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Pesky Products

5,406 orders since Jul 23, 2014

Danville, CA, United States of America

Ships from United States of America.

Custom Work Available

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Welcome to Pesky Products!

Overall Rating:

Review Breakdown

5
91 4
62 3
21 2
3 1
2

Average Ratings

Product: (4.74)

Documentation: (4.14)

Shipping: (4.80)

Communication: (4.60)

All Reviews

Diego | May 29, 2017

Excellent Quality

For Grid-Eye 8 x 8 IR Array

Amazing sensor, the build quality is VERY good, the sensor works perfectly.

I'm still getting to know it as I just got it 30 minutes ago; for those of you working with esp8266 the connections that worked for me working with a Nodemcu are:

* 3V3 -> 3V3
* GND -> GND
* SDA -> D2
* SCL -> D1

Pesky Products answered all my questions quickly and very clearly I highly recommend them and I will surely make some more purchase in the future as they have many interesting products.

Maurice | May 15, 2017

Great air quality sensor. Easy I2C interface.

For Air Quality Sensors

I interfaced the sensors on the I2C bus from an RTL8710 chip. There is an example program for the board on Github, but I used the Sparkfun BME280 and CCS811 libraries from Sparkfun. That worked fine for me as long as I used the 5A address for the CCS811 and pulled down the nWAK line for its I2C transfers. The CCS811 takes a couple of days to stabilize. Also I suspect the heater in the CCS811 is adding a couple of degrees to the temperature of the BME280 since they are in very close proximity.

But overall a nice breakout, well engineered and interesting to experiment with.
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Response from Pesky Products | May 15, 2017
Thanks for the review.

Yes, the CCS811 heater will raise the board temperature a bit, especially if you run the sensor at 1 Hz. The BME280 was added to allow compensation of the CCS811 data for pressure and humidity. The latter will be slightly affected by any temperature rise due to the current usage. I measured 20 mA current (IIRC) when the heater is on, and at 0.1 Hz this shouldn't cause too much extra heating. The board design is a compromise of many factors with the goal of ease of use and small size. Other choices are possible.

Btw, does Sparkfun's program handle the humidity and pressure compensation? If not, you might be missing optimal performance from the CCS811.

Robert | April 27, 2017

Great little board

For nRF52832 Development Board

Really like this board - nice combination of 2nd gen nordic bluetooth and 9-axis 9250.
Also appreciate the quick shipping of product once they returned to stock.

Recommended.

Ruud | April 24, 2017

THE imp003 breakout board to get!

For Electric Imp (IMP003) Development Board

Brilliant small design, using quite a few to full satisfaction for longer time now.

No downsides I can think of.....

Ruben | April 17, 2017

Great Product! Have ordered multiple units.

For BQ25504 Solar Cell LiPo Charger

This is a great little unit for either plug and play solar-to-lipo charging, or as a very reasonably priced eval-style board for the BQ25504 module. Many thanks to the seller (Kris) for sharing their excellent design.

Allan | April 16, 2017

great board

For nRF52832 Development Board

Great board for trying out nRF52.
Kris shipped the next day and was very helpful and responsive when I contacted after with questions.
Highly recommend.

Lennart | April 3, 2017

Great!

For SPI Flash Memory Add-ons for Teensy 3.X

Great!.................................................................................................................

Bryan | March 22, 2017

Breadboard

For BQ25504 Solar Cell LiPo Charger

The board works and does it's job as described in the documentation. Unfortunately it is not bread-boardable due to the pin layout. It would have been nice if all pins were setup in two lines on each side of the board. Yes, I could have ran an extra wire and yes, the PCB size may have needed to be slightly bigger, but I would gladly take the extra size to give it bread-board capability.
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Response from Pesky Products | March 22, 2017
Thanks for the review!

The BQ25504 breakout board is designed to mount onto the back of a small LiPo battery and/or solar cell, so small size was the goal. There are other breakouts that are larger and offer better access to the pins for breadboard use. Yet, the solar cell input pins and the battery output pins are on the board edges spaces 0.5" apart and can accept 0.1" machine pin headers and be mounted in a breadboard. This is how I tested my very first one. In this case, I used hooked test leads to connect the system voltage and GND to an MCU. So the board is almost perfect, even for breadboarding, but I'll keep trying...

Gennadii | March 20, 2017

Balanced composition of features for good price

For nRF52832 Development Board

Initially bought it for my idea of cheap balance\gait\posture training rehabilitation device, and I'm still on my way to it. During my journey device showed itself as a 3D mouse, joystick, head tracker. Unoptimized power consumption about 15mAh and probably it could be quite lower when handling correctly.

One thing to be careful with - in older version of the board interrupt from MPU comes to pin 10 that is protected by default to be used as NFC (along with pin 9). You should remove protection to use it as GPIO.

Also, when used with external power bank from OnePlus board's voltage controller goes crazy and starts cycling between power on\off continuously. Not sure why. With other power sources (USB and battery) it works as expected.

Davyd | March 19, 2017

Very neat work. Super fast turn around

For ICS43432 I2S Digital Microphone

Needed these to evaluate several MEMS mics in a project I am building. The official shipping company for the components went back and forth for several weeks and then eventually came back to me saying they no longer made the breakout boards with these specific mics.

I found these, ordered them, and they were delivered and in my design before I even got an order fulfillment note from the original shipper for the other components I had ordered!

Very neat boards. Well done.
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Response from Pesky Products | March 19, 2017
Thanks for the review Davyd, I am glad you like them. The newest version is the ICS43434 which offer slightly smaller size and lower power usage. When the last of the ICS43432 are gone from inventory I will make a production run of the newer version to keep these useful little mics in stock. Thanks for being a customer! Kris

Iliya | Feb. 24, 2017

MLX90621 4 x 16 IR Array

For MLX90621 4 x 16 IR Array

It is very good PCB. Especially for me who is not a professional.
Thanks to all of these people who make such projects, I can realize also my ideas and give them to my students.

François-Xavier | Feb. 19, 2017

Very good product !

For BQ25504 Solar Cell LiPo Charger

A few word to explain why this product is awesome : small, simple and efficient ! I use it to make a very small, solar powered, really very low power weather station in a remote place. Associated with a 3.6V 200mA solar cell and a big li-ion battery, it allow the weather station to work for months without sun, ans probably years if there is at least a little sun sun one day every two week !

Daniel | Jan. 27, 2017

Super fast shipping and great support

For BNO-055 9-axis motion sensor with hardware fusion

A nice compact design with good examples and excellent shipping and support -- thanks Kris!

A few notes from my initial experiences:
- the v0.02a BNO055/BMP280 board no longer has jumpers to control the pullups -- they're hard wired
- the BNO055 firmware is v3.11 on the ones I received
- using Kris' sketch with the board in "shield" position with headers
- sometimes I get hangs in the I2C scan phase
- the magnetometer behaviour seems problematic: the mx,my,mz reports change very little when rotating execution but substantially from one boot to another, and the reported heading is completely unreliable, even when the system and magnetometer report full calibration (all 3s). I was able to get much more sensible output by disabling the up-front magnetometer calibration and relying on the running auto calibration. Could this be related to being in the S hemisphere?

Next step for me will be a thorough review of the BNO055 docs.

Thanks,
Daniel

John | Jan. 17, 2017

Arduino Compatible Development Board - ESP32

For Smallest ESP32 Development Board

All in all I am absolutely satisfied with this little morsel. I had a bit of trouble on my windows 10 machine at first, but it ended up being windows assigning the wrong drivers to this device and was easily fixed. Kris helped me with every question every step of the way and has since created additional documentation. This is in the early stages, but is going to be a great addition to any tinkerers toolbox for sure! I am proud to have been one of the few to have funded the Kickstarter and to have been able to purchase the device. I have been playing with this as well as the DragonFly, LadyBug, and ButterFly for a few weeks now and have not found a limitation yet. Some libraries may not be compatible yet, but that in my opinion is a call to action for the community. If anyone is interested I will start a section on my forums at https://ghostlyhaks.com /forum to support and help build on this great project that was graciously left open source by all who was involved in this.

Robert | Dec. 18, 2016

Great Service

For LSF0108 Logic Level Translator

Wiring first project now - translating 1.8v I2C and GPIO to 5v components using Intel Edison. Looking forward to this being THE SWISS ARMY KNIFE of 1.8v-5v level translators.

Tanguy | Dec. 16, 2016

First attempt to use in a motion capture setup

For Wearable BNO055 Nano Board

I received 10 of those sensors a few days ago. My goal is to use them as a body motion capture device. 10 of such devices to capture a human body attitude and motion. Interfacing them with an arduino like processor board with an i2c multiplexing module is straightforward. Il easily transmits quaternions on i2c bus after a few bytes of configuration.
Only problem: getting the 16 bytes of a quaternion. Each byte has to be requested separatly. I failed having them in a burst or multiple read mode. l did not use a ready-made library.
The very small size of the board is very practical for my project.

Loïc Tanguy
France

Masaki | Dec. 1, 2016

Significant effect, but a bit sensitive

For ESC for BLDC motors

Around 8% more thrust force than Mx-3A is obtained. However, I'm bothered by frequent low-power-reset while the Mx-3A has no problem with the same settings. I guess it comes from voltage drop-down through power supply wires, and the setting of the level is higher than that of the Mx-3A.
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Response from Pesky Products | Dec. 1, 2016
Yes, we have noticed that with BLDC motors with large current draws there is a brown out issue with these ESCs. We have "cured" this with a large (400 uF) cap across the power port of the ESC but this is an ugly solution. For use with the small AP-02 and AP-03 motors this should not be an issue and caps unnecessary, but for slightly larger motors you might have to add capacitance as the voltage drop due to battery resistance alone at high current (the FETs have extremely low on resistance) can be enough to drop the voltage below the 3V3 required for stable F850 MCU function. This is the price for ultra-small; adding a SMT 400 uF cap to the board would require a significant increase in size.

Thomas | Nov. 17, 2016

Great board

For Dragonfly STM32L4 Development Board

Bought it with the microSD expander. Works well. I will be ordering 10 more in the next few months.

Also, will last about 48 hours with a 400mAh LiPo battery.

David | Nov. 16, 2016

Wearable BNO055 Nano Board: Useful less-expensive option

For Wearable BNO055 Nano Board

This is the least expensive way to get the BNO055's excellent onboard fusion into my project. I didn't really need a barometer, external clock reference, or other fanciness. I would heartily recommend it to anyone in the same position. It boringly does exactly what it was supposed to, which is the highest praise I can give a breakout board, so I'm now going to spend the remainder of this review criticizing and nitpicking.

The mechanical design of the board itself could be optimized some. I know this is a "wearable" variant, but surely the convenience of full through-holes outweighs the extra 2 mm of board size. Gadgets with IMUs are often subjected to significant mechanical stress, and half-pin solder joints are significantly weaker than full-pin.
Also, given Pesky Products' emphasis on Teensy add-ons, it would have been nice if the board lined up well with the Teensy pins it uses. I'd rather not pay more for a board with features I didn't need, just for the Teensy-friendly footprint.

On the documentation front, the included Arduino sketch worked as advertised. However, I already had a codebase that used Adafruit's comprehensive library for the BNO055, with nice classes for quaternions and so on. That library didn't play nice with this breakout board, and I had to figure out some hacks on the Adafruit library to get it to work. For example, I had to force it to use i2c_t3.h over Wire.h, and I changed the default device address from 0x28 to 0x29 (This was because the ADO pin was not pulled down to ground, and the pin floats HIGH).
Given the wide reach of Adafruit's libraries, some compatibility documentation (and in the case of the ADO pin bug, possibly design changes) would be useful.

David | Nov. 16, 2016

LiPo battery charger for Teensy 3.1: Great device!

For LiPo battery charger add-on for Teensy 3.1

The design of this charger add-on makes my day. The way it puts the power switch right next to the MicroUSB port simplifies enclosure design, and the low-battery blinking feature is quite handy, coming from MCP73831-based designs.

I do have one suggestion, though. It would have been SO NICE if the travel of the power switch went from one end of the micro-USB port to the other, instead of starting at one end and moving away from the center. That way, the access hole in my enclosure could just be a bit taller, instead of taller and wider. Plus, it would have been so nicely symmetrical.

Francois-Xavier | Oct. 21, 2016

Very good product !

For ESP8285 Development Board

I'm very happy with this little board : small, efficient, very easy to use.
I would like to use it to make small and very low power environemental sensors, powered by small solar cells.
I have made a modified version of your script (with post to PHANT instead of a server) and have been able to have less than 8mA of current used during sleep, which is very good for my usage.
If I can ask for one improvement for the hypothetic next revision : the BME280 sensor seems to be impacted by the rest of the board (interference or just heat dissipasion of the other component, not sure yet). As you said, a small offset can be set in the code, but since the BME280 use internal temp to compensate for humidity and pression, seems that everything is a little off and it doesn't seems to be linear.
Would it be possible to add a little gab between this sensor and the others component (or a heat shield ?!) ?
I would be very happy to buy more than one of a new revision with this very little issue solved !
And, but this is for my very specific usage : a Vin pin to be able to plug my solar pannel directly on a pin, not on the USB port (maybe with a very low voltage drop diode to protect it)
Thanks a lot for this very good little board !
Francois-Xavier
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Response from Pesky Products | Oct. 24, 2016
The VBAT pin on the lower left corner is a VIN pin and can accept any voltage from 3.3 to 5.5 V. If you have a LiPo battery connected to the board via the +/- port then VBAT will show the LiPo battery voltage; VBAT is connected to the + port. However, if you do not use a LiPo battery on the +/- port, then VBAT is a VIN and the board will be powered by either VIN or VUSB, whichever is the greatest voltage.

Simon | Oct. 7, 2016

I built a flight controller with it :^)

For DC Motor Controller Board for Teensy 3.1

Usual experience with Pesky Products: in stock, quick delivery, follow his directions and you get something awesome.
Check out the flight controller I built with it (and Pesky's MPU9250 shield):

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/hackflight-teensycopter

Time to order another one, for TeensyCopter Mark II !

Seth | Oct. 3, 2016

Works as described

For ESP8285 Add-on for Teensy 3.2

I hooked both of these up but was a bit confused on the AT commands required to make them work. Firmware was installed correctly. Length of the antenna would have been nice - I asked an RF expert at work and he recommended about 3cm to 4cm...

Robert | Oct. 3, 2016

Amazing product, but could use better documentation.

For ESP8285 Add-on for Teensy 3.2

To do a thorough job on the documentation for this product would probably be harder than creating the product itself. The range of understanding and knowledge that customers bring must be all over the place. But it is important. Stuff like: 1) Here is what you received, and here are some of the things it can and can't do. 2) Here is the first thing that you should do, then do this and this. 3) Be very careful to do/not to do this and this. 4) You have different options for developing software and flashing this microprocessor....here they all are with the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy. 5) Here are some clear examples of how this product can be connected with other hardware. 6) Here is a glossary of terms we are using. 7) At every step, here is what you should see if all is well. And here is what you should do if you don't get what you are supposed to.

With determination a customer can eventually figure things out. But it sure saves a lot of time with good documentation. For this amazing product, the documentation provided is accurate and clear, but just not enough of it. It needs 20 pages, not 1 page.
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Response from Pesky Products | Oct. 3, 2016
Thanks for the review Robert!

If this was only one of a few products I sell or if I had a team of people I might be able to oblige the request for better documentation with in-depth tutorials. Alas, I am not Sparkfun or Adafruit, it's just me! And for this product there is the ESP8266 forum, an excellent Arduino core with wiki, lots of discussion on the Teensy forum about how to use the ESP8266 with the Teensy, and of course, I am ready and happy to answer all questions about this or any product I design and sell. I am glad you got it to work for you!

Bruno | Oct. 1, 2016

Great dev board!

For ESP8285 Development Board

I got in touch with Kris initially inquiring about his dev board after some research into esp8266. This board is unique and the way Kris has designed it makes it the easiest to develop code out of all the offerings out there.

Kris answered every question I had very quickly without any bias towards the products he is selling. I'm definitely getting more stuff from his store in the future!
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Response from Pesky Products | Oct. 1, 2016
Thanks for the kind words.

I am working on a revision of the board that exposes two more of the GPIOs (pins 9 and 10) for an even better utility.

Kris
Pesky Products

Oleksandr | Sept. 21, 2016

Great product

For BNO-055 9-axis motion sensor with hardware fusion

The boards work perfectly.
Very pleased with communication with the Seller.
Will try the other your products as well.

Christian | Sept. 3, 2016

Beautiful board

For ESP8285 Development Board

I am impressed by how much thought went into the design of this, and I love the “appallingly small” size. I am using it with MicroPython (just playing around for now, no specific project) and everything I’ve tried works flawlessly.

I did get tracking even with the cheaper shipping option, despite the description saying otherwise, and the shipment arrived in Switzerland in 9 days.

The only thing I’m a little disappointed about is that it’s not purple anymore, I liked that color. ;)
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Response from Pesky Products | Sept. 4, 2016
Thanks for the kind words!

I like purple too, but this is not an option at the fab I usually use and i got tired of assembling these myself!

Kalle | Aug. 26, 2016

It works.

For ICS43432 I2S Digital Microphone

The board works great, just as advertised. Thanks!
But the shipping... 30$ , 8 days to Europe (even if the parcel was posted the same day I ordered it, and it didn't even get stuck in customs!), tracking unavailable.
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Response from Pesky Products | Aug. 26, 2016
Shipping costs can be lowered by choosing first class air mail at $14.95, which normally also takes 8 - 10 business days to Europe. Registered mail is really only necessary in cases where there is some risk of package "diversion". Registered mail is trackable, which means the sender can track it after seven days from mailing but for whatever reason the receiver cannot except when the package is sent to certain countries. I don't understand this, but then who can understand Post office policies? Nevertheless, for most international shipping, first class air mail is the best choice, even though this is only trackable through the customs number in some (but many) cases.

Mark | Aug. 25, 2016

Thumbs up for both electric imp and this dev board

For Electric Imp (IMP003) Development Board

I am using this product to make tools for in-house research in our R&D department.

I have been using electric imp since they introduced the first module several years back. I have found their system design to be just plain reliable and it is why I continue to use it. Most of the devices I have built are deployed remotely - actually half-way round the world and I like being able to push code to them with total confidence that it will work. My rep at the company depends on it ; )

So far as this particular dev board I used it to transition between the obsoleted imp002 and whatever comes next. I like the inclusion of the blue LED as I can use this as an error code indicator. The layout is clean and easy to work with.


: )

Martin | Aug. 24, 2016

A good board, but self-heating can be problematic...

For BNO-055 9-axis motion sensor with hardware fusion

I bought this board primarily to experiment with the MS5637 pressure/temperature sensor (they're very hard to find on their own carrier board!) My understanding was that the MS5637 is extremely accurate - it immediately made me doubt my lowly RHT03/DHT22 sensor's readings (consistently lower by over 2 degrees C and it's been that way for weeks.

I recently got a SHT31-D, which is also considered to be highly accurate, mainly to compare RH readings to. It was reading almost exactly the same RH *and* temperature as the RHT03/DHT22! That surprised me. I moved components a bit, pondered airflow (adequate), and was all but ready to declare the MS5637 faulty.

Then I realized... unlike the other breakouts, the MS5637 has an on-board neighbor: the BNO-055, which is doing a lot of work even standing still. I got out my tiny FLIR camera and gave it a look:

http://i.imgur.com/LHmVgR4.jpg
# (unfortunately I can't seem to upload a review image or create an actual link here)

I don't have exact radiometry but it looks like the BNO-055 is the main source of the extra heat. Perhaps a heat-sink would help, though that might cause other problems. Bottom line: if the MS5637 was on its own separate board this would not be a problem.

I plan to test whether I can idle the BNO-055 to deal with this for the purpose of my setup (and to test the true accuracy of the MS5637), but obviously this isn't going to help someone expecting to have the 9-DOF active and get accurate temperature and pressure readings (given that temperature is used to calculate pressure offsets as well). It's a neat device... I just wish self-heating wasn't such a problem with T/P accuracy on it.

---

Followup: I switched the BNO-055 to suspended power mode and the temperature of the auxiliary MS5637 sensor on this board immediately began to drop, leveling out just about 2 degrees C below where it had been before and almost exactly in line with what the SHT31-D sensor read (and a few tenths of a degree C above the value seen on the RHT03/DHT22) and validating my hypothesis.

Matt | Aug. 11, 2016

Great little board!

For ESP8285 Development Board

Have been playing around with MicroPython and Blynk (using Arduino) on this . Great little board! I haven't figured out what I'm going to use it for long term yet, but it's great to have the very small option. Maybe for a wearable (I'm not really into that but I'm trying to encourage my 14 year old daughter to learn as much as she can about programming and microcontrollers so maybe a wearable project will induce some extra learning opportunity for her).
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Response from Pesky Products | Sept. 4, 2016
I like the small aspect of this board too, and just enough GPIOs to make it interesting. I hope your daughter finds the board easy enough to use that she sticks with it, my kids seem bored with electronics:<

Albertas | Aug. 8, 2016

Nice sensor

For VL53L0X Time-of-Flight Ranging Sensor

The sensor works no problem. The board is small and tidy. Quick search led me to this thread that contains Arduino example code: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/diyrovers/lc7NUZYuJOg

Just in case I'm duplicating it here: https://gist.github.com/Miceuz/13b51336cbdfaa372dbe10777a5068f4

Oscar | July 14, 2016

Great charger for projects

For STBC08 High-Current LiPo Battery Charger

First off, this is a great product, and my go-to on every project I do, cause I want portable.

Will this charge a Li-Ion battery without problems, in particular a cell battery like a rechargeable CR2032?
Like this: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10319
or this: https://www.amazon.com/Battery-Li-Ion-Rechargeable-Button-LIR2032/dp/B006O3UG6A

Dan | July 13, 2016

Fantastic product! Well made, easy to interface / program

For BNO-055 9-axis motion sensor with hardware fusion

I have been using the BNO055 for many months now, and I am extremely pleased with the product and its performance. I am using it in a custom sensor fused with GPS data to measure and track the sensor's velocity and position in inertial space. Combined with a Teensy 3.2, I can output all the data at a 50 Hz rate - fast enough to adequately sample a chaotic wind field (must have chaotic accelerations to use the accelerometer data correctly).
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