New Shields for the Quickstart
Hi all, David Gitz here with FAST Robotics. After 15 years of designing, building and competing with robots, weve decided its our turn to give back to the community. We are proud to announce our new line of shields for the Parallax Quickstart. Our first product were launching is the Robot Shield.
Robot Shield Rev A
With the Robot Shield you get 8 Analog Inputs, 9 GPIO's, 4 LED's, a MicroSD card slot, Serial Interface and not to mention 4 Servo Outputs.
Datasheet
Just because we love the robotics community so much, we made 2 videos demonstrating how you can use the Robot Shield in your next project: Demo 1 and Demo 2 with Obstacle Detection.
We will be launching the Robot Shield Rev B with many improvements on Kickstarter in the next couple weeks and are planning on pricing it around $50-$55 including assembly and shipping.
In the next couple weeks we will also be launching the Radio Shield and Power Shield.
Radio Shield
Wanting to connect your Quickstart wirelessly? With the Radio Shield you can plug in your XBee compatible radio and get connected. But thats not all! The Radio Shield includes Signal Strength LEDs, RF shielding from your motors and switches to select either the default Propeller TX/RX lines or P7/P8.
Power Shield
Whats better than driving 4 Servos? Driving 32 Servos! With the Power Shield every pin from the Quickstart is broken out to a standard PWM Connector. Not to mention that each of the 4 Ports supply voltage is selectable between 5V, 6V and 7.4V with on-board DC-DC regulators at up to 2A! This aint your mommas Servo Shield. Of course you dont have to drive Servos with the pins, they can still be used for any Input/Output too.
Of course all our shields are stackable. We have a lot of ideas for other shields in the future, so stay tuned. At FAST Robotics we are firmly committed to the Open Source/Open Hardware movement. Thats why all of our source code (including the code for the 2 demo videos above, drawings, 3D models, etc. are all available on our website. If you have any feedback on these products you can post here or on our github page too!
Follow us @fastrobotics
Robot Shield Rev A
With the Robot Shield you get 8 Analog Inputs, 9 GPIO's, 4 LED's, a MicroSD card slot, Serial Interface and not to mention 4 Servo Outputs.
Datasheet
Just because we love the robotics community so much, we made 2 videos demonstrating how you can use the Robot Shield in your next project: Demo 1 and Demo 2 with Obstacle Detection.
We will be launching the Robot Shield Rev B with many improvements on Kickstarter in the next couple weeks and are planning on pricing it around $50-$55 including assembly and shipping.
In the next couple weeks we will also be launching the Radio Shield and Power Shield.
Radio Shield
Wanting to connect your Quickstart wirelessly? With the Radio Shield you can plug in your XBee compatible radio and get connected. But thats not all! The Radio Shield includes Signal Strength LEDs, RF shielding from your motors and switches to select either the default Propeller TX/RX lines or P7/P8.
Power Shield
Whats better than driving 4 Servos? Driving 32 Servos! With the Power Shield every pin from the Quickstart is broken out to a standard PWM Connector. Not to mention that each of the 4 Ports supply voltage is selectable between 5V, 6V and 7.4V with on-board DC-DC regulators at up to 2A! This aint your mommas Servo Shield. Of course you dont have to drive Servos with the pins, they can still be used for any Input/Output too.
Of course all our shields are stackable. We have a lot of ideas for other shields in the future, so stay tuned. At FAST Robotics we are firmly committed to the Open Source/Open Hardware movement. Thats why all of our source code (including the code for the 2 demo videos above, drawings, 3D models, etc. are all available on our website. If you have any feedback on these products you can post here or on our github page too!
Follow us @fastrobotics
Comments
It's really great to see this kind of third-party support for the Propeller! Good luck with your product offerings!
-Phil
What is the anticipated price for the Robot Shield? Any idea yet? - Edit - Duh! Just reread your original post! Sounds good!
We want to keep the Robot Shield at a decent price so the Rev B is going to avoid SMT parts as much as possible (we will install them) and all the other thru-hole parts will be installed by the customer. So we will be shooting for around $35 plus shipping for the Rev B.
If you would like to buy the Rev A we can definitely accommodate you but FYI there will be a couple simple modifications on the board. About half the parts on the Rev A are SMT and half are thru-hole. We can do the SMT parts, would you want us to do the thru-hole part insallation as well? I will post on here when you can order it from our webstore.
David Gitz
David Gitz