Where can we send product suggestions?

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Disciple
 
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Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by Disciple »

Here's something I would have bought at the time, a pack of assorted jumper wires.
  • Male-to-male, 5 short, 5 medium, 5 long
  • Female-to-female, 5 short, 5 medium, 5 long
  • Male-female 'extenders', 5 medium, 5 long (who needs short extenders?)
That's a 40-wire pack that covers a wide range of situations. Useful?

What is the proper place for such messages? I presume there is one. Maybe a dedicated forum? Thanks.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

I'll pass the suggestion long to the products team. Thanks for posting!

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rudinesbitt
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by rudinesbitt »

I definitely also think that would be great. It seems I can never get enough of those wires.
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Rodekater
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by Rodekater »

What I would like to buy is a load balancer and charger for adafruit lipo/lithium packs.

I"m building a FurSuit with a lot of Neopixels and would like to have allot of thin packs in a 3d printed safe casing in the suit than a single bulky big one that impairs movement and could harm me if I would role over the floor.

Using several small packs could open allot of new bigger wearable projects.

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juliopjbn
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by juliopjbn »

It is a good suggestion, I like it! Andre Tippett
Last edited by juliopjbn on Tue Jun 02, 2015 2:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

You don't need a load-balancer for that.

Just partition your system into groups of NeoPixels that receive power from different LiPos, and give each LiPo its own charger:
distributed-power.jpg
distributed-power.jpg (25.29 KiB) Viewed 1001 times
Connect all the LiPo GND lines together so they all have the same reference for data signals, and you're good.

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Disciple
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by Disciple »

How about this, enclosure cases for each of the perma-proto boards?
They could have options like...
  • white, black, or silver-tone (or transparent?)
  • regular size or low-profile
  • rounded edges/corners
  • mounting holes and screws
  • 2 or 4 knock-out holes for external wiring
  • an external SPST switch to control power
  • a snap-cover housing for AA or AAA batteries
  • a clear window in the top cover
  • an attachment place for one of the membrane keypads
  • external mounting flanges
  • speaker holes
  • cooling vents (?)
  • and a shiny embossed Adafruit logo, of course
How many kinds of project could fit in a box like this? Like before, if this existed, I'd be ordering one now.

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Disciple
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by Disciple »

Maybe that idea's uninteresting, but I have a direct question or two for the product team.
The Adafruit NeoPixel LED Strip Starter Packs don't appear to include the recommended capacitor nor resistor. What would you say to a request to add them? Thanks for reading.

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bodger
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by bodger »

I see Maxim has a new port expander chip out with ADC, DAC, and GPIO, and it can do level shifting as well, so you can run 5V I/O from a 3V chip, or even +/-10V analog signals from 3V or 5V logic. It's the MAX11311, and nice breakout board for it seems like something that would be a reasonable item for the AdaFruit product line. I'm willing to help with the board design if that would be useful.

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Disciple
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by Disciple »

Here's one. Adafruit offers several boards that can recharge Li-po and Li-ion batteries. How about the same for NiMH? 2-cell, 4-cell and 8-cell chargers could all be useful. Say I wanted to create a rover that can dock and recharge unattended, I would feel less nervous if they were NiMHs.

What do the officials think?

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

I'll mention it to the products team, but don't think it's very likely for a couple of reasons:

First, NiMH cells are tricky to charge. There's no clean line between "okay, I'm fully charged" and "okay, I'm outgassing hydrogen and about ready to explode". A good charger uses a combination of voltage, current, and temperature to decide when to quit.

Second, we prefer to keep our power devices as interchangeable as possible because those are the pieces that fail in exciting ways. All the LiPos we carry work with all of our chargers, PowerBoosts, and Feathers. Aside from plugging in a third-party LiPo whose JST connector is wired backwards to ours, not much can go wrong. If we add multiple voltages and battery chemistries, the combinatorial issues explode. We want to remain beginner-friendly, and that's not a good place to remove the safety padding.

For people who are ready to work with power sources outside the 3.3v and 5v and generally less than 1A range, we like to refer people to http://pololu.com/ They focus on robotics, and carry the range of devices appropriate to the next few steps up the ladder. They also lean toward an audience with more electronics experience, so they have more freedom to say "we assume you know what you're doing."

Rodekater
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by Rodekater »

I found out that the Asus uses the ws2812 system on there motherboards to control there aurora rgb leds strips. This means that with the help of some headercables we can get the adafruit Neapixels to work and use them in our computer case.

Also I think that all the other major big motherboard brands Wil be using ws2812 but just with a different pinout.

Rodekater
 
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Re: Where can we send product suggestions?

Post by Rodekater »

And now I think about it it will work the otherway around to. Using a adafruit metro or circuit playground to make a Asus aura sync computer case light up with out having to buy a whole new motherboard and cpu.

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