Digispark

Digistump is an extraordinary family business based in Portland. The founder, Erik Tylek Kettenburg, and his wife Jenni run Digistump in Washougal, Washington, where they live with their horses, dogs and other farm animals. The idea for the company was born out of a need for a simple and inexpensive solution to the problems of electronics and robotics engineers around the world. Thus, the Digispark board was born. Today, Digistump offers products such as Digispark Shield kits, Digispark Pro, DigiX or even sweatshirts and t-shirts with the company logo for fans.

Digistump - a project born from a real need

The whole project started on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform where visitors can support various projects submitted by users. The Digispark tile was one of those projects and a large group of backers contributed to its production. The fundraising was a huge success and thus enabled Erik Tylek Kettenburg to found Digistump. The first idea was to solve a problem that many electronics engineers were encountering. The popular, easy and convenient Arduino boards used to "bring to life" simple projects were too big and expensive (for a simple controller used to control a diode, among other things), which wasted their capabilities. At the same time, the Arduino environment, SPI, I2C ports, and off-the-shelf solutions were very practical for doing a lot of projects. So Erik Kettenburg decided to build a Digispark board that is compatible with the Arduino environment, but at the same time smaller, lighter and cheaper.

What will you find in the Botland range from Digistump?

First of all, you will find a product called "Digispark - ATtiny85 Mini Microcontroller - 5 V" which is the now legendary board that started Digistump. The device has a practical ATtiny85 microcontroller (with 8 kb Flash memory and 16 MHz clocking), a built-in USB Bootloader for programming with Arduino IDE environment, and a microUSB socket for programming. The device is powered by a USB port or a special socket, where you can safely connect a power source from 5 V up to even 35 V (thanks to a voltage regulator with up to 500 mA capacity). The device also offers 6 digital pins (input/output): 4 ADC pins, 3 PWM channels, and an I2C and SPI interface. The board also features two mounting holes (2.1 mm in diameter), making it easy to install the board in a suitably adapted enclosure or on a special rack. A six-pin and three-pin goldpin connector and a USB cable are included, so you can connect the device directly to your computer right after purchase. The whole device is lightweight and takes up very little space, which makes it fit into very small spaces.