Crowdfunding now
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CROWDFUNDING
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When backing a crowdfunding
campaign, you are not purchasing
a finished product, but supporting
a project working on something
new. There is a very real chance
that the product will never ship
and you’ll lose your money. It’s
a great way to support projects
you like and get some cheap
hardware in the process, but if
you use it purely as a chance to
snag cheap stuff, you may find
that you get burned.BUYER
BEWARE!ost microcontroller boards are designed to run
as stand-alone machines – you might add more
hardware to them, but not usually any more
processing power. Tomu is different. It’s an ARM-
powered microcontroller board that fits inside a USB port with
just enough sticking out for two LEDs and two touch switches.
Essentially, it’s an extra programmable LED button for any
computer with a spare USB port. The makers suggest that it could
be used as a volume button or as a two-factor authentication tag.
We can also imagine Tomu being useful for adding a little input to a
semi-embedded Raspberry Pi or other small Linux machine.
The price of Tomu depends heavily on the number you buy.
A single Tomu is $30, but you can get five for $60. At the larger
numbers, it becomes much easier to justify the price for small
projects. Of course, all this is dependent on actually having a spare
USB port – a luxury that’s becoming rare on modern ultra-books.EFLO is low-price reflow soldering oven with one big
caveat – the maximum PCB size is 5 cm 5 cm (or 2
inches by 2 inches). This is small, but it’s not ridiculous
and there are lots of makers whose PCBs would always
fit in this size – wearables designers for instance. By keeping the
size small, the REFLO fits nicely into even the most cramped
workshop. The oven is controlled via a mobile app (iOS and
Android), so there’s no fiddly display or controls on the unit itself.
Another side effect of the small size is the lower power
requirement – a peak use of 300 W.
The controller is Arduino-compatible and you can change the
software running the oven if, for example, you want a different
heating profile.
If – and it’s a big if – you can put up with the size limit,
the REFLO looks like a great option for a no-fuss reflow
soldering oven.M R
Tomu REFLO
A microcontroller in every USB port Automatic soldering for small PCBs
$30 crowdsupply.com Delivery: July 2018 $345 crowdsupply.com Delivery: Feb 2018