Blog

With the Industrial Dual 0-20mA Bricklet and the PTC Bricklet there are now two new products available in our shop. Both Bricklets are available for an introductory price of 16.99€ until July 21st.

The Industrial Dual 0-20mA Bricklet can be used to read out sensors that are not based on voltage but on current. If voltage is used for measuring, there is always voltage drop (depending on wire length etc) that can distort the measurment. Problems of this kind can not occur if current is measured. This kind of sensor interface is typically used in an industrial environment. It is standardized under IEC 60381-1. The Bricklet can read out up to two sensors at the same time. It has a high accuracy (0.15%), resolution (up to 0.172µA) and sample rate (up to 240 samples per second).

With the PTC Bricklet we provide the possibility to read out Pt100 and Pt1000 temperature sensors. Those are so called PTC thermistors, i.e. temperature-sensitive resistors. The sensors are available in different types (accuracy classes, 2-, 3- and 4-wire) and for different purposes. Often it is used to measure very low or high temperatures or in the food sector. It is not easy to read out Pt100 or Pt1000 sensors with a high accuracy. We use an IC that is specifically made for this purpose. It has a resolution of 15bit (0.03125°C) and a accuracy of 0.5% on the full measurement scale (-246°C to 849°C). We support 2-,3- and 4-wire type. This allows to chose the correct sensor for a specific use case, the PTC Bricklet supports all Pt100 and Pt1000 sensors.

As of now we have a new Mounting Plate as well as a new Rail Mounting Kit in our Shop.

The Mounting Plate has a size of 120x60mm with 22x10 holes in a 5mm grid.

The Mounting Plate comes with four self-adhesive non-slip rubber feet and a Mounting Plate Connector. With the connector it is possible to string together several Mounting Plates:

With the Rail Mounting Kit it is possible to mount nearly all Bricks and Bricklets on DIN rail:

The mounting to the rail itself is done with 1x WAGO 288-001 Mounting Carrier and 2x WAGO 288-002 Mounting Foot. On the Mounting Carrier you can mount nearly all Bricks and Bricklets to a 42x62mm PMMA plate.

Additionally to the new mounting possibilities there will be compatible cases for Bricklets in the near future, stay tuned!

As in the previous year, we will be at the Elektor Live as an exhibitor.

This year the Elektor Live will take place on 13th October in the Congress Park of Hanau. Besides our building blocks we will present the different starter kits which will be available until then. We look forward to meet some of you guys there.

Based on the many different feature requests, we can finally release the new Ethernet Extension. The Customer wishes included PoE support, such that a whole stack of Bricks and Bricklets can be powered by an Ethernet cable. Another request was, that the Ethernet jack is on the Extension itself, a two-circuit-board solution was not desired. Since there is not much height available in the stack, most of the Ethernet jacks were out of the question. In the end we had to find a manufacturer that could produce a custom Ethernet jack for us, which supports PoE and has an acceptable height. This was one of the reasons for the long waiting time before the release.

But now it’s happening, the Ethernet Extension is available in the shop. It has an introductory price of 49.99€ (valid until June 30th).

The introductory price of 99.99€ (compared of the regular pice of 130.33€) will be extended until June 6th.

The magazines c’t Hardware Hacks and Elektor are reporting about the Starter Kit: Weather Station in their current issues. We extended the discount by two weeks (until June 6th). This will allow Elektor and c’t readers to still receive the introductory discount.