Line Laser Diode – 5mW 650nm Red: You have some frickin’ sharks at your lair, and you’re thinking “it would be really great if I could attach some lasers to them” and then you see these little laser diode modules: what great timing! These encapsulated laser diodes are Class IIIa 5mW, with a 650nm red wavelength. They can be driven from 2.8V to 5.2V so they’re great for your embedded electronics project. This particular laser diode has a lens attached to turn the dot into a line. We think this would be particularly good for making a 3D scanner, but there are probably many other cool uses! Simply connect power to the red and black wires and you will be lasing in no time. The line beam spread is 120° – so from a distance of 5cm the line is 15cm long. The line fades out and doesn’t have a sharp cut-off. (read more)
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
