Loads of exciting new things have arrived at Cool Components towers. Just a few are featured below – Enjoy!

First up – the i-racer. It’s small, zippy, and can be controlled from your iOS or Android smartphone. It comes almost ready to drive out of the box and has a rechargeable LiPo battery, on board bluetooth radio, motor drivers. It’s all centered around an ATMega48V. Snazzy huh?

The Duinomite is a self contained mini-computer. Plug in a keyboard and a monitor and you can type lines of code directly into it. It’s not all flashy (and hard to get) like the Raspberry Pi, but offers a fantastic platform to learn embedded programming without needing a PC. Duinomite boards come in several different flavours with a mix on onboard-peripherals and connectors.

Sugru is a goopy bluetack like substance that hardens when exposed to air to form a rubbery material. It’s perfect for repairing things and comes in a variety of colours. We use it to make everything from fishing weights to door-stops.

From the makers of the Netduino, comes “Netduino Go“. Similar to the .Net Gadgeteer system from GHI – it uses connectors and cables to be pretty much ‘plug and play’ compatible. There’s a good selection of daughter boards, and you get a good selection in the Netduino Go Starter Kit.

We’re going screwdriver mad! Look in the tools section and you’ll find three sets of precision made ergonomically styled screwdriver sets. We’ve a got a mini-set, a deluxe set, and a specialist set for people who need to take Apple products like the iPhone apart

Finally -  just in case you missed it, why not check out our nifty Soldering Starter Kit. It’s got everything you need to start your soldering adventure! If you need a few tips on how to get started with soldering have a read of this awesome soldering comic tutorial.

Apps are everywhere these days. Now there are a couple of good all-rounders for the world of electronics. The ‘Electro-Droid‘ App for android tablets and phones provides access to simple, everyday calculations and reference sources.

The resistor colour code is something that a lot of people find themselves forgetting, but Electro-Droid also has sections for working out Ohm’s law calculations and Voltage divider values. Another hugely helpful section provides colourful pin-out diagrams of USB, serial and ethernet connectors as well as loads more. The app has a free version and a paid version (without adverts)

If you’re an iPhone user, there’s an similar app called Circuit Playground. Unfortunately, there’s no free version of this app – it costs $2.99.

While these apps are great for getting quick answers we do urge a little caution : You do really have to understand some of the theory behind electronics to avoid getting a catastrophically wrong answer and blowing up an expensive components. It’s also best if you have teeny-tiny fingers for entering details accurately on smart-phone touch screens! It’s also worth saying that there are loads more apps than just these two.

There are some fantastic new products to talk about, all fresh for the new year! First up – the new mbed.

It uses NXP’s Cortex-M0 LPC11U24 chip and is expressly designed to get you up and running *quickly* with USB and low power applications. It’s cheaper than the original mbed, and comes in a natty shade of yellow (!!). The online compiler used to write the mbed code has been updated as well to work with the new processor.

You may have seen the Fez Spider ‘.Net Gadgeteer’ kit – now say hello to the Spider’s big sister, the Hydra. It’s a 100% open-source (hardware and software) .NET Gadgeteer compatible mainboard running .NET Micro Framework. It incorporates a 240Mhz AT91SAMRL ARM9 processor. With 16MB of SDRAM an 4MB of FLASH. Whoooaa!

Arduino have released some new goodies – first up, the Uno has been reworked and released as ‘Revision 3′. There’s really not much difference, but a couple of extra signals are broken out to new pins. All of the old shields are still compatible. We’re now *only* selling revision 3 Unos.

Also released from Arduino, their official motor driver shield. Capable of driving two DC motors at varying speed and directions, the shield uses the L298P chip and can cope with 4 Amps per channel!

Finally, lets talk displays! The uLCD43 is a lovely, glossy touch screen from those folk at 4D Systems. It’s 4.3″ in size, 480 x 272 QVGA resolution, RGB 65,000 colours, with a touch overlay. Like most of 4D systems displays, this screen uses the ’4DGL’ display language to draw primitives and display images and video. As an added extra, the board also has an onboard sound output with built in amplifier! And that’s just the tip of the features iceberg!

*Loads* of you have been asking for it – and finally, the Fez Spider ‘Net Gadgeteer’ system has arrived. The kit boasts a powerful board that runs .NET micro framework with code written in C#. The top side of the main CPU board is filled with connector sockets, so that complex peripheral components can be easily attached and detached without soldering.

We’re initially selling the Fez Spider board as part of a kit including a display, a camera, and lots of other cool peripherals, however over time, you’ll start to see more and more of the components being listed on their own. We’re already listing the camera, serial USB module and mainboards separately.

New from the US, this fantastic Arduino shield. The Gameduino is based around a powerful chip that can handle basic, but high quality 2D sprite based computer graphics. The chip can also pump out good quality stereo sound effects. To top it all there’s a full size VGA monitor connector so you can hook up your 152″ plasma. All of this means that it’s easy to create very cool computer games.

Already the Gameduino’s creator has ported Manic Miner, Asteroids, and many others…

Next – if you’re using kit with an Xbee socket on it, why not make the move to WiFi? We’re now selling these impressive modules from Roving Networks. They’re a standard RN131 WiFly module in an Xbee form factor. The pins and power supplies are similar, so you can pull out your Xbee and plop in one of these.

Finally, for the UAV or RC fanatics out there a new board that allows you to control your aircraft from your Android enabled phone. The ‘phoneDrone’ board gives the phone a number of essential hardware resources including 8 servo channels and 3 serial ports. On the phone, software to control the board can be quickly written using Google’s ADK (Accessory Development Kit).

Last but not least, if you’re flying a quad (or hex or octo) copter, we now stock 10″ and 12″ propeller blades. They come in matched push/pull pairs with hub rings to match to your favourite brushless motor.