Premier Farnell, the Development Distributor, is making it easy to find the perfect gift for even the hardest to shop for engineer this holiday season with handpicked gifts for engineers of all ages and abilities, from those with decades of experience to those just starting out.

“Picking out the right gift for the engineer on your list need not be a stressful time,” says Ankur Tomar, Technical Marketing Manager at Premier Farnell “Premier Farnell aims to simplify the gift-giving process by making it easy for shoppers to delight engineers, develop their skills, and turn their ideas into reality. Whether you’re shopping for a gadget collector, budding engineer, hobbyist, or professional, Premier Farnell is one-stop-shop for finding something they’re sure to love.”

Fun gifts for the young engineer:

• CODEBUG Development Board: A fun, engaging entry-level introduction to the world of coding, physical computing and electronics that’s shaped like a ladybug.
• micro:bit wear:it Development Kit: Build it, code it and wear it! This kit includes everything young engineers need to power their first wearable technology project. The versatile micro:bit enclosure is designed for mobile applications and can be used with a wrist strap, keyring or lanyard.
• MARTY the Robot: A fully programmable, Wi-Fi enabled robot who can walk, turn, dance and react to his environment. This educational kit is great for kids, makers and educators.

Essential kits for every maker, designer and engineer:

• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ Starter Kit: A complete kit including power supply, enclosure and SD card to get started developing with the latest Raspberry Pi.
• Raspberry Pi Desktop: A revolutionary set of accessories to convert your Raspberry Pi into a functional desktop computer with Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, Real Time Clock, Camera and SSD. The new Pi Desktop displays to an HDMI interface for an authentic PC experience.
• Creality CR-10S 3D Printer: A low cost solution to 3D printing for any maker or hobbyist.

Tools and accessories for the maker who seems to have it all:

• Raspberry Pi Camera Board: An image sensor custom designed to add-on to the Raspberry Pi. Perfect for any projects that require the capturing of images with Raspberry Pi.
• Matrix Voice: An open-source voice recognition platform for the Raspberry Pi that provides developers with the opportunity to integrate custom voice & hardware-accelerated machine learning technology right onto the silicon.
• Bitscope Oscilloscope & Logic Analyzer: A full featured mixed signal oscilloscope, test and measurement system that is perfect for an experienced maker or engineer.

element14, the development distributor, today announces exclusive global availability of the new BitScope Blade range, offering the ability to conveniently power and mount multiple Raspberry Pi’s.

BitScope Blades are designed for building scalable computing solutions ranging from stand-alone servers, routers and workstations up to full compute clusters, private clouds, networked physical computing and Industrial IoT systems.

Every Blade can be used with simple plug packs, 12V batteries, solar power systems, low cost uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) and even passive power over Ethernet (PoE) solutions to up 48V. They may be used individually on the desktop, wall mounted or multiple Blades may be installed in racks for large scale deployment. Blades offer full access to Raspberry Pi I/O for displays, cameras, keyboards, expansion boards and peripherals including BitScopes, Raspberry Pi HATs and the Raspberry Pi 7” Touchscreen Display.

BitScope Blade is available in three editions based upon the number of Raspberry Pi boards mounted:

• BitScope Blade Uno is a flexible power and mounting solution for one Raspberry Pi computer and optional HAT. It is the perfect computing platform for makers, students and engineers using the Raspberry Pi.
• BitScope Blade Duo is a desktop, rack or wall mountable power and mounting solution for a pair of Raspberry Pi computers, ideal for building a reliable stand-alone desktop & server system with the Raspberry Pi.
• BitScope Blade Quattro is a desktop, rack or wall mountable power and mounting solution for four Raspberry Pi computers, ideal for creating compute clusters, private clouds or build farms with the Raspberry Pi.

Claire Doyle, Global Head of Raspberry Pi and Single Board Computing for element14, said: “The BitScope Blade is a really exciting addition to our ecosystem of Raspberry Pi accessories as it increases potential to use the Raspberry Pi within new applications as well as providing power reliability required for industrial use. We work with an increasing number of start-ups designing-in the Raspberry Pi for commercial and industrial use. This new product has the potential to create a step-change in opportunities within the industrial sector, and facilitate a revolution in the use of single board computers within industry”

Bruce Tulloch, CEO of BitScope Designs, said: “Our experience working with hundreds industrial customers using BitScope with Raspberry Pi demonstrated the key problem most of them faced was finding a cost effective, reliable and scalable power and mounting solution for Raspberry Pi and its accessories. BitScope Blade is our solution, customised specifically to the needs of our industrial, commercial and educational customers.”

The product is expected to appeal to professional engineers, students and hobbyists as a solution to broaden industrial design applications for Raspberry Pi.

The BitScope Blade products are available from Farnell element14 in Europe, Newark element14 in North America and element14 in Asia Pacific. For more information on the BitScope Blade range please visit the element14 community.