Hello Readers

The month of August is now over and hence another competition. There were six questions hidden among the August articles, and for the curious the questions and answers were:

1. In which country is the Gravitech Nano MP3 board assembled? – United States;
2. If you had six pushwheel switches, how many numbers greater than zero can be displayed? – 999999;
3. Which SMD package type is the SAA1064 used on the Gravitech 7-segment shield? – SOIC (also accepted SO-24, SOT-137 1 etc.)
4. How many LEDs are on the Snootlab Rotoshield when constructed? Five – there are four bi-colour SMD LEDs on the PCB and the user solders in the power LED. Some people count the bi-colours as two LEDs, so I also accepted an answer of nine;
5. What does I²C stand for? – Inter-integrated Circuit;
6. What was the CPU speed of the original MITS Altair 8800 computer? – A scorching 2 MHz.

Craig from Western Australia who has won a brand-new  Freetronics EtherTen!

This is the mother of all Arduino-compatible boards. Designed in Australia and manufactured to the highest quality standards the EtherTen replaces three boards – consider having an Arduino Uno SMD, Ethernet shield with PoE, and a microSD shield – all on the one board. From the Freetronics website:

The EtherTen is a 100% Arduino compatible board that can talk to the world. Do Twitter updates automatically, serve web pages, connect to web services, display sensor data online, and control devices using a web browser. The Freetronics EtherTen uses the same ATmega328P as the Duemilanove and the same Wiznet W5100 chip used by the official Arduino Ethernet Shield, so it’s 100% compatible with the Ethernet library and sketches. Any project you would previously have built with an Arduino and an Ethernet shield stacked together, you can now do all in a single, integrated board.

We’ve even added a micro SD card slot so you can store web content on the card, or log data to it.

All the good things about the Eleven and the Ethernet Shield have been combined into this one device so please see those pages for all the specific details, but the highlights include:

• Gold-plated PCB.
• Top and bottom parts overlays.
• Top-spec ATmega328P MCU.
• Mini-USB connector: no more shorts against shields!
• D13 pin isolated with a MOSFET so you can use it as an input.
• Power-over-Ethernet support, both cheapie DIY or full 802.3af standards-compliant.
• Ethernet activity indicators on the PCB and the jack.
• 10/100base-T auto-selection.
• Fully compatible with standard Ethernet library.
• Reset management chip.
• Fixed SPI behavior on Ethernet chipset.
• Robust power filtering.
• Sexy rounded corners.

Note that just like our Ethernet Shield with PoE support, the EtherTen provides a number of options for different Power over Ethernet. You can use the supplied jumpers and feed 7-12Vdc down the wire for cheap DIY version, or you can fit our PoE Regulator 24V and feed a bit more voltage down the wire, or you can use our PoE Regulator 802.3AF along with a proper commercial PoE injector or switch. It’s up to you.

And the second winner is Uday K-A – who has won a brand-new Freetronics LCD & Keypad shield

This LCD and Keypad Shield gives you a handy 16-character by 2-line display, 5 buttons and a controllable backlight, plug it straight in on top of your Arduino board or other project shields.
The display is set behind the shield for a low profile fitment and nice look and we’ve included panel mounting screw holes in the corners.

It’s great when you want to build a stand-alone project with its own user interface that doesn’t require a computer attached to send commands to your Arduino.

Works perfectly in 4-bit mode with the “LiquidCrystal” library included with the Arduino IDE, allowing you to control the LCD with a total of just 6 digital I/O lines. We’ve deliberately picked D4-D9 so that it doesn’t interfere with pins required by other popular products such as the Ethernet Shield and EtherTen, so you can stack this on top of other shields to give you a local display.

The buttons provide “left”, “right”, “up”, “down”, and “select” while using just one analog input. That leaves the other analog inputs free for you to use in your projects.

The LCD backlight is connected to D3 and can be controlled for on/off, brightness and flashing effects.

Features:

• 16×2 LCD using HD44780-compatible display module (white characters on blue background).
• 5 buttons on one analog input (A0).
• LCD backlight with current limiting, brightness and on/off controllable by D3, can be moved to D2, D10, A1, A2, A3, A4 or A5 for easy project pin compatibility.
• Recessed LCD, panel mount screw holes and button layout suitable for panel or cabinet mounting if desired.
• Reset button.
• Power supply smoothing capacitor.
• Gold-plated PCB for maximum durability.
• Overlay printed on both the top and the bottom.
• Pins used by shield clearly marked, LiquidCrystal library setup reference is on the bottom of the pcb for convenience.

So another month – another competition. The next competition will be announced soon with another group of great prizes.

And of course thanks to our generous competition sponsor Freetronics!

Posted via email from tronixstuff’s posterous | Comment »