Today I had a parcel from Farnell / element14. Nice parcel, next day delivery as usual and it looked the usual, not very exciting box; but I knew what goodies lay inside for me.
Inside the delights waiting my attention are lovely new Raspberry Pi B+ with Noobs SD card.
I love this new bit of kit, those extra usb slots will be useful, and as for those additional shiny new GPIO pins, well they are going to be so useful!
This new toy will be put into the next item out of the box, an nice looking clear enclosure.
This looks lovely, seems to be of good construction and pretty robust. I did find a small potential risk when putting the Pi in its new home; you need to put the Pi into the case in the right way. With the usb slots etc you can't put the Pi in upside down or anything, what I mean is that you must hook the board under the tags on the GPIO side of the case then click the opposite side down. It seems to risky to do it the other way as you need to put too much pressure on the Pi.
Next is a new shield for my Arduino. My PhD project is looking at smart home technology and how it can be used in a social care environment and I am looking at using ZigBee as the protocol to connect all my bits of kit in the house. The shield is a RF shield with a ZigBee module that will be used in my proof of concept stages. The idea is to be able to turn either my Uno or Mega ADK into whatever type of sensor I need to test at that particular point and by using the shield it will be able to communicate with the rest of the house. That is the plan, we will see how it goes.
The module has an antennae, the little black bit sticking up that looks like some kind of starting handle.
The smallest item is the temperature sensor that will be used to measure temperature not surprisingly 
A really boring picture next
Nothing else to say on this one!
Last but not least comes a real nice addition to my element14 Beaglebone Black. An expansion cape with LCD display
I am so looking forward to playing with this; I am going to see what info I can get out of my systems and use this cape to display the results.
So, there you go, a lovely haul of stuff that has been sponsored by Farnell element14 to assist me with my PhD over the next 3 years. I am going to be posting blogs in the appropriate areas as time passes, for example the arduino group for my work with the ZigBee networking gear and the BeagleBone Black group as I work with this. I intend to keep these blogs going throughout my PhD so you can see how my work progresses. I want something from you, fellow community members though. Input! Ideas! Conversation!
Kit List
| Farnell Number | Description |
| 1546390 | ZIGBEE MODULE, XBEE ZNET, WIRE ANT |
| 1848697 | ZIGBEE MOD, XBEE, WITH OUT RF MOD |
| 2364756 | BB View_43 LCD DISPLAY CAPE, FOR BEAGLEBONE |
| 2431427 | Raspberry Pi Pi B+ & SD card |
| 2426744 | RasPi Enclosure |
| 2191832 | TSIC 301 T092 temp sensor |
