New Product Discoveries - Digi International's XBee Dev Kit and Trinamic's Stepper Motor Control IC

In this episode of DigiKey New Product Discoveries, I focus on an XBee cellular development kit from Digi International and a stepper motor driver IC from Trinamic Motion Control.

Digi International’s XBee cellular development kit (part number XKC-V1T-U) comes with everything to connect your product to the internet via the Verizon LTE Cat 1 data network. Included in the kit are the XBee Cellular Modem, development board, Verizon SIM card (with six months of free cellular service), antennas, and power supply. This service includes 5MB of data per month and limited SMS. Anyone who has a need to integrate cellular connectivity in their design should check out this kit.

Another interesting product I have found is a stepper motor control IC (part number TMC2208-LA-T) from Trinamic Motion Control. This is a closed-loop motor control solution that gets the absolute best performance out of a stepper motor. While a bit more expensive than your average driver, this chip integrates the driver and controller. This makes it able to sense where the load is and drive only the amount of current necessary to keep the motor shaft where it needs to be. This means the IC doesn’t get hot. It has 256 micro steps between poles of the stepper motor, giving it incredible resolution. Additionally, it is quiet; the only thing you hear is the bearings of the motor itself. To facilitate development, Trinamic has designed a driver board ready to be integrated in to your specific design or to be used with the StepStick or Pololu A4988.

Thanks for watching! Let us know if you have any questions or comments!