Hardware Category - Page 503 of 1133 - CNX Software

September 3, 2019September 3, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

ESP32-S2 Processor Datasheet Released, Development Boards Unveiled

Last may Espressif Systems unveiled ESP32-S2 secure WiFi processor with a single Xtensa LX7 core clocked at 240 MHz, and the first ESP32 processor to come with a built-in USB (OTG) interface, as well as some new features such as WiFi Time-of-Flight (ToF), hardware security, LCD RGB & camera interfaces, and more. Note that contrary to other ESP32 processors launched so far, ESP32-S2 does not support Bluetooth. ESP32-S2 Datasheet The processor is still not available, but there has been some interesting development in recent weeks. First the datasheet (PDF) has been released, so we’ve got to check more technical details including the processor diagram below. The main specifications have not changed, so I won’t reproduce them here, and you can check out ESP32-S2 announcement for specs. ESP32-S2 Development Boards The first ESP32-S2 development boards are also available… in Espressif Systems’ offices that is, but not quite publicly. The board above […]

September 2, 2019August 6, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

PT100 Resistance Temperature Detector (RTD) Probes Support Extreme Temperature Ranges

I’ve been playing with temperature measurements in several hardware platforms such as Texas Instruments eZ430-Chronos Watch, Sonoff SC environmental monitor, Wemos D1 board with aDHT21 temperature sensor, or more recently ANAVI Thermometer with the last three platforms based on ESP8266 WiSoC. All four devices/boards above have temperature sensors designed to measure ambient temperature with for example DHT22 having a range of -40 to +125 degrees Celsius. I had also come across DS18B20 waterproof temperature probe to measure liquid temperature several times with a range of -55 to 125°C. Good for most use cases, and for example you could check boiling water with the later. But I had never really thought about measuring data for much lower or much higher temperatures, and this morning I came across two “PT100” temperature probes on IC Station new arrivals feed namely WZP-187 ($4.89) and an unnamed probe ($3.42) respectively capable of -200°C to +400°C […]

August 31, 2019 by Stephen Vicinanza - 6 Comments

Pi-oT Raspberry Pi Add-on Board Targets Commercial & Industrial IoT Automation (Crowdfunding)

USA Based Startup Builds RPi Add-on Pi-oT, a Cleveland based startup has launched a Kickstarter campaign for a Raspberry Pi add-on for commercial and industrial IoT automation. The unit is a full mountable chassis with fan and DIN-rail that extends the Pi’s GPIO with 26-pin terminal connectors and provides 5x relays, 8x ADCs, and power outputs. We have reported on a variety of uses for the Raspberry Pi SBC, from home automation to development in IoT, to hobby projects, and in education settings. It is not surprising to see an automation module developed for IoT industrial applications around the popular and powerful SBC. The Choices The Kickstarter campaign has passed its low initial target and is set to ship at the end of October. There is an early launch discount on the unit’s price of $40 for commercial and $50 for industrial backers. That early bird type special is 15% […]

August 30, 2019March 15, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

ULX3S Education Board is Powered by Lattice Semi ECP5 FPGA & ESP32 WiFi/BLE Module

ULX3S Lattice ECP5 FPGA Educational Board

A few days ago, we covered the KiCAD designed OrangeCrab open-source hardware board powered by a Lattice Semi ECP5 FPGA, and compliant with Adafruit Feather form factor. It’s turned out there’s another Lattice Semi ECP5 FPGA board that’s also designed with KiCAD and open source hardware. Radiona ULX3S differs are it’s larger and exposes more I/Os since it was specifically designed to meet the meets of the digital logic course at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER) of the University of Zagreb in Croatia. ULX3S specifications: FPGA – Lattice ECP5 LFE5U-85F-6BG381C with 84K LUT System Memory – 32MB SDRAM @ 166 MHz Storage – 4–16MB Quad-SPI Flash for FPGA config and user data storage; MicroSD slot Audio – 3.5 mm jack with 4 contacts (analog stereo + digital audio or composite video) Video – Digital video (GPDI General-Purpose Diferential Interface) with 3.3V-5V I2C bidirectional level shifter Display – […]

August 30, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Using Sony PS3 Eye Camera as an Inexpensive Microphone Array

Almost exactly two years ago to the day, we published an article showing how microphone arrays performed against a single USB microphone, and the latter started to have a poor wake word detection success rate at around 3 meters array even in a silent room, and it got worse with white noise or background music, while the microphone arrays would pick up the wake word with a much higher success rate in all conditions. The price of smart audio development kits varies a lot from $500 for Intel Speech Enabling Developer Kit to $129 for an Allwinner R18-based 3-Mic Far-Field Amazon AVS Development Kit, and $99 for ReSpeaker Core v2. If you’ve already got a Raspberry Pi 3/4 board, you can get cheaper options such as ReSpeaker 4-Mic Array for $25, but nothing beats the price of Sony PS3 Eye camera that comes with a 4 microphone array and sells […]

August 29, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Gateworks GW5913 Compact NXP i.MX 6 SBC Supports PoE, GPS and 4G LTE Cellular Connectivity

Gateworks has announced a new Ventana SBC similar to their GW5530 board with 4G LTE connectivity, as GW5913 single board computer follows the same factor, and supports 4G LTE connectivity via mPCIe cards, but it replaces the microSIM card slot by a nanoSIM card socket, and adds a Gigabit Ethernet port with 802.11at PoE support. Gateworks GW5913 specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 6Dual dual-core Arm Cortex-A9 processor @ 800MHz System Memory – 512MB DDR3-800 SDRAM Storage – 256MB Flash, serial configuration EEPROM Connectivity Gigabit Ethernet with PoE support Optional 4G LTE via high-power (up to 8W) Gen2 Mini-PCIe socket with USB 2.0 and nanoSIM socket Optional u-blox GPS Receiver with MMCX or U.FL Antenna Connector Expansion Connector – USB, UART, I2C, DAC, DIO Misc – Real-Time Clock with battery backup, voltage and temperature monitor, programmable watchdog timer Power Supply – 8 to 60VDC input voltage range via 2-pin power connector […]

August 29, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 36 Comments

$5 Longan Nano GD32V RISC-V Development Board Comes with LCD Display and Enclosure

There’s been some exciting news about RISC-V microcontrollers recently with Gigadevice announcing GD32V, one of the first RISC-V general-purpose microcontrollers, which outperforms its Arm Cortex-M3 equivalent in terms of performance and power consumption. The company also announced some development boards, but they are not quite that easy to purchase being listed on Tmall website in China. The good news is that Sipeed has introduced Longan Nano development board powered by GD32VF103CBT6 microcontroller, and it’s up for sale on Seeed Studio for $4.9. Longan Nano board specifications: MCU – Gigadevice GD32VF103CBT6 32-bit RISC-V (rv32imac) microcontroller @ 108 MHz with 128KB Flash, 32KB SRAM Storage – MicroSD card slot Display – 0.96″ 160×80 IPS RGB LCD connected via SPI USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and programming Expansion – 2x 16 through holes (2.54mm pitch) exposing 3x USART, 2x I2C, 3x SPI, 2x I2S, 2x CAN, 1x USBFS (OTG), 2x […]

August 28, 2019 by Ayo Ayibiowu - 3 Comments

Nordic Thingy:91 Cellular IoT Prototyping Platform Comes with 16 Sensors

Nordic Semiconductor launched the Nordic Thingy:52 back in mid-2017 in the hopes of bringing app and web developers into the hardware ecosystem as fast and easy as possible. The Nordic Thingy:52 was a Bluetooth 5 IoT sensor development kit based on the company’s nRF52832 WiSoC. Although the Nordic Thingy:52 kit is still very much available for purchase and support always available, Nordic Semiconductor has gone further launching a new development kit called the Nordic Thingy:91 targeting cellular IoT applications. The Nordic Thingy:91 is a cellular IoT prototyping platform with support for LTE-M, NB-IoT plus GPS option. Even though IoT connectivity standards like LoRaWAN, BLE, WiFi, ZigBee, and others are very much growing and expanding, Nordic Semi is fully backing cellular technology, something that has very much been available and most likely will still keep been available, and the adoption of 5G is another testimony to that. Cellular is here, and […]