This year, especially the last 4-5 months has been a very busy time in our design department, cooking up all kinds of Touch of SPice add-on boards.
The Touch of SPice concept is very simple but extremely effective: To a standard controller, with its generic facilities, add a small add-on daughter board that provides a "Touch of SPice", some special functionality that would otherwise be very hard, very expensive or downright impossible to source.
The new SPice boards introduced this year include (click the links for full information):
Embedded webserver support. Your SPLat based product can now have its own presence on the world wide web.
6-channel water level switching using conductivity probes. This one is a big hit with water pumping and liquid food processing applications.
3-phase AC voltage measurement. Ideal for genset and energy management products.
K-type thermocouple. For low temperatures our very low cost thermistor temperature measurement is still the least expensive, but this board will take you up to 1024°C in 0.25°C steps.
Small DC motor speed control. Ideal for small permanent magnet 24VDC motors in applications like peristaltic dosing pumps and small robotic mechanisms.
Analog I/O expansion. Add more general purpose analog I/O to MMi200 and SL99, or give the MS12 some analog capability.
These are small, low cost add-on boards performing functions you might otherwise have to pay big bucks for as an external "box". Also, what doesn't show up in this list is the very unique functions we can and do brew up as custom SPice boards. These are typically "weirdo" circuits needed to interface some proprietary sensor to a controller. You won't find our competitors offering them because they are "non-standard" and the quantities are low (i.e. less than 10,000). We can do a batch of custom SPice boards as small as 15 to 20 pieces and be cost effective.