New Product Post
There are a lot of interesting products out this week. Each item speaks for itself, and they all lend themselves to out-of-the-box applications that will bring out the maker in you.
RFID has been around for a while, and the applications and uses for the technology are creative and diverse from tracking stolen cacti to barring the neighborhood vermin from entering your house via the doggie door. This week we are jump starting your RFID project by offering three Mini 125Khz RFID Modules: the Mini 125 kHz RFID Module – External LED/Buzzer Port and the Mini 125 kHz RFID Module – Pre-Soldered Antenna for either 35mm or 70mm reading distance.
All of them are read modules and support EM4100 compatible read only or read/write tags. The Mini 125 kHz RFID Module – External LED/Buzzer Port has a reading distance of 70mm and a buzzer port if you want to audibly be notified when a tag is read. For the pre-soldered antenna modules, they let you know when a tag is near with an LED indicator light. If you are unfamiliar with RFID and you want to get started, Ye Xiaobo created a 125 kHz RFID library for Arduino which is available for download from GitHub.
Have you thought about setting up your own interactive art installations or remote controlling your robot with your iPhone? Now you can with Konashi, a microcontroller that can connect to iOS phones and tablets via its embedded BLE module. Normally BLE (Bluetooth low energy) wireless capability is obtained through a separate add-on, like a shield, but this board delivers all-in-one. The board can be powered by an external source via USB-mircoB or by inserting a coin battery into the battery terminal. It supports several programming languages, including Objective-C, javascript, open source library SDKs, and konashi.js which is available in the App Store. With a wide variety of I/O pins including reconfigurable digital pins, analog pins, and 1 UART pin, you are good to go.
Until next time, keep on making.
Written by Erin Linke
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