Blog

This blog entry is only available in German: https://www.tinkerforge.com/de/blog/new-features-and-changes-in-warp2-firmware-200/

Chip Shortage

The year 2021 was full of "chip challenges" for us. The chip shortage was (and still is) a huge problem. We have gotten used to delivery times of many month and nobody is shocked anymore to get qouted a lead time of a year. We are trying anything we can to keep supply of our own products available. Our own inventory of ICs has increased significantly. We think we are well positioned for 2022, but it will likely be the case that some individual products will be sold out and have long lead times.

Example Industrial Analog Out Bricklet

Currently the Industrial Analog Out Bricklet is sold out. The main IC was ordered by us about 9 month ago and we ought to receive it in 6 month from now. Unfortunately even these lead times can't be trusted at the moment. It might get further postponed at any time. Sometimes ICs unexpectedly arrive early, but often the lead time is pushed further away without any prior notice.

We now have an automatic monitoring system in place that queries the websites of all of the big distributors. With this we are some times able to quickly shift orders from one distributor to another if a part becomes unexpectedly available. There is a chance that we get hold of the analog out IC early through this system. Since there is no direct replacement for this IC, the only other option for us would be a redesign.

The "experts" on TV and in news articles have announced an improvement of the chip shortage some time ago already. With our building blocks we use a broad range of different ICs from different areas and the truth is that we just can not see any improvements yet. We currently expect that the situation will remain difficult through the complete year of 2022. A different difficulty that we face are price increases. If we ignore some parts that are currently only available from scalpers for 10x the normal costs, price increases of 20%-30% are the norm for many parts that are available. On top of that there is a sharp increase in shipping costs (and delivery times), especially for parts that come from overseas.

If you already now that you wil need bigger quantities of specific Bricks/Bricklets in 2022, please contact us as early as possible!

2021 - A good year for Tinkerforge

In spite of all of the aforementioned problems the year 2021 was still a good year for us.

The software and other parts of the Tinkerforge building blocks have been improved and we also released new Bricklets. The dominant topic for us surely was the entry into the electric vehicle charging sector with the brand WARP (Wall Attached Recharge Point) and our WAPR Chargers. By now we have sold more than 1500pcs of the EV chargers that we manufacture in-house. At the beginning we also had long lead times for the EV chargers, but by now we managed to cumulate a big stockpile of parts and the lead time is down to 1-2 weeks.

We plan to expand both areas, Tinkerforge and WARP, in 2022.

Outlook for 2022

Early next year we plan to release the ESP32 Brick and ESP32 Ethernet Brick. As you might expect from the name, these are Bricks that are equipped with an ESP32 microcontroller. The ESP32 Brick has WIFI and bluetooth. It can be programmed with C/C++. You can connect up to 6 Bricklets to it and control them with the (to be released) "C/C++ for Microcontroller" bindings. The ESP32 Ethernet Brick has an additional ethernet port. With the mew bindings you can write your own embedded programs for standalone projects. It is also possible to use the new Bricks in a proxy-mode with a standard firmware that we provide. With this firmware the new Bricks can be used like a Master Brick + WIFI/Ethernet Extension. The ESP32 Brick is already used in the WARP1 Chargers and the ESP32 Ethernet Brick is used in the WARP2 Chargers.

We plan to release additional "Arduino Bindings" that can be seamlessly integrated in the Arduino world. Both new bindings can be used on any microcontroller platform. To add support for a new platform you have to implement a new HAL for the SPI communication with the bricklets. We will start with HALs for Arudino, STM32F0 and Raspberry Pi and expect to add many more HALs in the future.

Of course we will also improve WARP. We have a long list of TODOs that consist of many enhancements, new features and bugfixes (see https://github.com/Tinkerforge/esp32-firmware/issues).

For more information about the future of WARP see the german version of this blog entry: https://www.tinkerforge.com/de/blog/review-2021-outlook-2022/

Please note that we currently only sell WARP within Germany and the complete documentation is currently only available in German. We will likely start to expand this to other countries in Europe in the future and at that point we will start to translate everything to the country-specific languages. For a product like EV chargers we think it is not enough to only provide documentation in english/german if we want to sell outside of Germany in non-german/english speaking countries. This is a big change for us, since we currently only provide support in english and german for the whole Tinkerforge ecosystem.

If you are interested in helping us to bring the WARP Chargers to your country please contact us. We are definitely open for cooperations!

Closing Words

We, the Tinkerforge team, want to express our thanks to all of you for 2021! The trust and sympathy that you guys offered to us despite long lead times and all of the support we got from the community was truly remarkable!

We wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

This blog entry is only available in German: https://www.tinkerforge.com/de/blog/warp2-ist-kfw-439-kfw-440-und-kfw-441-f%C3%B6rderf%C3%A4hig/

This blog entry is only available in German: https://www.tinkerforge.com/de/blog/warp2/

2017 (https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/blog/outlook-for-2017/) we started to convert our Bricklets from 10 pole connectors to 7 pole connectors. This conversion was allready done for all of the Bricklets. Some Bricks are still equipped with the 10 pole Bricklet connector. With version 3.1 the Master Brick is now also equipped with four 7 pole Bricklet connectors.

The conversion of the remaining Bricks (Silent Stepper, IMU) will be done soon, such that in the future all Brick <-> Bricklet connections will use 7p <-> 7p Bricklet cables. For new projects it will be much easier to choose the right Bricklet cable, the 7p <-> 7p Bricklet cable will allways be the right choice.

Master Brick 2.1, 10p <-> 10p and 10p <-> 7p Bricklet cables will still be available in the shop. Spare parts as replacements for old projects will be available. These parts are listed in the "legacy" category. All non legacy Bricklets in the shop now only have the 7p <-> 7p Bricklet cable option left.

In comparison to Master Brick 2.1 the Master Brick 3.1 is equipped with 7 pole Bricklet connectors, but also with USB-C instead of Mini-USB. USB-C is at least as robust as Mini-USB but also has the advantage that the USB-C cables can be attached in both directions. Therefore it is much easier to use. Additionally the Master Brick 3.1 has a switchable Brickklet power supply. That means that you are now able to switch the power of connected Bricklets on or off during runtime with the API of the Brick.

Otherwise the Master Brick 3.1 is a one-to-one replacement for the Master Brick 2.1. Up to four Bricklets can be attached to the Brick. It is possible to build stacks of Bricks with up to 9 Bricks (1x Master Brick + 8x other Bricks). Master Brick 3.1 can be used together with Ethernet-, WIFI- and RS485 Master Brick Extension to connect attached Bricks/Bricklets with other interfaces than the USB interface of the Brick.