Hardware Specifications
Inputs
- Integrated Temperature Sensor for measuring ambient temperature.
- Integrated Light sensor that can measure relative light intensity.
- Integrated Potentiometer to allow and simplify setting levels of intensity and thresholds.
- Touch Pad and Input Switch to enable user inputs.
- 38Khz Infrared Receiver which allows wireless remotes to control physical devices like robots.
Outputs
- WS2812B Smart RGB LED for Colored Light Mixing.
- I2C OLED Display for Visual Data Representation *
- Multi tone Piezo buzzer for audio experiments.
- Arduino Digital I/O’s connected to LED’s, enabling very quick debugging and error corrections.
Connectivity
- ESP8226-01 Module to allow seamless Internet and Cloud Connectivity *
- Connections and hardware that allows Arduino to be programmed over WiFi.
- NRF24L01+ Module which allows for Mesh Networking and Collaborative Decision Making. *
- Bluetooth and BLE Modules for connectivity to smartphones *
Extensibility/Advanced features
- Expansion ports for Digital and Analog pins of Arduino.
- Micro SD Card Socket for data accumulation and storage.*
- Additional Voltage Regulator and onboard power conditioning hardware for 3.3 V devices.
- Selection Hardware (Jumpers) for enable/disable features (User Selectable).
- Compatible with Major Arduino Boards( new devices being added every week).
Our premise of creating this product has come from experience teaching 450 kids for the last two years, how to get started with Arduino, and eventually build good projects with them.
Wiring hardware is crucial skill to have, but overwhelming for first timers. The kids have already been exposed to the scratch programming environment for Arduino. We believe there is a market for a product like this, that alleviates the need to wire, solder and build circuits on a breadboard. Some of these hardware cannot be put on a breadboard for their physical packages being SMD only ( ws2812B or the SD card), or require complex wiring to do level conversion. ( ESP8266 and the SD card)
We are running the campaign to gauge interest for the larger community.
Videos are coming soon. You can look at some of our draft work here, https://github.com/CuriosityGym/Arduino-Sketches
Some of these are a Weather Gadget that auto detects location by IP, a gmail alarm for physical email, examples around two of these shields talking to each other etc.
The product also has the unique ability to program the Arduino over the Local Wifi Network.
Love to hear more feedback! Thanks!