Convert just about any battery pack to 5V with VERTER - our fresh new Buck-Boost power converter. VERTER can take battery voltages from 3-12VDC and output a nice 5V DC, which makes it a perfect universal power supply for your portable project! Where Verter really shines is when you have a battery or power range that can fluctuate a lot, or you don't know what you'll end up using.

It operates smoothly over the 3-12V range, moving from a boost converter (3-5V in) to a buck converter (5-12V in) on the fly. Please note! This chip can do both, but it really works better as a buck converter than a boost. If you need a full 500mA out, it will struggle as it gets down to 3V and the output will sag to about 4.8V (which is still within standard USB power specs). If you only need something to boost a voltage up to 5V and you want it to be really good at it, check out our PowerBoost series, which excel at that.

Like our popular 5V 1A USB wall adapter, we tweaked the output to be 5.2V instead of a straight-up 5.0V so that there's a little bit of 'headroom' long cables, high draw, the addition of a diode on the output if you wish, etc. The 5.2V is safe for all 5V-powered electronics like Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or Beagle Bone while preventing icky brown-outs during high current draw because of USB cable resistance.The VERTER has at the heart a TPS63060 boost converter from TI. This buck-boost converter chip can handle a wide range of voltages (3-12V) and has some really nice extras such as power good output, 2A internal switch, synchronous conversion, excellent efficiency, and 2.2MHz high-frequency operation. Check out these specs!

Synchronous operation means you can disconnect the output completely by connecting the ENable pin to ground. This will completely turn off the output

2A internal switch means you can get out 500mA from as low as 3V, and at least 1000mA from inputs as high 12V

On-board 500mA charge-rate 'Apple/iOS' data resistors. Solder in the included USB connector and you can plug in any iPhone or iPod for 500mA charge rate. Not suggested for iPad (which really needs 1A charge rate).

Full breakout for battery in, control pins and power out

90%+ operating efficiency in most cases (see datasheet for efficiency graphs), and low quiescent current: 5mA when enabled and power LED is on, 20uA when disabled (power and low batt LED are off)

Great for powering your robot, Arduino project, single-board-computer such as Raspberry Pi or BeagleBone from a wide variety of inputs. We especially like it for use with 4 x AA batteries, which can range from 7V for fresh alkalines down to 4V for nearly-dead rechargeables. If you're only going to be using voltages higher than 6V, we recommend our UBEC step-down. If you're only going to be using voltages under 5V, check out the PowerBoost 500 which has much better boosting capability

Each order comes with one fully assembled and tested PCB, 2 pin terminal block, and a loose USB A jack. If you are powering your project from USB, solder the USB A jack in (a 3-minute soldering task). If you would like to use a terminal block, pick up a 3.5mm 2pin block here and solder to the output spot where the USB jack would go. The terminal block goes on the input side, so  you can easily connect and disconnect a battery pack. Or don't solder anything in for a more compact power pack. 

Note: The terminal block included with your product may be blue or black.

Your power supply problems just got SUPER SOLVED! This 3.3V Buck Converter Breakout board is great for supplying power to low voltage circuits from a single Li-Ion cell battery or USB power.  This chip provides up to 600-mA load current across the entire input voltage range of 3.5 to 5.5V.  Great for your portable project, we made this "pin compatible" with the LM1117-3.3V TO-220 chip so you can swap it in for better performance (90-95% efficiency!) There's also an ENable pin, tie it low to shut down the output completely.

There's a 2-MHz fixed-frequency in PWM mode and PFM mode extends the battery life by reducing the current during light load or standby operation.

Comes with a fully assembled and tested breakout board.  We also include header to plug it into a breadboard.

Because the Arduino (and Basic Stamp) are 5V devices, and most modern sensors, displays, flash cards and modes are 3.3V-only, many makers find that they need to perform level shifting/conversion to protect the 3.3V device from 5V.Although one can use resistors to make a divider, for high speed transfers, the resistors can add a lot of slew and cause havoc that is tough to debug. For that reason, we like using 4050/74LVX245 series and similar logic to perform proper level shifting. Only problem is that they are only good in one direction which can be a problem for some specialty bi-diectional interfaces and also makes wiring a little hairy.That's where this lovely chip, the TXB0108 bi-directional level converter comes in! This chip perform bidirectional level shifting from pretty much any voltage to any voltage and will auto-detect the direction. Only thing that doesn't work well with this chip is i2c (because it uses strong pullups which confuse auto-direction sensor). If you need to use pullups, you can but they should be at least 50K ohm - the ones internal to AVRs/Arduino are about 100K ohm so those are OK! Its a little more luxurious than a 74LVX245 but if you just don't want to worry about directional pins this is a life saver!Since this chip is a special bi-directional level shifter it does not have strong output pins that can drive LEDs or long cables, it's meant to sit on a breadboard between two logic chips! If you do not need instant bi-directional support, we suggest the 74LVX245 as below which has strong output drive.This breakout saves you from having to solder the very fine pitch packages that this chip comes with. We also add 0.1uF caps onto both sides and a 10K pull-up resistor on the output enable pin so you can use it right out of the box!

Because the Arduino (and Basic Stamp) are 5V devices, and most modern sensors, displays, flash cards and modes are 3.3V-only, many makers find that they need to perform level shifting/conversion to protect the 3.3V device from 5V.We do have some other handy level shifters in the shop, from the DIP 74LVC245 to the fancy bi-directional TXB0108. However, neither of these are happy to work with I2C, which uses a funky pull-up system to transfer data back and forth. This level shifter board combines the ease-of-use of the bi-directional TXB0108 with an I2C-compatible FET design following NXP's app note.This breakout has 4 BSS138 FETs with 10K pullups. It works down to 1.8V on the low side, and up to 10V on the high side. The 10K's do make the interface a little more sluggish than using a TXB0108 or 74LVC245 so we suggest checking those out if you need high-speed transfer.While we designed it for use with I2C, this works as well for  TTL Serial,  slow <2MHz SPI, and any other digital interface both uni-directional and bidirectional. Comes with a fully assembled, and tested PCB with 4 full bidirectional converter lines as well as 2 pieces of 6-pin header you can solder on to plug into a breadboard or perfboard.

If you’ve ever tried to connect a 3.3V device to a 5V system, you know what a challenge it can be. The SparkFun bi-directional logic level converter is a small device that safely steps down 5V signals to 3.3V AND steps up 3.3V to 5V at the same time. This level converter also works with 2.8V and 1.8V devices. What really separates this Logic level converter from our previous versions is that you can successfully set your high and low voltages and step up and down between them safely on the same channel. Each level converter has the capability of converting 4 pins on the high side to 4 pins on the low side with two inputs and two outputs provided for each side.

The level converter is very easy to use. The board needs to be powered from the two voltages sources (high voltage and low voltage) that your system is using. High voltage (5V for example) to the ‘HV’ pin, low voltage (3.3V for example) to ‘LV’, and ground from the system to the ‘GND’ pin.

Get Started with the Logic Level Converter Guide

Features

0.63 x 0.52" (16.05 x 13.33mm)

If you’ve had ideas for a project that depends on the ability to sense different spectrums of visible light and react based on those measurements, the ISL29125 breakout board may be just what you need. The ISL29125 breakout board makes it very easy to sense and record the light intensity of the general red, green, and blue spectrums of visible light while rejecting IR from light sources. You can then use these color sensor readings for the purposes of logging and finding patterns, or creatively calculate and make control decisions in your electronic projects.

Each pin from the ISL29125 has been broken out to allow you to interface with it, SDA, SCL, 3.3V, GND, and even an optional INT pin is available for use. The ISL29125 Light Sensor operates at 3.3V but if you plan on using this chip with a 5V microcontroller make sure to use a logic level converter.

Features

Operating Voltage: 3.3V

Operating Current: 56µA

Selectable Range

I2C (SMBus compatible) Output

ADC Resolution 16 bits

SCL, SDA, INT, 3.3V, & GND Pins Broken Out

18.4mm x 17.2mm x 2.4mm (0.7" x 0.6" x 0.09")

This is a pre-wired and waterproofed version of the DS18B20 sensor. Handy for when you need to measure something far away, or in wet conditions. While the sensor is good up to 125°C the cable is jacketed in PVC so we suggest keeping it under 100°C. Because they are digital, you don't get any signal degradation even over long distances! These 1-wire digital temperature sensors are fairly precise (±0.5°C over much of the range) and can give up to 12 bits of precision from the onboard digital-to-analog converter. They work great with any microcontroller using a single digital pin, and you can even connect multiple ones to the same pin, each one has a unique 64-bit ID burned in at the factory to differentiate them. Usable with 3.0-5.0V systems.The only downside is they use the Dallas 1-Wire protocol, which is somewhat complex, and requires a bunch of code to parse out the communication. If you want something really simple, and you have an analog input pin, the TMP36 is trivial to get going.We toss in a 4.7k resistor, which is required as a pullup from the DATA to VCC line when using the sensor. We don't have a detailed tutorial up yet but you can get started by using the Dallas Temperature Control Arduino library which requires also the OneWire Library.