There are some fantastic new products to talk about, all fresh for the new year! First up – the new mbed.

It uses NXP’s Cortex-M0 LPC11U24 chip and is expressly designed to get you up and running *quickly* with USB and low power applications. It’s cheaper than the original mbed, and comes in a natty shade of yellow (!!). The online compiler used to write the mbed code has been updated as well to work with the new processor.

You may have seen the Fez Spider ‘.Net Gadgeteer’ kit – now say hello to the Spider’s big sister, the Hydra. It’s a 100% open-source (hardware and software) .NET Gadgeteer compatible mainboard running .NET Micro Framework. It incorporates a 240Mhz AT91SAMRL ARM9 processor. With 16MB of SDRAM an 4MB of FLASH. Whoooaa!

Arduino have released some new goodies – first up, the Uno has been reworked and released as ‘Revision 3′. There’s really not much difference, but a couple of extra signals are broken out to new pins. All of the old shields are still compatible. We’re now *only* selling revision 3 Unos.

Also released from Arduino, their official motor driver shield. Capable of driving two DC motors at varying speed and directions, the shield uses the L298P chip and can cope with 4 Amps per channel!

Finally, lets talk displays! The uLCD43 is a lovely, glossy touch screen from those folk at 4D Systems. It’s 4.3″ in size, 480 x 272 QVGA resolution, RGB 65,000 colours, with a touch overlay. Like most of 4D systems displays, this screen uses the ’4DGL’ display language to draw primitives and display images and video. As an added extra, the board also has an onboard sound output with built in amplifier! And that’s just the tip of the features iceberg!

*Loads* of you have been asking for it – and finally, the Fez Spider ‘Net Gadgeteer’ system has arrived. The kit boasts a powerful board that runs .NET micro framework with code written in C#. The top side of the main CPU board is filled with connector sockets, so that complex peripheral components can be easily attached and detached without soldering.

We’re initially selling the Fez Spider board as part of a kit including a display, a camera, and lots of other cool peripherals, however over time, you’ll start to see more and more of the components being listed on their own. We’re already listing the camera, serial USB module and mainboards separately.

New from the US, this fantastic Arduino shield. The Gameduino is based around a powerful chip that can handle basic, but high quality 2D sprite based computer graphics. The chip can also pump out good quality stereo sound effects. To top it all there’s a full size VGA monitor connector so you can hook up your 152″ plasma. All of this means that it’s easy to create very cool computer games.

Already the Gameduino’s creator has ported Manic Miner, Asteroids, and many others…

Next – if you’re using kit with an Xbee socket on it, why not make the move to WiFi? We’re now selling these impressive modules from Roving Networks. They’re a standard RN131 WiFly module in an Xbee form factor. The pins and power supplies are similar, so you can pull out your Xbee and plop in one of these.

Finally, for the UAV or RC fanatics out there a new board that allows you to control your aircraft from your Android enabled phone. The ‘phoneDrone’ board gives the phone a number of essential hardware resources including 8 servo channels and 3 serial ports. On the phone, software to control the board can be quickly written using Google’s ADK (Accessory Development Kit).

Last but not least, if you’re flying a quad (or hex or octo) copter, we now stock 10″ and 12″ propeller blades. They come in matched push/pull pairs with hub rings to match to your favourite brushless motor.

New from Arduino, a couple of boards that could really have a big impact on your projects!

First up, the Arduino Ethernet. It’s worth saying that this is actually a board with a processor on it, rather than a shield. The Arduino Ethernet effectively combines onto one PCB, the Arduino Uno and the Arduino Ethernet shield. Also – the version we’re selling has an additional PoE module. ‘PoE’ stands for ‘Power Over Ethernet’ and means that DC power can be provided down your LAN cable.

So why do we care about the Arduino Ethernet being PoE enabled? Really it’s because now, there’s an affordable, compact, network portable device that can be plonked (the posh word is ‘deployed’) onto your home/work/university network anywhere where there’s a PoE enabled LAN cable. In business and lots of educational institutions, that’s most places these days. Your Arduino can then sit quietly, reporting sensor readings to a central server, or maybe turn things on and off by remote request.

One final note on PoE – be careful, not all LAN cables have power running through them – this very much depends on your router. If your router doesn’t supplier PoE power into your LAN, you can buy add on modules that will do roughly the same thing. We supply several types.

Next up is the new Mega ADK for Android.

This board has been designed with the world of Android enabled phones / tablets in mind. It’s essentially the same Mega 2560 board but with a hardware interface that can be written to directly and easily by a new add-on to the Android programming language. There’s a USB host chip that talks to the phone, and a power supply that is able to recharge the phone. Because of the way that ADK software is written, it’s possible to plug in a few sensors, and have your phone run a complex, ‘real world’ application with just a few minutes worth of programming. Crazy!

Forgetting the ADK software side of things – because this board has a USB host interface all sorts of possibilities open up – just like the mbed, the board theoretically should be able to talk to various USB dongles – flash drives, GPRS dongles – all sorts!

It’s been a bit of time since our last new product post, and there’s loads and loads and loads of really exciting new stuff.

First up – these 1 metre long strips of RGB leds. Each led can be controlled individually via a 2 wire bus, and separate strips can be daisy chained together to form message displays or even basic ‘jumbo’ sized TV screens. Interfacing is pretty simple and can easily be handled by an Arduino, mbed, or Fez.

Olimex has been busy recently! They’ve updated their range of PIC based web servers to cover the PIC32 family of microprocessors. Most impressive is the PIC32-MAXI-WEB, with a lovely on-board 320×240 colour touch screen, 3 axis accelerometer, 2 relays, CAN drivers and a whole lot more!

Also new from Olimex is an updated range of MP3 players. The MOD-MP3-X appears to your PC as a mass storage device, but can play and record stereo audio in a variety of formats. Power is supplied from just one AA battery due to an on-board voltage converter.

On the RF side of things, we’re stocking these neat WiFi / MCU ‘all in one’ modules. The FlyPort is a WiFi module, PIC microcontroller and antenna on one board. The device has its own dedicated IDE that allows fast tracked code creation and deployment to the device. Have a look at our getting started tutorial to get an idea of how quickly you can be up and running.

Finally – don’t forget the .NET side of things – ideal if you’re a software guy looking to move into embedded hardware because you can write all of your embedded code in C# using Visual Studio. New on the block is the Fez Panda II – an enhanced and bang up-to-date version of its little brother the Fez Panda. What’s cool about this board (and many other .NET boards) is that it offers real time, on-device debugging, all from within your normal VS IDE. Nice….