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 […]

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

WZP-187-PT100 Temperature Probe

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 […]

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 – […]

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

Longan Nano

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 […]

TinyGo GO Compiler for Microcontrollers Now Works on Arduino Boards

Powerful, yet simple to use, TinyGo is making a significant mark in the open-hardware sector. This was well stated in the Arduino blog interview of Ron Evans, Technologist for Hire, as  Arduino is now working with TinyGo on an ongoing basis. What is TinyGo? The whole purpose of TinyGo is to bring Go to the microcontroller and the latest web browsers, to have that powerful language able to function in tiny processor formats, such as the Arduino Uno and Arm-based processors such as the Cortex-M type processors and also the BBC Micro: bit, STM32 Bluepill, and some other MCU boards, from any web browser. How It Functions It does this through LLVM toolchain and that format allows TinyGo to compile Go programs to a fraction of their original size, then flash the reduced Go program directly onto the microcontroller. Web Browser Applications With WebAssembly TinyGo can be used with WebAssembly […]

Getting Started with Sipeed M1 based Maixduino Board & Grove AI HAT for Raspberry Pi

Grove AI HAT Face Detection

Last year we discovered Kendryte K210 processor with a RISC-V core and featuring AI accelerators for machine vision and machine hearing. Soon after,  Sipeed M1 module was launched with the processor for aroud $10. Then this year we started to get more convenient development board featuring Sipeed M1 module such as Maixduino or Grove AI Hat. Seeed Studio sent me the last two boards for review. So I’ll start by showing the items I received, before showing how to get started with MicroPython and Arduino code. Note that I’ll be using Ubuntu 18.04, but development in Windows is also possible. Unboxing I received two packages with a Maixduino kit, and the other “Grove AI HAT for Edge Computing”. Grove AI HAT for Edge Computing Let’s start with the second. The board is a Raspberry Pi HAT with Sipeed M1 module, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi header, 6 grove connectors, as well […]

$10 Wio Lite W600 Arduino Zero Compatible WiFi Board Follows Adafruit Feather Form Factor

Seeed Studio has just released the latest Arduino compatible Wio Lite W600 a combination of the W600 WiFi module mounted on the board and an Atmel  SAM D21 Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller. The WiFi core is a W600 2.4 GHz module featuring the Arm Cortex-M3. The SAM D21 is the same chip used by the Arduino Zero, so the Wio Lite W600 is compatible with Arduino Zero. Basic Specs The I/O level is 3.3V, and there are 6 analog pins and 14 digital pins, as well as one UART, I2C, and ICSP port. The board is powered through a USB Type C port or a 3.5V–4.2V LiPo battery. The latest feature is the W600 module is CE/FCC certified and supports 802.11 b/g/n WiFi. The WiFi module also features 1MB on-chip flash to store and run freeRTOS operating system. Seeed Studio provides a full Arduino W600 library and demos for many wireless […]

Arduino Partners with Chirp to Enable Data-Over-Sound M2M Connectivity

Announced on August 12, 2019, Arduino has partnered with the London-based Chirp, a wireless data-over-sound software solution for machine-to-machine connectivity.  The system has the ability to work online or offline, as long as there is a loudspeaker and a microphone available. The software works with the Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense board in send and receive mode, while most Arduino MKR boards and Arduino Nano 33 IoT will also be supported by the SDK, but only to send data. The software and board are fully compatible with SDKs from a wide variety of platforms. The Nano 33 BLE Sense is available for purchase from the Arduino website, for $29.50. The sensor-rich Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense is application-ready right out of the box, and Chirp is ready to start sending encoded data from a device fitted with an audio speaker, to the board’s built-in microphone, where it is encoded and […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC