I think we might be coming to the end of the Prize announcements.
So, last but not least are the Prizes donated by 4tronixs.
Robot lovers Prizes from 4tronixs |
These prizes are especially situated to the robots lovers.
Each Prize includes:
The PlayHat includes a 3x3 full colour neopixel LED matrix, 4 big buttons and a buzzer.
Great for programming with the Raspberry Pi. This is just begging out for a game of Simon to be created.
Motors are fun things. When they start they draw a lot of power (think of train pulling out of the station. It needs far more power to get going then it does to keep itself moving. Same thing for motors). This mean if you want to drive motors you need extra circuitry to do it safely without damaging your Raspberry Pi. The PiRoCon is one of the best solutions for this for the Raspberry Pi.
In addition to motors drawing a lot of power when they start and stop they can also affect the voltage and current of electronics drawing from the same power supply. This can cause difficulties in getting good readings or accurate control. This is where the iBoost64 comes in. It cleans up the signals and makes them good without affecting the rest of the circuit. Ideal for robots where there can be a lot of stopping and starting of motors as well as reading of external sensors for line following or object avoidance.
With the combination of the PiRoCon and iBoost64 you have the electronics to get that robot built.
If working in Scratch the current ScratchGPIO library from Simon Walters supports the PiRoCon.
If you have robots you will need power. The final 2 boards are a 1 way and 4 way charger board for Li-Po batteries. These are great batteries for robotic as they store lots of energy and give out a consistent voltage. Cheap batteries have a power curve that means they very quickly drop from the maximum voltage which can cause lots of problems with motors. Li-Po batteries are the ones used in high quality remote control cars.
Unfortunately you can't just plug a Li-Po battery into your normal battery charger due to the way they work so custom chargers are usually provided or need to be purchased with the battery. These great little boards mean you can use a standard 5V microUSB power supply to charge the batteries. This is the same type of power supply used for the Raspberry Pi, meaning if you are building a Raspberry Pi based robot you will already have the correct power supply.
There are 2 different boards included. A 1 way, so it can charge 1 battery and a 4 way which can change 4 batteries at the same time. Giving you more than enough power for your laser guided, GPS tracking, missile shooting, web cam streaming, grabber, digger, flame thrower robot. Or maybe just a line following robot.
From the picture you can see they also provided some pens.
Thank you 4tronixs for the prizes.