HealthyPi v4 Wearable WiFi Vital Signs Monitor Follows Raspberry Pi HAT Form Factor

HealthyPi v4 Campaign Starts ProtoCentral has started a Crowd Supply campaign for the HealthyPi v4, its latest vital signs monitoring dev kit. The HealthyPi v4 is wearable, wireless, and can be mounted on a Raspberry Pi. The units are all open source and stand-alone made for end-users, students as well as researchers and developers.  An Improvement on HealthyPi v3 The recent increase in health-related tech has fueled ProtoCentral’s desire to bring its HealthyPi v3 up to current usability and development standards. The retail versions of the HealthyPi v4 are made specifically to work in conjunction with the Android OS for ease of use and mobility.  Also, the Raspberry Pi HAT form factor is also supported in this version of the device. Articles On Health-Related Development The articles that have touched on health-related issues and topics from our archives, as well as very recently include HEGduino a neurofeedback monitor and […]

HEGduino IoT Real-time Neurofeedback Platform Aims to Increase Brain Function (Crowdfunding)

The HEGduino Alaskit has developed a way to measure the blood-oxygen levels in the brain and create a biofeedback system that is said to increase brain function. The new tech is called HEGduino and is a connection between a biofeedback method and an IoT platform.  Past Reported Medical SBCs In the past, CNX has covered several health-based platforms for the Raspberry Pi (Healthy Pi HAT) and ESP32 (Hearty Patch, ECG reader) medical SBCs. HEG Particulars The HEG in HEGduino stands for Hemoencephalography, a neurofeedback technique similar to EEG measurements in brainwave activity. The difference is HEG can measure neural activity based on neurovascular coupling, which can be approached through near infrared and passive infrared techniques – both of which are ways to cerebral blood flow can be matched to metabolic activity. HEG Functions The HEG is a way to alter brain function through a series of “training” sessions based […]

Spartan Edge Accelerator Arduino Compatible Board Combines ESP32 & Spartan-7 FPGA

Spartan Edge Accelerator

Xilinx Spartan FPGAs have been around for a while, and a few years ago we covered Spartan-6 FPGA boards such as Spartixed and miniSpartan6+.  Seeed Studio has now launched another Xilinx Spartan board with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Spartan Edge Accelerator Board follows Arduino UNO form factor and combines a more recent Xilinx Spartan-7 FPGA with Espressif Systems ESP32 WiFi + Bluetooth chip. Spartan Edge Accelerator specifications:  FPGA – Xilinx Spartan-7 XC7S15 FPGA with 12.8K Logic Cells and 360Kb block RAM WiSoC – Espressif Systems ESP32 SoC with 802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1  BLE Storage – SPI flash, MicroSD card slot Video Output – Mini HDMI Video Input – CSI Camera Interface with support for OV5640 sensor USB – USB type-C port Expansion Arduino UNO headers (5V) FPGA I/O header DAC output and ADC input header (via 8-bit ADC1173 chip) 2x Grove connectors (I2C and digital I/O) Debugging […]

ESP32-S2 Processor Datasheet Released, Development Boards Unveiled

ESP32-S2 Development Board

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 […]

Espressif ESP-Skainet Voice Assistant Offers Wake Word Engine and Speech Commands Recognition for Embedded MCUs

ESP-Skainet

Skynet is finally here! OK, not quite, but at least we do have ESP-Skainet now courtesy of Espressif Systems. ESP-Skainet is an intelligent voice assistant that features the company’s WakeNet wake word engine and MultiNet speech commands recognition. WakeNet WakeNet has been specifically designed for low-power MCUs such as ESP8266 or ESP32 with a low memory footprint (20KB RAM) and a high calculation speed that makes it capable of achieving a high success rate for wake word detection even in noisy environments. Tested in the company’s upcoming LyraT-Mini audio board that combines an ESP32-WROVER-B module and a codec, WakeNet achieves a 97% wake word success rate at a one-meter distance, and 95% three meters away in a quiet environment. ESP-Skainet wake-up engine ships with the wake-up word “嗨乐鑫” (Hi Lexin), which translates in “Hello Espressif”, and supports up to five wake words. You can use customize wake words as well, […]

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 – […]

Getting Started with ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit and Home Assistant

ANAVI ESP8266 Gas Detector Display

ANAVI Gas Detector is an ESP8266 based board designed for MQ gas sensors supported by Arduino. This allows you to easily monitor air quality, or more accurately air conductivity using MQ-135 sensor as part of the starter kit either visually on the OLED display, or through your smartphone or computer using MQTT via automation platform such as Home Assistant. Leon Anavi sent me an ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit to have a look, and I’ll report my experience with the kit using it standalone, and through Home Assistant. Starter Kit Unboxing The kit contains the open-source hardware, ESP8266 based ANAVI Gas Detector board, a plastic stand, an OLED display, a USB to serial adapter, a gas sensor, and a few KiCad and ANAVI stickers. The board itself comes with an ESP8266MOD module, features a micro USB port for power, a reset button, four LEDs, a UART console, a 4-pin GPIO […]

ESP32-MeshKit is a Development Kit for ESP32 Mesh Networking

ESP-MESH kit

The ESP8266 was a jewel in its peak, it ruled the maker’s world in the need for creating a low-cost WiFi module. Being Arduino compatible also furthered  its glory then the ESP32 came in. ESP32 offered so much more than the ESP8266, and most importantly it was also affordable. With support for Bluetooth and WiFi, ESP32 was to open a new frontier for the development of Internet of Things applications. A major drawback of the affordable ESP32 was the lack of official support of mesh network for the chip, something that was easily possible with the ESP8266. Mesh network allows you to build a network of nodes that can communicate with each other, self heal, and many more possibilities.  But thankfully, back in 2018, Espressif Systems released the ESP Mesh Development Framework (ESP-MDF) which sits on top of the IoT Development Framework (ESP-IDF), the official development framework for the chip. […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design