Design of the Week by a-whitehead

Check out the totally awesome LaunchPad BoosterPack for Seeed Studio’s Grove designed by Akeem Whitehead.

A few words about the design.

Seeed Studio’s Grove I/O Expansion BoosterPack is designed to enable interfacing between Texas Instruments (TI) LaunchPads and the Grove modular electronics ecosystem. To provide a straightforward means of evaluating single function modules, such as sensors, actuators, and displays, with the embedded intelligence of a microcontroller platform, the Grove BoosterPack will streamline the process for entry level users, students, and hobbyists. Though oriented towards TI’s 40-pin LaunchPad series, the Grove BoosterPack will also perform on TI’s 20-pin LaunchPad series with a limited number of connectors.

The Grove BoosterPack’s full listing of features includes:

• Selectable module supply voltage of 3.3V or 5V
• Approximately 100 Grove modules to select from
• Shrouded, 4-pin buckle connectors to lock-in modules
• 23 total connectors
  • 13 Digital connectors
  • 7 Analog connectors
  • 3 Specialized connectors (UART, SPI, and I2C)

For more information on TI’s LaunchPads, visit www.ti.com/launchpad

For more information on Seeed Studio’s Grove, visit http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/grove-t-3.html?ref=top

Akeem, who are you?

I am an Applications Engineer at Texas Instruments. I am a new hire to the company, having just recently graduated from Texas A&M University this last May. I have been involved in technical projects ranging from emergency response robotics, medical labor monitors, and spacecraft power management.

I enjoy each step of the product development cycle for every conceptual design I am involved in, which includes the initial brainstorming sessions, the software and hardware solution implementations, and customer interfacing.

Now that I have the time to pursue personal projects outside of work, I strive to become an amateur inventor within the next few months, and share my ideas with others to potentially produce a product I can take to market myself.