There are many companies trying to bring robotics into the mainstream by making them cheap, providing expansive open source, easy-to-learn software and illustrating their immense range of capabilities. German company, TinkerForge, truly stands out in this sector bringing a high degree of adaptable and diverse hardware is.
In the past year, TinkerForge has released a new way of making their robotics hardware easy to upgrade, modify and learn about. Bricks and Bricklets are what they call small, 1.57’’ x 1.57’’, modular circuit boards that users can simply stack on one another to expand and explore new capabilities.
At the foundation of every stack, there is a base Brick, equipped with a 32bit microcontroller, two status LED’s, a USB port, and connectors to stack up to four specialized Bricklets atop.
Examples of some TinkerForge Bricks are:
● Master Brick used to communicate signals between Bricklets
● IMU Brick that process complex sensor information
● DC Brick that drive motors
● Servo Brick capable of controlling up to 7 RC servos
In addition to these base Bricks, TinkerForge has a wide variety of Bricklets that perform specific tasks. Infrared distance sensors, temperature sensors, humidity sensors are just a few examples. Control Bricklets, like joysticks and linear or rotating potentiometers, are also available. TinkerForge even has small LCD screens, monitor outputs, and more. The easy-to-use software treats the Brick and Bricklets as individually controlled circuits for easier programming.
The Bricks range from about $15 to $60 and Bricklets from $4 to $25. They come with beginner friendly, PC compatible software but are also programmable using coding languages such as C, C++, C#, Java and Python. TinkerForge also makes project source code and design files, along with many other resources, available on their website tinkerforge.com.
I am sure TinkerForge wants to take a piece of the Arduino market. Do they have a chance to catch up?
Eavesdropper
