New Product Announcement and The Spring 2013 Sale

We are excited to present Cerb40 II, which replaces the original Cerb40. The new revision includes a 3.3 V regulator and the 32 kHz RTC crystal on-board. This allows developers to plug a USB cable in and begin programming without adding any additional circuitry!

Need more excitement? Check out our new WiFi RN171 Module. This is not your typical WiFi module. It broadcasts its own standard access point, allowing for WiFi devices to connect to it (such as smart phones, Android tablets and Microsoftā€™s Surface, among others). Things get even better because itā€™s not AdHoc, which can be problematic on mobile platforms. Possible applications include controlling a robot from a phone or reading sensor data on a tablet. Module driver already includes a HTTP server to aid developers in hosting webpages right on the device.

Weā€™ve also added other modules, such as the Radio FM1 Module, Accel G248, Power Extender Module, and many more. Our new Latest Products RSS feed is an excellent resource to help you keep track of new releases. They are also listed on the catalogā€™s home page.

As for File System related products, ALFAT USB is now available to extend ALFATā€™s family and replace uALFAT-USB. This brings USB storage with a Microsoft-licensed Long File Name support to any product with SPI, UART or I2C bus.

To end excitement at an all time high, the Spring Sale is going on. The sale wonā€™t last very long, so get your order in before itā€™s too late!

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More awesome stuff from GHI!

I really like the onboard regulator as an option on the Cerb40 IIā€¦ great for breadboarding. Will the original Cerb40 stay in the catalog? I see itā€™s still there but out of stock (likely because of the great sale price).

@ FireyFate - original Cerb40 is not needed anymore. It will be removed in few days.

Thatā€™s a pretty bold statement. Itā€™s ā€œneededā€ in the aspect that the product description said ā€œThis board is ideal for low-production run and for easy prototypingā€¦ use FEZ Cerb40 to live permanently in a product.ā€

So those who designed a product around it, donā€™t need RTC, and designed a PCB with on-board regulation might like the option of the original.

@ FireyFate - For those rare cases, we can always special run some of the old board :slight_smile: As for most cases, if not all, the new board will work for their needs. It added features, not removed.

I like the improvements and itā€™s only $5 more on the BOM priceā€¦ I just thought having both styles to perfectly suit the need would be great.

Iā€™m sure you guys considered it. Anyways, congrats on the new offerings.

yay! save some soldering (and parts ordering) time!
I really wish it had a 32f415, though. only 50c more part, and I could use the cryptoā€¦

@ ziggurat29 - can you please more?

I think he means that it would be nice to have the version of the STM32 that has the crypto hardware (the 41x instead of the 40x) in the Cerb* family.

Which would mean going to 100pin package an make the board biggerā€¦

Maybe it would fit using SMT pins instead of PTH? I dunno. Iā€™ve never needed the crypto, but I can see the advantages in some applications, especially if NETMF had support for it.

@ Gus - Thanks for listening to the feedback on the Cerb40. That is a solid 2.0 device. And a tiny RTC crystal!

P.S. I hope the capacitance of the crystal is 7 pF or less and the caps are 10 pF or lessā€¦

@ gus - yes what godefro said, to have the crypto accelerator

@ godefroi - yes, the crypto. Iā€™m often needing it to signatures/hmac/etc. even aside from speed, itā€™s handy just to have an implementation on hand to save the flash space.

@ justin - I donā€™t think you donā€™t need to go to 100 pin. STM32F415RGT6 is 64 pin, and pin compatible with the '405, so no hardware design change; which makes sense when you think about it since from the outside the crypto is an instruction set feature

anyhow, I expect to have mine today, and I certainly second valkyries joy with the rtc; no more expensive ds1307 (and using an i2c at that, and the board space), yay!

@ ziggurat29 - o, missed that - thought all the 415 with crypto were 100pinā€¦

@ justin, np; truly, just now Iā€™d buy some boards with /no/ cpu and install my own 415 haha, at least to have something on which to develope some codeā€¦

You could take the cerb40 design and get some boards made up. Or get Justin to put that on his octoā€¦

hmm, not sure I know what an ā€˜octoā€™ is in this context, or if Justin would want me to put something on his, but if it means desoldering, I did just successfully remove a dead 405 off a (different model) board and it looks pretty good, so I ordered some 415s to try a transplant. weā€™ll see how it goes; Robert J White, eat your heart out! haha.
anyway, I think Iā€™ve derailed this product announcement thread long enough. irrespective of the crypto feature, Iā€™m excited with the product offering, and itā€™s a great value and form factor ā€“ so happy coding shall surely lie ahead!
but ps do consider the 415 in the futureā€¦
EDIT: i did successfully rebrain the other board with a 415 cpu that arrived today, so later I may try modding one of the two cerb40ii I have ā€“ but first Iā€™m struggling with installing the stock firmware just nowā€¦

Justinā€™s octoā€¦ http://www.ghielectronics.com/community/forum/topic?id=11612

@ ziggurat29 - did you get your 415ā€™s running?

Not just the Octopus any more. Threadneedle uses the 415ā€™s too. See creations later :wink: