NEW PRODUCT – mbed Application Board – Turbo-charge your mbed LPC1769 dev board with this compact but feature-full application board. Fully assembled, just plug in your mbed and you will be ready to rock.

Featuring:

1. 128×32 Graphics LCD
2. 5 way joystick
3. 2 x Potentiometers
4. 3.5mm Audio jack (Analog Out)
5. Speaker, PWM Conencted
6. 3 Axis +/1 1.5g Accelerometer
7. 3.5mm Audio jack (Analog In)
8. 2 x Servo motor headers
9. RGB LED, PWM connected
10. USB-mini-B Connector
11. Temperature sensor
12. Socket for for Xbee (Zigbee) or RN-XV (Wifi)
13. RJ45 Ethernet conenctor
14. USB-A Connector
15. 1.3mm DC Jack input

mbed board not included (but we have them in the shop!)
For more details, and a cookbook of code and project ideas, check out the mbed.org cookbook page.

Technical Details:

• Dimensions: 56.27mm / 2.2″ x 85.95mm / 3.38″ x 15.22mm / 0.6″
• Weight: 46.65g

In stock and shipping now!

Some good news for fans of the popular mbed platform … the core libraries are now available on github under an open source license!  You can read the announcement here, but this is good news for a platform that was already very easy to use and powerful, and this announcement will hopefully get people who might have been turned off but it’s semi-closed nature to take another look!  Curious what it’s all about?  You can grab an mbed right here and get started with ARM yourself today!

Over at DesignSpark, they posted a preview of an upcoming ‘Lab Board’ for the mbed microcontroller.  It is pretty insane what they have fit onto a credit card sized board.  Here are some of the included features:

• 128 x 32 graphics backlit LCD, SPI interface
• 3-axis accelerometer, +/- 1.5g, I2C interface
• Temperature sensor, I2C interface
• 5-way navigation switch (Thumb joystick)
• 2 x Potentiometers
• RGB LED, PWM connected
• Miniature loudspeaker, PWM connected
• Socket headers for Xbee Zigbee module or RN-XV Wifi module
• 2 x 3.5mm audio jack (Analogue In/Out)
• 2 x standard R/C servo motor headers
• Mini-USB connector (keyboard, mouse, MIDI)
• USB-A connector (Flash drive, Bluetooth, GSM Modem(UK Only))
• RJ-45 Ethernet connector
• 1.3mm 6 to 9Vdc jack socket (Powering USB-A and Servo headers)
• And of course the double-row header for the LPC1768 mbed module itself

Watch out for the official announcement on Twitter.

mbed + extras – LPC1768 development board [v5.1]. The mbed is a tool for rapid prototyping with microcontrollers using the beefy LPC1768 ARM Cortex M3 chip. While it looks like a classic breadboard-friendly breakout board, this dev board has a few tricks up its sleeve. First of all, underneath the PCB is a second LPC chip which acts as the programmer: when plugging into a USB port the mbed shows up as a flash drive and programs can be ‘dragged’ onto it for uploading. This makes it easy to program without an external device, and makes bricking impossible. There’s also a bunch of indicator LEDs, and a little flash storage chip as well.

In Stock and Shipping Now

The Adafruit ARDX – v1.3 Experimentation Kit for Arduino.  This is by far the best way to get your feet wet with Arduino.  I use this exact kit when I teach an Arduino 101 class at The Mill in Minneapolis, MN.

We also offer a great starter pack for the Arduino.  This pack includes everything you need to follow along with Ladyada’s fantastic Arduino tutorial.  Once you have completed the online tutorials you will have some great gear to get you started on your first project.  We also have a budget Arduino pack that will allow you to finish Ladyada’s tutorial as well.

If you are looking to get into robotics, or teach a robotics class, look no further than the Parallax BOEBot.  This robot is built like a tank, and has a ton of functionality to get you or your students hooked on robotics.  The best part of the whole system is Parallax’s amazing online guide for the BOEBot.  Because of the built-in breadboard, once you have completed the tutorials, you can modify the bot to do what you want.

When you are in need of a microcontroller with a lot more processing power than the Arduino, the BeagleBone is a great place to start.  We have a starter pack that will get your project up and running in no time.

mbed is another really powerful microcontroller that is also super easy to use thanks to the mbed online IDE.  We have this neat mbed RFID/NFC starter kit that will not only introduce you to the mbed, but also teach you how to incorporate RFID/NFC into your projects.

If you want to teach someone of any age (and we mean any age) about electronics, be sure to check out littleBits.  This neat kit has a bunch of electronics components that snap together with magnets to create custom circuits.  There is no wrong way to hook up your littleBits, and they have a lot of great project examples online to give you some inspiration.

Adafruit for Educators! #backtoschool

Please visit our educator’s section to learn more about:

• Adafruit volume discounts and programs for educators, discounts galore!
• Adafruit electronic kits, products, Arduino & Raspberry Pi products for education, we have’em!
• Adafruit products and Arduino for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Used in schools!
• The Adafruit System, the best way to learn electronics!
• Adafruit iron-on “skill badges” / patches and partners, celebrate skills building!
• Resources for educators, our picks for educators!
• Adafruit for educators content on Adafruit.com, daily posts for educators!
• Circuit Playground – iPad/iPhone App For Educators, volume discounts via Apple’s edu program!
• Adafruit copyright permission for educators, educators can use them, hassle-free!

Visit.

Lauszus posted a great video of his mbed based balancing robot on Youtube.

I have for a long time wanted to build a remote controllable balancing robot aka Segway – that’s was actually the main reason why I created the PS3 Bluetooth Library both for Arduino and the FEZ Devices. It has been a long time since the sneak peak and the performance has been improved a lot since then. The original one had a FEZ Rhino as the main processor, but I discovered that it was not fast enough to read the encoders, as it is not running embedded code. Also I was already using more than 10ms per loop, which I used as a fixed time loop, so I decided to step up a notch and go for a much more powerful device: the mbed microcontroller, which is an ARM Cortex-M3 running 96MHz.

There is a great writeup here, including links to the original code (and an Arduino only version).

NEW PRODUCT – mbed + extras – LPC1768 development board [v5.1]. The mbed is a tool for rapid prototyping with microcontrollers using the beefy LPC1768 ARM Cortex M3 chip. While it looks like a classic breadboard-friendly breakout board, this dev board has a few tricks up its sleeve. First of all, underneath the PCB is a second LPC chip which acts as the programmer: when plugging into a USB port the mbed shows up as a flash drive and programs can be ‘dragged’ onto it for uploading. This makes it easy to program without an external device, and makes bricking impossible. There’s also a bunch of indicator LEDs, and a little flash storage chip as well.

Writing code for the mbed is a little different than you may be used to. Instead of downloading the IDE and installing it locally, the user must instead visit the http://mbed.org website and use the web-based ‘cloud’ programming system. Since the board is programmed via drag-n-drop, no software is installed. The good news is that it means its easy to work on anywhere you are just by logging on, and there’s a vibrant social network sharing code on the mbed site. The bad news is that Internet access is required to work on a project.

New users can get started with mbed tools in 60 seconds, by plugging in an mbed microcontroller, going to the mbed.org website to sign up, and downloading and running a “Hello World!” binary just like saving to a USB flash drive. Compiling a first program takes only 60 seconds more; Launch the browser-based compiler, create a new template project, click ‘compile’ to build and download the binary – there is nothing to configure or install, and everything works on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

The mbed’s core chip, the NXP LPC1768 features:

• 40-pin DIP, 0.1″ pitch form-factor
• 100MHz NXP LPC1768 MCU with ARM® Cortex™-M3 Core
• 64KB RAM, 512KB FLASH
• Ethernet (requires magnetics and jack), USB, 2xSPI, 2xI2C, 2xCAN 3xUART, 6xPWM, 6xADCs, 1xDAC
• USB drag ‘n’ drop programming
• High-level C++ libraries
• Online browser-based toolchain

For experienced users, mbed provides a fast way to create proof-of-concept designs in the early stages of development. For developers using older microcontrollers, discrete logic, or even those new to the industry, mbed removes the barriers to the world of modern 32-bit microcontrollers.

In stock and shipping!