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The LED Strip Bricklet is now available in version 1.1. The new version of the LED Strip Bricklet has protective circuitry to protect WS28XX pixels from voltage spikes. The firmware/API of the Bricklet does not need any changes, software for the old version will be 100% compatible.

The Bricklet was sold out for the last ~2 weeks. Open backorders from this period were shipped today. We are sorry about the long delivery time for the LED Strip Bricklet, we did underestimate the “Christmas-demand” for LED things :-).

We now have a Tinkerforge gift card in our shop.

For everyone that still needs a present for Christmas, this may be a good option :-). You can choose the value of the gift card in 1€-steps. We ship the gift cards without shipping costs, as long as they are ordered individually.

Currently the gift card is only available with the German phrase “Gutscheinkarte im Wert von … €”.

Until now Brick Logger intervals could be defined in seconds. This is okay for slowly changing values such as temperature or humidity. But intervals in seconds might not be small enough for fast changing values as provided by the IMU Brick or Accelerometer Bricket as several users confirmed.

Because of that Brick Logger since version 2.0.2 (Brick Viewer since version 2.3.1) now supports intervals in milliseconds. Matching new time formats with millisecond resolution have been added as well as the option to define a custom time format using strftime syntax.

In many applications of the Tinkerforge building blocks it is necessary to log measurements that are later analyzed in a program such as Excel. It is not a huge amount of work to use our API to program a small data logger, insofar you can program. If you need a more convenient solution or if you can’t program there is now a ready to use program: The Brick Logger.

The Brick Logger is integrated into the newest release of the Brick Viewer (version 2.3.0). You can use the GUI to configure devices (Bricks or Bricklets) and corresponding sensor values that are to be logged. The output format as well as the host can be configured. Thus it is possible to log measured data directly from a Brick/Bricklet, from a different PC or from a stack with Ethernet/WIFI Extension.

You can configure and start the logger directly from within the Brick Viewer. Additionally you can save the configuration and use a Brick-Logger-Python-Script without Brick Viewer. As an additional alternative we offer a RED Brick program that can be uploaded to the RED Brick.

A more detailed description can be found in the Brick Logger documentation.

Today we have released the Tinkerforge Workbench. It is perfect for everybody that wants to experiment with Tinkerforge components and wants to present the project in a tidy way.

It is a plastic case with a size of 240x140mm and a slightly tilted front panel. The front panel has a grid of 3mm drill holes, that have a distance of 5mm to each other. You can mount all of the Tinkerforge modules on this grid, as well as other circuit boards or other hardware projects. Cables can be put through slots and guided unobtrusively at the bottom site of the case. The resulting projects are thus always clean and tidy, even if they have complex wiring.

In the middle of the front panel is enough space to either mount a stack of Bricks or a Raspberry Pi (which unfortunately does not have a 5mm compatible grid). If you use a Raspberry Pi, you can still put up to four Bricks at the bottom side of the front panel (inside of the case). If that is not enough, you can of course also mount Bricks at any other position of the case.

The struts at the front and at the back also have 3mm drill holes. These can be used to mount other construction. As an example we attached a simple HDMI display mount made with MakerBeams:

If you miss a mounting option somewhere, you can easily drill new holes into the acrylic plastic. We wish you lots of fun with this case and hope to be able to see some photos of your projects!