NEW MAKER TECH

Jeffrey Braverman

INTEL EDISON

$75 including breakout : makershed.com

Intel just started shipping Edison, their postage stamp-sized Linux computer-on-module platform. The board itself has some powerful specs: a dual core, dual threaded 500 MHz Atom processor and a 32-bit, 100 MHz Quark microcontroller for real-time functions. It has 1 gigabyte of RAM, 4 gigabytes of on-board flash memory, wi-fi, Bluetooth, and 40 GPIO pins for interfacing with your own hardware.

To get you started, Intel offers two breakout board options: one that has Arduino pin compatibility; and another that is much smaller for more advanced hardware developers. The company expects makers to use this tiny computer to create Internet of Things and wearable computing products.

—Matt Richardson

LOGI-PI

$90 : element14.com

While they’re quite powerful, getting started with FPGA development boards has its hurdles. In fact, setting up the development environment is often no easy task. Thanks to the LOGi-Pi add-on board for Raspberry Pi, you can get up and running in no time. Its Spartan-6 LX9 chip is great for applications such as real-time robotics control or computer vision. Not only do the developers of the LOGi-Pi provide a few open source examples to get you started, but they also offer API’s and wrappers so that you can program using C, C++, or Python. The board even has an Arduino pinout so that you can use LOGi-Pi with the shields you already have.

—MR

RASPBERRY PI MODEL B+

$35 : element14.com

In a recent development that we expect will delight makers, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a revision of their flagship product. The new Raspberry Pi Model B+ offers a few improved features over the Model B, which will continue to be available. The Model B+ has four USB ports instead of two and improved power circuitry. Its 40-pin connector breaks out additional GPIO pins, allowing you to connect more components to the Pi. Smaller differences include rounded corners on the board itself, a microSD card slot, and a single jack which carries the analog audio and video signals. The CPU and memory remain unchanged, as well as the board’s low price.

The new model also supports Raspberry Pi’s HAT specification, which defines the way expansion boards should be designed. The spec includes an automatic configuration method that allows users to add hardware easily with no need to load drivers or reconfigure their boards.

—MR

RPLIDAR

$399 : robopeak.com

LIDAR is like radar but uses a laser instead of a radio beam to sense distance. Pro-level applications include mapping terrain from orbit and keeping autonomous cars from running off the road.

This little guy mounts an invisible near-infrared laser (operating at eye-safe power levels) next to a detector, on a rotating head, with electronics that read the time required for laser pulses to bounce back from walls and other obstacles 2,000 times per second. The head speed can be adjusted to complete between one and 10 rotations in that time. Spinning slower gives better angular resolution but a slower refresh rate. Max range is about 20’, though this will vary with the reflectivity of nearby targets.

The software produces a 2D “flatland” map of vertical obstructions and is mostly intended for use in so-called SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) applications for indoor robots — basically building a real-time map of the surroundings and locating oneself within it. Theoretically, you could probably tilt or translate on the Z-axis and collect contours to build full 3D scans, but there’s a lot of coding between here and there.

—Sean Ragan