Servo - December 2014

with fixed pulleys that drive both axes. They have a fixed non-moving motor mounting location, resulting in a lighter weight, lower inertia, faster acceleration and deceleration, and an overall higher system performance. For pricing contact Macron.

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New Type of Jumper for Prototyping and R&D

Schmartboard has released a line of specialty jumpers which will give engineers an easier way to perform functions that sometimes require multiple hands. The uses are many, but in short, this product allows users to connect multiple points to a single common signal, save space, and reduce jumper use in tight areas such as ground.

It can also be used with electronic testing equipment such as logic analyzers as a signal interceptor to more easily access test points.

Schmartboard includes a row of

40 headers for convenience. The 11" four-way bus jumpers will be available in five colors; pricing is $9 for a set of five.

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New Robot Platform for STEM Education

Toronto-based Mimetics has developed a new youth STEM education platform called the Jade robot. Jade is ready to use and requires no PC for simple programming via its built-in screen. Jade also works seamlessly on both Macs and PCs via a Google web app (runs on Windows XP, SP2 and later, Vista, Windows 7 and 8, as well as Mac OS 10. 6 and higher). Jade is programmable via C or the new Jade Scratch GUI environment.

Scratch is a popular children's GUI (graphic user interface) programming format which simplifies programming to moving icons on-screen, allowing children in grades 3-4 to easily develop and test their programs on Jade robots.

Mimetics is also sharing their coding and engineering with all developers to help foster further education innovations.

Mimetics' Jade robot was developed from workshops with over 15,000 students and 400 teachers since 2001. Students can instantly start using Jade (it is fully assembled and charged — nothing to build).

Jade is easy to use and provides a fun and rewarding robotics experience, touching on real world skills in math, earth and space sciences, robotics, and computer programming. Jade also features a working spectrometer and an optional gripper and camera — a first for a robot in this price range (MSRP $349).

While Jade rewards novices with immediate ease of operation, it is designed to grow with the users and offers sophisticated programming and diverse capabilities, even for college level students.

Jade brings "space age technology down to earth," offering capabilities found on the NASA Curiosity Mars rover to help get students excited about science, robotics, and programming.

Jade's applications are based on Google Chrome apps which simplify the user experience and allow for intuitive custom programming by anyone. Jade also uses Cloud-based processing, user storage, and support, so students can log in with their Google account (typically Gmail) from anywhere to access any of their programs or the Jade help forums.