shaft. Between board heights range from 6mm and 20mm.

Raspberry Pi Camera Software/Project – April 10th

This Raspberry Pi Camera workshop will get your camera installed and configured to use with the provided Raspbian software and libraries. We will look into the various software capabilities provided – exposure control, special effects, timed photos etc – for both stills and video. Using only the Pi & camera module you can do many interesting photo projects but adding a button or two to the GPIO connector allows even more fun – so we will look at controlling the camera from the GPIO as well!

500K Ohm Breadboard Friendly Potentiometer

This very common 500K ohm linear potentiometer is designed to be mounted in an enclosure or panel. While the tabs on this pot are a little more difficult to solder wires to, they are spaced at 0.200″ making it breadboard compatible and perfect for prototyping on a solderless breadboard. The potentiometer is rated at 1/5W and has 300 degrees of rotation.

Introduction to ESP8266 & Arduino

Arduino micro-controllers have been a mainstay of DIY device hackers for years and come in a bewildering array of variants. The ESP8266 is a relative newcomer but has rapidly become a favourite because of the built-in WiFi and higher performance. Although there are several ways to program these useful little devices, the Arduino IDE application is an excellent way to get started since it supports almost all versions of both. This workshop will get you off to a good start with the Arduino IDE, show you how to connect your ESP to WiFi, and how to use a simple button and LED.

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Product Of The Week – 15% Off


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Upcoming Workshops


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