Did you know that the Raspberry Pi has drivers installed that support the FTDI FT232RL USB to Serial chip? So if you find you need to add another serial TTL port to your Raspberry Pi you can just plug in one of the above boards to a USB slot and you automatically have another serial TTL port.
The Big Easy Driver, designed by Brian Schmalz, is a stepper motor driver board for bi-polar stepper motors up to 2A/phase. It is based on the Allegro A4983 stepper driver chip. It's the next version of the popular Easy Driver board.
Each BigEasyDriver can drive up to about 2A per phase of a bi-polar stepper motor. It is a chopper microstepping driver which defaults to 16 step microstepping mode. It can take a maximum motor drive voltage of around 35V, and includes on-board 5V/3.3V regulation, so only one supply is necessary. Although this board should be able to run most systems without active cooling, a heatsink is recommended for loads approaching 2A/phase.
www.hobbytronics.co.uk/big-easy-stepper-driver
The Hobbytronics LCD Backpack is a useful little board
that can be soldered onto the back of LCD’s that use the standard
Hitachi HD44780 compatible interface. This allows the LCD (and backlight
if fitted) to be controlled directly from a microcontroller using
either the I2C interface or via a serial RX connection at baud rates from 2400 up to 115200.
This has a number of advantages
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Reduces the minimum number of connections needed from 12 (for an LCD
with backlight) to only 3 or 4 thus saving many input/output pins on the
microcontroller
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Control an LCD using virtually any microcontroller either through the
I2C interface or via a serial RX connection (either in hardware or
software)
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Simplifies wiring
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Digital control of LCD backlight brightness from off (0) to fully on (250) and any level in between
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LCD Contrast adjustment potentiometer fitted to backpack
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Allows the connection of multiple LCD displays to one microcontroller without additional pins.
www.hobbytronics.co.uk/i2clcd-backpack-v2
Make some noise with your next project! The MP3 Trigger board is built
to make MP3 sound integration easier than ever. The board has 18
external trigger pins that will directly trigger pre-selected MP3
tracks, and a full-duplex serial control port that provides full
transport control, remote triggering for up to 256 tracks, and fast
real-time volume control. MP3s are stored on FAT16 formatted SDSC or
FAT32 formatted SDHC micro-SD flash memory cards. In addition, optimized
code now achieves 192Kbps stereo playback from a wider range of cards
than before.
The heart of the MP3 Trigger board is the Cypress PSoC CY8C29466-24SXI
microcontroller which serves up MP3 data to a VLSI VS1063 audio codec
IC. This version also supports an optional initialization file that can
be used to set the serial port baud rate as well as to reprogram any of
the 18 trigger inputs to alternate functions, including random and
sequential track selection, transport controls and even volume up/down.
Each conventional trigger can be set to either allow immediate restarts,
or to lock out restarts if audio is playing. Also, a new trigger
filename convention provides greater flexibility in naming your MP3
tracks and makes file management easier.
www.hobbytronics.co.uk/mp3-trigger-board
This is a breakout board for the Maxim MAX7456 monochrome on-screen
display chip. The board is set up with all supporting circuitry and RCA
connectors to allow the user to easily interrupt and overlay text and/or
graphics onto a video signal (PAL or NTSC). Just plug in your video
signal to "Video In", plug your TV into "Video Out", connect a
microcontroller to the SPI interface and supply the board with 5V@100mA
(worst case) and you're good to go. Supplied sample code runs on an
ATMega168/328 (16MHz) and compiles with WinAVR, so it's just about
"plug-and-play" with an Arduino board.
Features:
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Input voltage 5V
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Current consumption 100mA, worst case
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5V SPI interface
http://www.hobbytronics.co.uk/max7456-on-screen-display
Hot on the heels of our standard Raspberry Pi GPIO Breakout Board, we have the Pro version. In the same form factor we have added a 500mA 3.3V voltage regulator to power all of your sensors and devices. The Raspberry Pi uses quite a lot of the onboard regulator's power
output leaving very little for anything you may want to connect up that
requires a 3.3V supply. So now you have 500mA at your disposal without
affecting the Raspberry Pi's power.
Supplied in kit form, it includes the following
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GPIO Breakout Board PCB with all surface mount components already soldered on
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2 x 13 way header pins
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26 way IDC box header.
Soldering is required to assemble the kit.
http://www.hobbytronics.co.uk/raspberry-pi-gpio-breakout-pro
