Adafruit New Products this Week: Featuring Ultra High Density DotStar LED PCB Bar! @adafruit #adafruit

All the new products at Adafruit this week!

NEW PRODUCTS THIS WEEK

Ada Twist, Scientist – The creators of the New York Times bestselling picture books Rosie Revere, Engineer and Iggy Peck, Architect are back with a story about the power of curiosity in the hands of a child who is on a mission to use science to understand her world. Ada Twist, Scientist, from powerhouse team Andrea Beaty and David Roberts, is a celebration of STEM, perseverance, and passion.

Black Miniature Metal Webcam Cover – Let’s just say, hypothetically, that someone wanted to take over your webcam and observe your every move. And let’s just say you didn’t want them to – because, hypothetically, you were building an open-source white hat firewall, or an CircuitPython chaos inciter, or you can only do one pull-up and just ate a whole bag of Bugles.

Then maybe spending a couple bucks on a webcam blocking sticker wouldn’t seem so ridiculous. They’re pitch black, like an eye-hole-free balaclava for your monitor’s built-in webcam, and have an inset, minimal black cover to rep your privacy concerns. The metal slider is super-thin so your laptop can easily shut even if you have the fanciest new Applebook. Also works great on phones and tablets with a flat glass camera area.

Circuit Playground Bolt-On Kit – You have a Circuit Playground Express, but you need to mount it to your charming cardboard robot friend, eh? Not so easy if you don’t have a set of standoffs!

Fancy Lock-sport Pick Set – 12 Picks and 3 Wrenches – Heard about locksport and want to try it for yourself? It’s a fun hobby you can pick up easily (ha!). It’s like a Rubik’s cube but you have to work by feel alone. And all you need to get started is a lock and a pick-set. We recommend kicking off with our beginner transparent padlock, it’s a perfect first lock. Once you’ve gained confidence you can check your local hardware store (or look through your basement/attic?) for other locks to try.

Basic Lock-sport Pick Set – 9 Picks and 2 Wrenches – Heard about locksport and want to try it for yourself? It’s a fun hobby you can pick up easily (ha!). It’s like a Rubik’s cube but you have to work by feel alone. And all you need to get started is a lock and a pick-set.

Coming soon! We want to reprogram our stock with the newest CircuitPython 3.0 before shipping these out! Adafruit pIRkey – a Python Programmable InfraRed USB Adapter –
The pIRkey adds an IR remote receiver to any computer, laptop, tablet…any computer or device with a USB port that can use a keyboard. This little board slides into any USB A port, and shows up as an every-day USB keyboard. The onboard ATSAMD21 microcontroller listens for IR remote signals and converts them to keypresses, mouse movements, or even USB serial output.

Ultra High Density DotStar LED PCB Bar – 128 LEDs – Look, just bolt this to your ceiling fan already – we know that’s the first thing you thought of! OK, so you already know what DotStar LEDs are – those digitally controllable LEDs that have two data wires and higher refresh rates for than NeoPixels. You can control them with any microcontroller since the timing on the data lines isn’t particular, and you can use an SPI peripheral to send data pretty fast. DotStars come in the classic 5050 (5mm x 5mm) size as well as an adorable 2020 (2mm x 2mm)

So what we have here is a special rigid PCB with 128 those tiny 2mm x 2mm LEDs on em, as close as possible. We already have flexible LEDs, but with the ultra high density (240 LED/meter density) we have here, you have to go rigid. Also, instead of a plain FR4 PCB it has an aluminum backing for extra strength and heat dissipation. Note that the PCB is rigid but requires support so it doesn’t droop and crack. It’s not intended to be bent or curved at all, and if you do so you may crack the copper traces.

New Products 5/23/2018 Featuring Ultra High Density DotStar LED PCB Bar!