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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!

We now have the new RS485 Extension (Version 1.1) in our shop.

With hardware version 1.1 we added additional filters for supression of interferences. This means that the RS485 Extension is now even more resistent to interferences.

The RS485 Extension in version 1.1 behaves the same as the old Extension in version 1.0. There are no software changes necessary and the two different versions are of course compatible to each other.