Funded 140% and only 16 hours left

Posted on 2017-02-162022-01-01 by neven

We are 140% funded and there are only 16 hours left of our Indiegogo campaign.

This would’ve not happened without your support. 🙂

By continuing to support our cause you will help us get even more Tinusaur kits to our students.

Not interested in getting a Tinusaur board? You can donate to the project! Our promise: we will spend the money to bring the Tinusaur boards to even more students … as we’ve done it before.

Neither of those is for you? No problem. You could just share our campaign link https://igg.me/at/tinusaur to your social media channels such like Facebook, Twitter, or whatever you prefer.

Just a quick reminder: After the campaign is over the price of the boards, the kits, and the shipping will go slightly up so now is the best time get a bunch them.

Thanks again for your support.

Moving forward with the Tinusaur Project in 2017

Posted on 2016-12-222022-01-01 by neven

2016 has been a great year!

Over 20 workshops, lectures, seminars, courses. One Indiegogo campaign. Hundreds of people started using the Tinusaur platform.

So, what’s next?

Our Q1 goal: Launch new Indiegogo campaign in February to produce 1000 Tinusaur kits and bring the cost down to $2 per basic kit.

This will make our boards available and affordable for everyone.

Isn’t that great! 🙂

Our focus: Learn+Educate+Make

Split the content into 3:

For Learners – Learn how to program microcontrollers. Assemble one yourself.
For Educators – Teach others how to work with microcontrollers. Help them assemble one themselves.
For Makers – Build things with tiny microcontrollers. Use your creativity under the constraints of the Tinusaur platform and share it with the community.

New Bundle: Tinusaur Starter 2

Posted on 2016-02-022022-01-01 by neven

As you may already know last week we announced the Tinusaur Shield LEDx2 – this is very simple add-on board that you put on top of the Tinusaur Board. It has just 4 components: 2 LEDs and 2 resistors for each LED – there is no much to solder.

Now we have bundled this with a Tinusaur Board and an USB-ASP Programmer and that is now the Tinusaur Starter 2 kit. Great, isn’t it!

Check the links below for more detailed content information about each of the products included in this bundle:

IMPORTANT: Note that this is a kit, you have to assemble it yourself.

This bundle has its own page at Bundles / Tinusaur Starter 2.

Please, check the Where to buy page to see if the Tinusaur Starter 2 at the The Tinusaur Online Store.

Small changes on the board

Posted on 2014-06-042022-01-01 by neven

Some of the people who received the Tinusaur Starter kit wrote us that it isn’t that easy to figure and remember how to put and use the 2 small 2×1 headers for the external power and the battery on/off. So, we decided to make a small change – have those in different colors.

Tinusaur Starter Kit Assembled

PS1 (external power source) is now red.

BS1, BJ1 (battery switch and jumper) are now yellow.

Your feedback is really valuable to us.

The Tinusaur Online Store Opens

Posted on 2014-03-162022-01-01 by neven

Finally, our online store is up and running.

We received some emails asking if we could offer the boards and the parts for purchasing … so we did it. We have to admit that it took us some time to arrange everything but some of the circumstances were beyond our control.

At the moment we have only one product listed – that’s the Tinusaur Starter.

Go to this tinusaur.storenvy.com/products/6076006-tinusaur-starter link if you’d like to buy it.

We have put up for sale very small batch of those starter kits as we don’t know what the interest will be. Please note that at the moment we don’t do this as a business and we do not make any profit – the sale only covers our expenses.

More information about the Tinusaur Starter kit is available at the Tinusaur Starter page.

IMPORTANT: This is offered as a kit which means that you have to assemble it yourself.

We chose Storenvy for our shopping site and we think that it was a good choice – it’s easy to setup and use but also provides all the functionality that we need at this stage. You can pay for your orders with PayPal.

All parts and boards arrived

Posted on 2014-03-092022-01-06 by neven

Dear friends, I’m glad to inform you that all the parts and the boards finally arrived.

So we’re ready to offer the Starter Kit to those that are interested.

Boards were produced by OSHPark – they look great, as usual.

We also received a small batch from SeeedStudio – cheaper but still looks good.

We are now preparing the purchasing option – a PayPal button or may something more complex – we haven’t decided yet. There is this “Start your own online store front” list of options that we consider looking at. Any feedback or shared experience we will appreciate very much.

Initially, we will put up for sale a very small batch – 20 or so packages – we don’t know what the interest will be, but we have the capacity to ship about 80 more.

February: Quick update

Posted on 2014-02-142022-01-01 by neven

This is quick update for what is happening in the lab.

The design of the board is pretty much final. We consider this as release candidate marked as RC1 – it probably won’t change much or not at all. It is available on 123d.circuits.io at this address: http://123d.circuits.io/circuits/116696. You can order the PCBs there or if you prefer from OSHPark at this address: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/L6DiChNz.
We have a shield-like proto board now, very preliminary design. It will allow you to solder some components on it and then put it on top of the Tinusaur Board – very much like any other shield-like board. It is available on OSHPark at this address: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/2zuAJJGZ.
All the parts for the Tinusaur Starter kit were ordered from our suppliers. We hope everything to be in our office (most of them already arrived) by the end of the month. Will post more information about it here and on our Twitter/Facebook/etc.
The boards for the Tinusaur Starter were ordered from OSHPark – great quality, no doubt. We also ordered some boards from Seeed Studio to see how’s their quality.

And by the way, our project was featured on OSHPark Blog, here’s the link … http://blog.oshpark.com/2014/02/staff-picks-for-the-week-of-2-february-2014/. Very glad to see that people are interested in this project.

As follow up to our first Tutorial 001 we are planing to put another one – Tutorial 002, probably about how to connect a push-button to the board and receive input from it.

Tinusaur Starter: We are making a beginners kit

Posted on 2014-01-182022-01-01 by neven

To start making things with the Tinusaur you need the board, the parts, a programmer with a cable and couple of LEDs to make your first blinking lights program for ATtiny85 microcontroller.

We’re ordering the PCBs and the parts from the manufacturers and it seems that the total cost for the full package will be 8 to 9 USD. Once we have everything here we’ll run a small test sale to see what’s the interest in the kit. The estimated cost for delivery of the kit to any country in the world is about 2 USD. So the total cost to get it would be 10 to 11 USD – very affordable for everyone.

Here is a list of everything that will be included in the Tinusaur Starter:

Name	Description
PCB	Tinusaur Board
MCU, Attiny85	Atmel AVR ATtiny85 microcontroller
Socket, DIP-8	DIP-8 socket for MCU
H1, Header	Header 2×4, Female
H2, Header	Header 2×5, Female
ISP, Header	Header 2×5, Male, for ISP
RESET, Button	Tactile push button, for RESET
Power, Header	Header 1×2, Male, for external power
Battery, Header	Header 1×2, Male, for battery power on/off
Battery, Jumper	Jumper, 2-pin, for battery power on/off
C1, Capacitor	Capacitor 100uF, Low profile 5×5 mm
C2, Capacitor	Capacitor 100nF, Small
R1, Resistor	Resistor 10K, Small, 1/8W
Battery holder	Battery holder for CR2032
Battery 3V	Battery 3V, CR2032
LED1	LED, 3mm, red
LED2	LED, 3mm, green
Resistor (LED1)	Resistor 330 ohm, Small, 1/8W, for LED
Resistor (LED2)	Resistor 330 ohm, Small, 1/8W, for LED
Header (LED1)	Header 1×2, Male, for LED
Header (LED2)	Header 1×2, Male, for LED
ISP Programmer	USB ASP, with 10-pin connector and cable
Packaging	Packaging bag, plastic

Check more often Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and The Tinusaur Project site for news about this kit.