No, I'm not (yet) on vacation.
I have requested a demo kit from the products of BigClown and promptly have a red suitcase and T-shirt (BigClown is rather lean makers ;-), red clown nose, 2 3D-printed cases, 1 ready demo out of the box and of course get a lot of sensors.
This article is the first of a planned series: Today I give you an overview of the portfolio of BigClown products - a company from the Czech Republic. In total, the IoT division BigClown belongs to Hardwario. Co-Founder is Alan Fabik.
No programming, no soldering, just one short overview.
Suitcase & SensorsLet's start with the suitcase: it's interesting that the individual sensors are delivered in a suitcase. The combination of a red suitcase paired with a clown profile with T-shirt and red nose forms a clear profile and an independent placement of your products in the market.
In the case of the "internal values," the sensors are found in a separate bag, which is provided with a well readable bar code and product name. Here are misunderstandings in the assembly excluded.
The sensors are available individually in the shop to purchase or put together as a kit. Here are 3 pre-configured kits available.
I found the following modules:
* the solution "ouf of the box" included:
- Core Module - BCM001 - that's where it all starts
- Humidity Day - BCT002
- Barometer day - BCT003
- Day Module - BCM003
- Battery Module - BCM004
- Lux Meter Day - BCT004
- Temperature Day - BCT005
- LCD Module - BG - BCM007 - is more of an OLED or ePaper display than a Liquit Crystal Display
The project compilation reminded me of an earlier project with a similar output and so I gave feedback here that the power supply via USB at the bottom of the case is not entirely happy.
* The additional modules included in the fiddling are:
- Core Module - BCM001
- USB Dongle - BCW001
- PIR Module - BCM009
- Relay Module - BCM011
- Flood Detector - LD-81 - BCA012
- Mini Battery Module - BCM016
- Climate Module - BCM017
- Sensor Module - BCM020
- Cover Module - BCM024
- Mini Cover Module - BCM025
- Button Module - BCM027
In comparison with the currently available portfolio, I still lack a good dozen: Cloony, Bridge, Sigfox, Power, NFC, CO2, Encoder, 1-Wire, Breadboard, Probe, Base and the Touch Tag. If you miss something in this already extensive collection, then the big clown support is available for a request.
In addition to the advantages of the 10 year warranty, the simple plugging together of the modules - without soldering - I already recognize a weak point in the concept: one depends on their proprietary hardware availability. Welcome to the Big Clown Universe.
PortfolioIn a nutshell, BigClown describes its portfolio as of 01/2018 as follows:
- BigClown is the open-source IoT kit for makers.
- You can start building your low-power, battery-operated devices without a need for wiring or soldering.
- The devices talk to each other securely in a sub-GHz radio band (868 MHz in Europe, 915 MHz in the U.S).
- Your wireless nodes can operate on batteries for more than 2 years.
- The whole ecosystem is remarkably modular on both hardware and software level.
- Our step-by-step tutorials and comprehensive documentation will help you to get on track quickly.
- For typical projects, you can use ready-made firmware right away, or you can get sources from GitHub and tweak them, or start from scratch using our innovative high-level APIs.
I hope to have brought you in the mood and you remain curious what we can do with the case content so everything.
We'll cover the basics with the next article, answering questions about how to flash code, which programming language is supported, etc.
So a good start to the week after the Whitsun holidays.
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