Cool stuff for Raspberry Pi, Arduino and all electronics hobby projects

All posts tagged new product

New Product: Zero2Go can power your Raspberry Pi in many ways!

Some customers have asked us if we have a product that can do power switch like Witty Pi 2 and accepts higher input voltage, now we proudly announce that we have one!
06-small
Zero2Go is a Pi-Zero sized power supply board that can accept 5~26V input and output 5V for your Raspberry Pi. It also has a button on board, so you can turn on and off your Raspberry Pi with a single tap (just like Witty Pi 2).
compare_wittypi2
Thanks to the wide range of input voltage, Zero2Go can power your Raspberry Pi with many kinds of power sources, such as power bank, Li-Po battery pack, solar panel, car battery or different kinds of power adapters etc.
power_sources
You can use the pogo pin connector (included in package) to connect Zero2Go with Raspberry Pi without soldering.
 
11
Or you can solder a 40-pin header (not included in package) on Zero2Go to connect it with other models of Raspberry Pi:
12

How Much? When and Where to Buy?

The price of Zero2Go is 350 CZK, which roughly equals to 12.95EUR/10.85GBP/13.65USD.
zero2go_stock
 
Zero2Go is now in stock and you can order one here.
 
 
 

Witty Pi 2: the New Witty Pi

2

Witty Pi has been in the market for more than a year, and it got public praise at the first place. By integrating realtime clock and power management into one board, it allows defining complex ON/OFF sequence with simple script, which is very welcome by users. Today we go a step further, and announce the new generation of Witty Pi: the Witty Pi 2.

What’s New?

First let’s compare the appearance of Witty Pi and Witty Pi 2:

Witty Pi

Witty Pi

Witty Pi 2

Witty Pi 2

Both boards have exactly the same size. The two pictures are with slightly different scale, that’s why Witty Pi 2 looks bigger. As you can see, both boards are quite similar. The switch and micro USB connector are not moved in Witty Pi 2, so the acrylic case will still fit.
The obvious differences are the jumpers, there are 4 colorful jumpers now. The newly added blue jumper is to enable/disable the pulsing dummy load on board. If you are using power bank to power your Witty Pi 2 + Raspberry Pi, you may need this pulsing dummy load to keep your power bank alive without drawing too much current.
Also you can see a new 6-pin female header on the top-right corner. This header breaks out some important signals (+5V, LED, RTC_INT, Vbat and Switch) on the board, which makes integration with other boards become easier. You can also use this header to connect an external switch (physical or electronic) to control your Witty Pi 2. Driving an external LED is also an easy work now.
You may also notice the chips are different. In Witty Pi 2, we use much better chips (DS3231SN, AO4616L and SA555), which have much wider operating temperature range. This means your Witty Pi 2 can work outside under much tougher environment. More importantly, the new DS3231SN chip is very accurate (annual error < 5PPM), and it has temperature sensor inside! With the new software you can read the temperature around your Raspberry Pi 🙂
chips
There are some improvements that could not be found in the picture too. Witty Pi 2 doesn’t use the TXD pin any more, hence using serial port for (huge) data transaction will not have any problem in Witty Pi 2. Also the famous “dead lock” problem, which is caused by ungracefully power off, is now solved at hardware level. Without the possibility of “dead lock”, Witty Pi 2 has much better reliability than the old Witty Pi.
Also the battery life has been extended a lot, thanks to the low power consumption of the new DS3231SN chip, which only draws about 3uA current from the battery, when no power supply is connected.
It is quite safe to replace Witty Pi with the newer Witty Pi 2, since Witty Pi 2 has the same interface with Witty Pi,  and Witty Pi 2 can even work on Witty Pi’s software (but not the reverse).

How Much?

Comparing to the old Witty Pi, the material cost of Witty Pi 2 has been significantly raised, mainly due to the high price of DS3231SN chip. As a result, we have to raise Witty Pi 2’s price to 480 CZK per unit (about 17.76 EUR, or 14.88 GBP, or 19.68 USD).

When Can I buy One?

We open the pre-order channel for Witty Pi 2 today, and you can pre-order it in our online shop. We will start the shipping of Witty Pi 2 on about 20th July, 2016.

Pre-order Witty Pi 2

How About the Old Witty Pi?

The old Witty Pi is now officially retired. We will not manufacture the old Witty Pi any more, unless our customer request to make a customized batch.
 


 
Update on 2016.07.20:
Witty Pi 2 is officially in stock now.
 

New Product: Witty Pi is Coming Soon!

It has been a while since our previous post. We were not sleeping, instead we were working hard on new products. Today we are glad to announce that one of our new products: Witty Pi is coming soon!wittypi_0

What is Witty Pi?

It is tiny PCB that could be mounted on your Raspberry Pi (model A+, B+ and Raspberry Pi 2 supported). With Witty Pi, your Raspberry Pi has realtime clock (RTC) and power management on board, and you get some amazing new features:

  1. You can properly turn on/off Raspberry Pi with single tap on the switch.
  2. Raspberry Pi and all its USB peripherals get fully power cut after shutdown.
  3. Raspberry Pi knows the correct time, even without accessing the Internet.
  4. You can schedule the startup/shutdown of your Raspberry Pi.

wittypi_2
 

Why we need Witty Pi?

Raspberry Pi uses micro SD card as its “hard-drive”, and it writes date to it from time to time. If you suddenly cut Raspberry Pi’s power without halting all processes in the system, the micro SD card may lose power during the date writing, and has the chance to be damaged.
Witty Pi adds a power switch for Raspberry Pi, and you can turn on/off the Pi properly, without worrying about the micro SD card. Witty Pi’s daemon process will halt all processes for you, before really cut off the power. What’s more, if you shutdown your Pi with “sudo shutdown -h now” command, or you choose “Shutdown” in the desktop environment, Witty Pi will detect that and fully cut off your Pi’s power after a few seconds. It is true that Raspberry Pi doesn’t consume much power after shutdown, but there are still some. If you have some USB peripherals connected on your Pi, they will also consume power even you shutdown your Pi. With the help from Witty Pi, your Pi’s power can be fully cut off and all its USB peripherals will not consume power anymore. Cool, isn’t it?
The ability to schedule shutdown and startup are also very useful. You don’t have to wait til midnight to shutdown your Pi, or wake up very early to turn on your Pi 🙂
Also don’t forget Witty Pi has RTC on board, it can remember the correct time for your Raspberry Pi. Even without the Internet access, your Pi will know the correct time, because Witty Pi will synchronize the time to your Pi’s system.wittypi_1

When and How Much?

The retail price for Witty Pi will be 380 CZK (about 15 USD, or 13.8 EUR, or 10 GBP). Besides the Witty Pi board, the package also includes a CR2032 button battery, 4 cooper standoffs and 8 cooper screws that can help you to fix your Witty Pi with Raspberry Pi.
The exact date to ship the first batch of Witty Pi is not decided yet, but the reservation process will be opened on our website very soon. Please keep an eye on our website, or follow us on Tweeter, Facebook or Google+ if you are interested.wittypi_4Update on 2015-04-18:
Here is a video to introduce Witty Pi’s cool features:


Update on 2015-04-19:
Here is the user manual of Witty Pi (in PDF format): http://www.uugear.com/doc/WittyPi_UserManual.pdf
Update on 2015-05-01:
The reservation of Witty Pi is now opened: http://www.uugear.com/product/witty-pi-realtime-clock-and-power-management-for-raspberry-pi/

Join Waitlist We will inform you when the product arrives in stock. Please leave your valid email address below.