Video Category - Page 145 of 324 - CNX Software

July 4, 2018July 7, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Differences Between RS232, RS422 and RS485 (Video)

RS232, RS422, and RS485 are pretty old serial communication interfaces, and I was not even born when RS232 was specified in 1962, but there are still commonly used today in various applications such a points-of-sales, multi-meters, industrial equipment like PLC or HMI, as well as medical devices. Maxim Integrated shared a video – embedded at the end of this article – on social networks today explaining the fundamentals of serial transmitter devices and the differences between RS232, RS422, RS485, and Profibus. The video goes into more details with a glossary of terms, discussion of cable length and bitrate, hand-shaking, and auto-shutdown, but I’ll provide a quick summary below: RS232 supports one transmitter and one receiver, and operates between -15 and +15V (with input tolerance of up to -/+ 25V). A logic zero is between +3 and +15V and a logic one between -15 and -3V on the receiver side RS422 […]

July 3, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Connect Multiple Rotary Encoders to Arduino, ESP8266, Raspberry Pi, etc… with I2C Encoder V2 (Crowdfunding)

Rotary encoders are pretty common devices that convert the angular position of a shaft to analog or digital output signals with quadrature-encoded A / B pulses the most common way of reporting the position to the micro. So for each encoder you’d need 2-pin, and if your project use many of those you may quickly run out of pin, interrupts, etc… Simone Caron has decided to tackle this issue by creating an I2C encoder board, which works with various encoders, and whose second revision is now offered on Kickstarter. The I2C Encoder V2 board supports standard mechanical encoders, illuminated RGB encoders, and clickable rotary encoders, each of which may be with or without dent. The board also comes with 3 GPIOs following RGB LED footprint, but also usable as PWN, GPIO, or ADC, and each board’s I2C address can be configured with some soldering on A0 to A6 pins. Finally, […]

July 2, 2018July 3, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Firefly Team Mailbag – Rockchip Development Boards and Accessories

T-Chip Intelligent Technology Co. is a hardware and software technology services company, and a few years ago they setup the “Firefly Team” to provide development boards running Android and/or Linux distributions to the maker community. If I remember correctly the company started with Firefly-RK3288 development board powered, as its name implies, by Rockchip RK3288 processor. Since then they’ve launched several other Rockchip development boards and modules, which I’ve covered on this blog. The company decided to send me some of their recent boards and accessories, so let’s have a look at what I received in my “mailbag”. I’ve also taken a few photos for those who did not watch the video or prefer close up photos. ROC-RK3328-CC “Renegade” Development Board The first board is ROC-RK3328-CC “Renegade” board which was first launched via a crowdfunding campaign by Libre Computer. Both companies have been collaborating on some boards, and Libre Computer makes […]

July 2, 2018July 2, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Vivo Announces TOF 3D Sensing Technology with 300,000 Sensor Points

Earlier this year, I reviewed a TOF sensor board based on STMicro VL52L0X Time-of-Flight ranging sensor that allows to measure distance accurately up to 2 meter using a 940 nm laser and a detection array with a few points to measure the time it takes for the light to travel and determine the distance. VIVO has showcased a smartphone solution leveraging time-of-flight technology at Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2018, but instead of using it for 2D measurements with a small detection array, their TOF 3D Sensing Technology creates 3D scans of objects using a whopping 300,000 sensor points. The technology will enable features & applications such as facial, gesture and motion recognition, 3D photography and extended/augmented reality. Vivo’s TOF 3D Sensing solution is said to deliver 10 times more depth of information than existing Structured Light Technology, for example used for FaceID in the latest iPhones. Vivo’s technology allows 3D […]

June 29, 2018June 29, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Maxim Announces Wearable ECG and Heart Monitor Development Kits

Maxim ECG Heart Monitor Development Kits

Maxim Integrated has recently announced two wearable development kits for fitness / health tracking: MAX-HEALTH-BAND watch for vital signs MAX-ECG-MONITOR with a chest strap for clinical-grade electrocardiograph (ECG) and heart rate. MAX-HEALTH-BAND Development Kit The MAX-HEALTH-BAND wrist-worn heart-rate and activity monitor features the company’s MAX86140 optical pulse-oximeter/heart-rate sensor, MAX20303 wearable power-management solution, and Maxim’s motion-compensated algorithms. The watch sends raw PPG and accelerometer data via Bluetooth to a smartphone app, and also monitors steps, activity, heart rate and interbeat intervals for heart-rate variability measurements. Battery life is around 7 days on a single charge. The kit also includes a USB charging cable, and instructions to download the Android-based application. The evaluation platform can be used for the development of fitness and wellness trackers, health monitoring trackers, or as a experimentation platform for new use cases and algorithms. In addition to raw PPG and accelerometer data, the MAX-HEALTH-BAND monitors steps, activity, […]

June 29, 2018July 14, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

LoStik USB Dongle Adds LoRa Connectivity to any Computer or Linux Board (Crowdfunding)

We’ve covered plenty of hardware with LoRa radio from gateways, to Arduino shields, tracker boards, and mini PCIe cards, but after reading an article on Time4EE this morning, I realized we never wrote about any LoRa USB stick. LoStik – previoulsy LoRa Stick – is an open source hardware USB dongle based on Microchip RN2903 / RN2483 LoRa module, and offered on CrowdSupply for $39. LoStik specifications: USB – USB 2.0 port LoRa Connectivity Microchip RN2903 – 915 MHz for US, Canada, South America and Australia Microchip RN2483 – 868 Mhz for Europe Receiver Sensitivity – down to -146 dBm TX Power – adjustable up to +18.5 dBm Range – up to 15 km coverage in suburban and up to 5 km coverage in urban areas Misc – 2x user LEDs Power Consumption – 140 ma typical TX, 20 ma idle (with power LED) Dimensions – 80 mm x 25 […]

June 28, 2018July 13, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Air-T Artificial Intelligence Radio Transceiver SDR Platform Combines NVIDIA Jetson TX2 and Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA (Crowdfunding)

If often write about low end and cheaper hardware on this blog, but not in this post. Deepwave Digital Air-T (Artificial Intelligence Radio – Transceiver) is a high-end software defined radio platform with continuous frequency coverage from 300 MHz to 6 GHz. The board combines AD9371 RFIC transceiver providing up to 2 x 2 MIMO of 100 MHz of receiving bandwidth, a Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA, and NVIDIA Jetson TX2 module. Air-T hardware specifications & key features: Software-defined Radio Analog Devices 9371 2×2 MIMO transceiver 2 x RX channels (100 MHz each) 2 x TX channels (100 MHz each) Auxiliary RX channels: Observation & Sniffer. Note: Can use either Observation or Sniffer at one time; utilizes one of the RX channels NVIDIA Jetson TX2 for processing 256 NVIDIA CUDA core GPU 6 CPU cores – 2x NVIDIA Denver2, 4x Arm Cortex-A57 8GB RAM 32GB eMMC flash Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA with75k logic […]

June 28, 2018June 28, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

SD Express Adds PCIe and NVMe Interfaces to SD Cards for up to 985 MB/s Transfer Rates

SD cards are known for the convenience, portability, and relatively cheap prices, but not so much for their performance which can be pretty poor especially for the cheaper and lower capacity models, and when fast random I/O is needed. The SD Association have been working on helping customer buy performant cards for their needs with – for instance – the app performance class introduced in SD 5.1 specification, which defines minimum random read and write speeds in Class A1 and Class A2 micro SD cards. However, the association has gone a step further with SD Express found in SD specification 7.0 that adds PCIe and NVMe interfaces to the legacy SD card interface. SD Express will enable theoretical data transfer rate up to 985 MB/s via PCIe 3.0, as well as advanced memory access mechanisms such as Bus Mastering, Multi Queue (without locking mechanism) and Host Memory Buffer thanks to […]