SparkFun just opened up a huge can of newness – here are some of their latest that I thought was worth checking out…
You knew it was coming. The Port-O-Rotary has dropped in price for the holiday ridiculousness. Black is $200, red is $250. But wait, there’s more! These new units have a built-in fast charger (no more opening the case). Pick up the handset and you’ll hear what no other cellular phone has – a dial tone! – Link.
If you’ve ever played with Atmel AVRs, you may have discovered how annoying the two different ISP (in circuit serial programming) interfaces can be. We designed this simple interface board to allow you to connect basic 10-pin programmers to 6-pin devices (think Arduino and LilyPad). We also included an inline connector for easy AVR breadboarding! – Link.
This is a ScreenKey – a programmable button that can display any graphic with a backlight that is itself configurable to be a handful of different colors. We have both RGB and RG versions. So cool – Link.
SparkFun Electronics – Link.
10 thoughts on “New stuff @ SparkFun electronics”
Comments are closed.
ADVERTISEMENT
Join Make: Community Today
The ScreenKey is awesome and something I’ve been waiting for for a long time. I hope this technology takes off to the point that the price comes down. It’s at a point where I want to buy one to play with, but not to the point where we can see these used all over the place in tech toys without a premium price.
The screenkey is definitely neat. NKK has been making a similar product called the Smartswitch for almost 10 years now, but it’s difficult to interface to. You have to constantly send it data or else it’ll stop displaying; mess up the timing and you’ll get bands of different contrast. The screenkey’s interface is a lot more user friendly – just tell it what to draw and it does that until you tell it otherwise.
I considered the display-only version of the smartswitch for my pong watch, but it was too small & low resolution. I ended up with a sweet OLED display instead — bigger screen, thinner, higher resolution, easier to drive, but of course, no pushbutton capability. And, I had to make my own bezel to make it look good.
At risk of nitpicking, the Port-O-Rotary is not the only cellular phone with a dial tone. The Jitterbug also has one.
@ markayak-
I had to go all the way to the jitterbug demo, but yes indeed- a dial tone.
Would have lost THAT bet…..MAKE comments RULE!!!
I want one of the port-o-rotary phones sooooooooo bad…..almost there…..maybe when black comes back into stock. The red stands out too much…. :)
Well, if anyone searches this out…
I finally bought the port-o-rotary.
LOVE it , with minor reservations.
Check out the forum thread, and contribute if you can.
THANKS!!
Volkemon
Hi Jim!
I am Randy, the proud owner of a Port-O-Rotary that called you a few weeks back.
It appears that there is someone who also got a POR, and has the knowhow to take on its shortcomings. (Unlike me…)
Can you take a minute and check it out?
http://forum.sparkfun.com/viewtopic.php?t=14301
Thanks!
Volkemon