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 […]
Fairphone 3 Socially Responsible Android Smartphone Launched for 450 Euros
Most phones today are disposable items, and if yours stops working for whatever reason it’s hard to repair it yourself work, and repairing it at the shop may prove to be too expensive. They are not really expandable either, so if you want a new feature, you may have to buy a completely new phone instead of simply adding a module with the functionality. The difficulty in repairing the phone and the lack of modularity leading to electronics waste. Finally, consumer products are cost-optimized, and that’s great for your wallet, but it may come at the cost of being made by slave labor either directly at the factory, or indirectly through the mining of materials. Aren’t you already feeling bad being complicit in destroying the planet and sponsoring human suffering while reading this on your device? Good! But luckily there’s a solution with Fairphone that aims to be an ethical […]
MPEG Video Coding for Machines (VCM) is in the Works
A video codec for machines seems like a good topic for the first of April, or an article on the Onion. But based on a recent press release by Gyrfalcon Technology, this may become a real thing as the company partnered with China Telecom, and proposed a new video codec called “Video Coding for machines” (VCM) that provides compression coding for machine vision and human-machine hybrid vision. Apparently a recent study published by Cisco in 2018, humans will become bit players in the “video watching business”, and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) applications will represent the greatest usage of Internet video traffic over the next four years. So the goal of the VCM group will be to establish a new standard that will improve the previous generation video coding and decoding standards such as H.264 (AVC), H.265 (HEVC) and H.266 (VVC). Few details are provided so far, and I can’t find any VCM […]
ODROID-N2 CoreELEC Edition Media Center Launched for $65 and Up
ODROID-N2 is an Amlogic S922X single board computer with 2GB or 4GB RAM that’s fairly popular thanks to its great performance/price ratio, good cooling, and decent support from Hardkernel. Hardkernel have worked in collaboration with CoreELEC, and have just introduced ODROID-N2 CoreELEC Edition media center featuring the SBC. The company offers the media center at introductory prices of $65 for the 2GB RAM model, and $75 for the 4GB model with limited stocks at those discounted prices. ODROID-N2 CoreELEC Edition media center includes the following: ODROID-N2 SBC with either 2GB or 4GB RAM ODROID-N2 Case Black An 8GB Industrial MicroSD UHS-1 card pre-loaded with CoreELEC for ODROID-N2 preinstalled 12V/2A Power Supply (with chosen type of plug) CoreELEC Logo Sticker CoreELEC for ODROID-N2 supports 4K HDR10 and HLG high dynamic-range, Auto frame rate switching & dynamic range matching, DTS-HD & Dolby-HD audio pass-through including DTS:X and Dolby Atmos. The firmware is […]
Beelink GT-King (Amlogic S922X) TV Box Review
Rant Karl here. I have been playing around with Android boxes for several years. Unfortunately, some fundamental issues from when I first started playing around with these boxes are still there. They have come a long way since the MK808 with Rockchip RK3066 processor. The MK808 was my first endeavor into Android on the TV in 2013. I can’t believe it’s been nearly 6 years. In 2014 Google introduced Android TV and the Nexus Player. It was designed for a TV and controller. The first boxes/sticks adapted the stock Android experience to run on a TV, but without a touch interface the experience was/is not optimal. Sure you get thousands and thousands of apps but a lot of them don’t work. Unfortunately, this hasn’t changed much. If these boxes came with Linux and Android I don’t think I would complain as much. I would consider it a tinkering box. But […]
Getting Started with ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit and Home Assistant
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
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. […]
Philips Crowdfunds PicoPix Max Android Pico Projector with Autofocus
PicoPix Extra Connectivity The latest entrant into the miniprojector market is the Phillips PicoPix Max Pico Projector in two versions, x10 and x100, a very versatile projector with many features and large aspirations. The mini projector is nothing new and we have reported on it in depth for units that came out some time ago such as the Rikomagic RKM R1 or Doogee Smart Cube P1. The fact that a major electronics manufacturer is launching a mini projector through a crowdfunding campaign is somewhat unusual, but let’s have a look at the details. Portable Native Full HD Phillips is calling the PicoPix Max Pro a premium, portable cinematic experience. The unit is made to go anywhere and not need a phone or laptop to function but has a large number of ports and options for each port. The LED light bulb is said to last 30K hours, and the source […]