Last Week’s Featured Products

from Last Week’s Featured Products
by Sully Romero

Last Week’s Featured Products

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1. Fixture Clip – Short

Doesn’t this fixture clamp look like a character in a Pixar movie? If you just drew two little eyes on it then you could just imagine it hopping around on nifty, adorable little adventures that are heartwarming and…sorry, we got carried away.

This fixture clamp is a great way to hold a printed circuit board in place while you’re testing or programming. It comes with two mounting screws so you can attach the clamp to your tester. Just press down on the white lever to add or remove a PCB then release to keep the board in nice and snug.

We do have a rough placement object in our EagleCAD library, its called FIXCLIP, your mileage may vary!

2. Assembled Terminal Block Breakout FeatherWing for all Feathers

The Terminal Block Breakout FeatherWing kit is like the Golden Eagle of prototyping FeatherWings (eg. majestic, powerful, good-looking). To start, you get a nice prototyping area underneath your Feather, with extra pads for ground, 3.3V and SDA/SCL. Not one to stop there, we expanded the PCB out to 2″ x 2.5″ with 3.5mm pitch terminal blocks down each side. There’s also four mounting holes so you can attach the breakout to your enclosure or project.

This product works with all our Feathers! The terminal blocks allow you to connect to any of the external Feather pins, great for wiring temporary or permanent installations. We also give you a few extra terminal block pins for ground and 3.3V connections since those are so useful.

Finally, there’s a slide switch, which connects the EN pin to ground when in the ‘off’ position, cutting off the 3.3V regulator. Note that the FONA Feather uses both VBat and 3.3V as power supplies so you wont be able to fully turn off the FONA Feather with this switch.

Note: As of Thursday, December 15th 2016, this product now comes fully assembled! Plug in your Feather and you’re ready to go immediately.

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3. Helping Third Hand Magnifier W/Magnifying Glass Tool – MZ101

The classic ‘third hand tool,’ as seen on every desk! We have one next to our Panavise jr, they complement each other well. This tool is good for holding small PCBs and wires for tinning or soldering to parts.

  • Every part can rotate around in any way with thunbscrews and wingnuts.
  • Two sturdy alligator clips for holding PCBs, wires, parts
  • 2.5″ diameter 4x magnifying glass good for checking out your soldering technique
  • Weighted base keeps everything steady

Even though there are fancier ones with soldering-iron holders, we found those would constantly tip over when a soldering iron was in place so we suggest getting one of these and a separate soldering iron holder/stand.

4. PaPiRus 2.7″ eInk Display HAT for Raspberry Pi from Pi Supply

The PaPiRus Screen HAT from Pi Supply is an ePaper / eInk screen HAT designed for the Raspberry Pi. Think of it as the older sibling of the PaPiRus Zero.

ePaper / eInk is a display technology that mimics the appearance of ink on normal paper. Unlike conventional displays, ePaper reflects light – just like ordinary paper – and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely, even without electricity. Because of this, ePaper displays and single board computers or microcontrollers are a match made in heaven as together they use a very small amount of power whilst still bringing a display to your project.

The PCB assembly has a lot of driver circuitry required to keep the display running smoothly as well as an EEPROM for HAT compatibility and easy plug and play operation with the Raspberry Pi. All signals are broken out to a 40 pin female header. Also included is a battery-backed real time clock (RTC) with wake on alarm functionality via an optional reset pin and four optional slimline switches for maximum project versatility. The driver board can take either 3V3 or 5V power and logic control do this PaPiRus HAT will work with virtually any microcontroller or CPU, not just the Raspberry Pi.

The ePaper display that comes with this PaPiRus HAT is a 2.7″ diagonal and 264 x 176 resolution ePaper display. These are intended for use as small dynamic signage in grocery stores since a barcode displayed on it can be scanned by a laser barcode-reader. The display does not require any power to keep the image and will stay ‘on’ without any power connection for many days before slowly fading. Of course, it’s also daylight readable and is very high contrast. This makes it excellent for data-logging applications, outdoor displays, or any other ultra-low power usages. Just like a Kindle, you can read whatever is on your screen in daylight without any reflection. More information including wiring diagrams, datasheets & and links to example code are available at rePaper.

Potential uses:

  • An eInk / ePaper name tag
  • Display the latest weather forecast
  • A Raspberry Pi ePaper watch
  • Display your own Twitter Feed
  • Small dynamic digital signage (such as displaying prices for products in a store)
  • Outdoor displays where you don’t want the screen to be affected by sunlight reflection
  • Any sort of data-logging applications

Compatible with Raspberry Pi Zero, A+, B+, 2B, and 3B (any 2×20 connector Pi). For a Pi Zero-sized pHAT, find the PaPiRus Zero here.

Note: Raspberry Pi computer not included!

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