Connect up to 32 Relays to Raspberry Pi with a Stackable 4-Relay Board (Crowdfunding)

Stackable Relay HAT Raspberry Pi

People have been playing with off-the-shelf relays on Raspberry Pi boards ever since it was released in 2012, and over the years, some companies have maybe Raspberry Pi-specific relay boards such as Strawberry4Pi and Pi-OT. Two years ago, Sequent Microsystems introduced a stackable 8-Relay board enabling up to 64 relays to be connected to a single Raspberry Pi board. The 8-relay board only supported 24V/2.5A, and the company is now back on Kickstarter with a 4-relay board with 250V/10A line-switching relays that can offer up to 32 relays by stacking 8 boards connected to one Raspberry Pi board via the 40-pin I/O header. The board comes with four Songle 250V/10A relays, 3-pin pluggable connectors that accept 18 to 22 AWG wires, and a 5V/3A power supply is recommended. If you stack multiple relay board a beefier power supply may be required. Here are some power consumption numbers provided by the […]

$50 ODROID-C4 Raspberry Pi 4 Competitor Combines Amlogic S905X3 SoC with 4GB RAM

ODROID-C4

Hardkernel has just launched an update to its ODROID-C2 board, with ODROID-C4 SBC equipped with a 2.0 GHz Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor combined with up to 4GB RAM, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.0 video output, and the usual 40-pin I/O header. That makes it a worthy competitor to Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM, especially since it supports Ubuntu 20.04, CoreELEC, Android 9, and LineageOS operating systems, and comes with a proper heatsink for cooling for just $50 plus shipping. ODROID-C4 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X3 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ 2.0GHz with Arm Mali-G31MP2 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.0 and OpenCL 2.0 System Memory – 4GB DDR4 Storage 1x eMMC connector (8/16/32/64GB modules available) 1x Micro SD slot with support for DS/HS mode up to UHS-I SDR104 Video & Output – HDMI 2.0 port up to 4K@60Hz with HDR, CEC, EDID Audio – Digital […]

HDHomeRun QUATRO 4K ATSC 3.0 Streamer Comes with Four ATSC Tuners (Crowdfunding – US)

HDHomeRun QUATRO 4K ATSC 3.0 Board

If your country broadcasts free-to-air TV channels over ATSC, and you want to watch 4K HDR channels, you’d need to hardware compatible with the latest ATSC 3.0 standard. One way to achieve this is to connect an ATSC 3.0 USB TV tuner to a computer or laptop, or get a set-top box with one or more built-in tuner. ATSC 3.0 trials will start this year in the US, and SiliconDust has just introduced HDHomeRun QUATRO 4K streamer that comes with four ATSC tuners, two of which support ATSC 3.0 standard, as well as one Ethernet port. The company did not exactly release the complete specifications for the device, but here’s what we know so far: Four ATSC Tuners all using QAM256/64 modulation: 2x ATSC 3.0 & 8VSB (ATSC 1.0) tuners 2x 8VSB only tuners RF input for roof or indoor antenna 100Mbps Ethernet (enough to stream four channels at once) […]

YARC Case Can House a Raspberry Pi Board with one HAT Expansion Board and Up to 3 Hard Drives (Crowdfunding)

YARC Raspberry Pi Case HAT HDD

There are plenty of enclosures for Raspberry Pi board and other compact x86 or Arm Linux SBCs, but many projects require expansion boards and it’s not always possible to use an off-the-shelf case. That’s with that in mind that Stefano Zorzi and other enthusiasts have created YARC (Yes, Another Raspberry Case), a hexagonal case that supports the most popular single board computers, even when an add-on board – such as a Raspberry Pi HAT – is attached to the board. There’s enough space for up to three 2.5″ hard drives. Those are the boards officially supported (tested?) with the case: Raspberry Pi B +, 2B, 3B, 3B +, 4B, A +, 3A + Hardkernel ODROID C1, C2 AAEON Up Board Asus Tinker board and Tinker board S Radxa Rock Pi 4 Orange Pi PC, Pi PC2, Pi PC Plus Basically any board with compatible mounting holes can be installed in […]

ADLink Launches Vizi-AI Development Starter Kit for Industrial Machine Vision & Artificial Intelligence

Vizi-AI Development Kit

ADLINK has recently launched Vizi-AI development starter kit for industrial machine vision and artificial intelligence (AI) at the edge in collaboration with Intel and Arrow Electronics. Vizi-AI is comprised of a carrier board that looks to be the same as used in the company’s I-Pi SMARC development kit equipped with an Intel Movidius Myriad X VPU and combined with LEC-AL Intel Atom Apollo Lake SMARC computer module. Vizi-AI SBC Let’s have a look at the hardware features and specifications of Vizi-AI SBC (aka VIZI-AI LEC-AL-E3940-AI-4G-32G): SoC – Intel Atom x5-E3940 quad-core Apollo Lake-I processor @ up to 1.6 / 1.8 GHz (Turbo) with 12EU Intel HD Graphics 500; 9.5W TDP System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 (Option up to 8GB) Storage – 1x MicroSD card slot AI Accelerator – Intel Movidius Myriad-X VPU (Vision Processing Unit) Video – 1x HDMI port, single-channel LVDS/eDP interface via flat cable Audio – On-carrier audio […]

HeimVision HM241 NVR Review – Part 2: Installation Tips, Video Interface, Android App

HeimVision HM241 4-ch Camera NVR

A coupled of weeks ago, I received HeimVision HM241 HD NVR kit, and in the first part of the review, I showed the content of the kit, installed an internal 3.5″ hard drive, and did a teardown of both the NVR and one camera. I’ve now had time to test the device for about two weeks. I have plans to install it permanently in another location, but for testing, I temporarily installed the camera for testing in several strategic locations: 3 outdoors, one indoors. Back inside, I connected the NVR device (black box below) to an Ethernet switch for Internet connectivity, a 4K TV to access the user interface, a USB mouse, and the power supply. First Boot and Configuration I was quite surprised during the first boot as I did not have to set up anything and the cameras were automatically detected. The first screen shows QR code for […]

AgVa Phone Ventilator Connects to a Smartphone to Fight COVID-19

AgVa Phone Ventilator

With the world at his knees, fighting the current coronavirus pandemic, which has impacted millions of lives around the world psychologically, economically, and physically. Engineers, scientists, politicians around the world are looking for ways to assist in stopping the virus spread, helping the critically ill people, and help restore society to the way it was before. One major highlight during this COVID-19 crisis is the lack of enough ventilators for patients, a piece of critical equipment that greatly affects the breathing of critically ill patients. There are not enough ventilators available in hospitals right now for all of the potential patients who will be struck by the virus, so it is clear we need more ventilators. Makers are joining the call to service with their existing maker tools, and an example is the attempt to make a low-cost, open-source Arduino ventilator device. Another solution is the AgVa phone ventilator produced by […]

Beware of Defective, Wrongly Manufactured IR Thermometers

Defective IR Thermometer

There is a lot of demand for medical supplies and equipment due to COVID-19. IR Thermometers are used to check the temperature of people before entering a building for instance and are also in short supply. So factories are frantically mass-producing everything they can from face masks to IR thermometers, and it looks like some may forgo quality control.  The latter are very hard to find in Thailand, but one person managed to purchase an IR thermometer online and decided to open it… [Update April 16th 2020: The Facebook video has been taken down, but still available on Youtube] This Heaco MDI908 medical thermometer’s infrared board is not connected to the mainboard, so it “works” even without the IR sensor… This takes “non-contact infrared thermometer” to a whole new level 🙂 I can see Kaidee (Thailand’s eBay) had some listed a few days, but the pages have since then been […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design