Silicon Labs Demonstrates Bluetooth 5.1 Location Technology (Video)

Bluetooth 5.1 Location Base Station

Recently there are been advancements related to precise indoor positioning with the announcement for Bluetooth 5.1 and 802.15.4z. Both can provide 1 to 10 centimeters accuracy with minimal lag, and Bluetooth 5.1 achieves this through Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD) features and an antenna array. I had never seen the new feature in action, but Silicon Labs recently demonstrated Bluetooth 5.1 location technology at Arrow IoT summit with a DMX-512 connected light following a person carrying a Bluetooth 5.1 tag. It looks fairly accurate, and it does not have a 3-6 seconds lag like previous solutions based on earlier versions of Bluetooth? So what does one need to enable Bluetooth 5.1 location finding? First, we’ll need a Bluetooth 5.1 base station with an antenna array, The one used above includes a 16 antenna array (4×4 grid) used to calculated angles of departure and arrival and ultimately […]

Arduino Introduces Four New Nano Boards with WiFi, BLE, Sensors, and/or HW Crypto

Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense

The Maker Faire 2019 is now taking place in San Mateo, California, United States, and Arduino has made an habit of announcing new products during the events. This year is no different as the company has announced a new Nano Family with four boards: Arduino Nano Every powered by a Microchip ATMega4809 AVR microcontroller Arduino Nano 33 IoT with secure internet connectivity thanks to a U-blox ESP32 WiFi module and ATECC608A HW crypto chip Arduino Nano 33 BLE with Bluetooth connectivity via U-blox NINA B306 module based on Nordic Semi nRF52840 Bluetooth 5.0 chip Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense with a design similar to Nano 33 BLE but some extra on-board sensors. Arduino Nano Every Specifications: MCU –  Microchip ATMega4809 AVR microcontroller @ 20 MHz with 48KB flash, 6KB SRAM, 256 Bytes EEPROM USB to Serial via Microchip ATSAMD11D14A Arm Cortex-M0+ USB MCU 2x 15-pin expansion headers with GPIO, SPI, […]

Gateworks Introduces GW16126 Mini-PCIe Cat M1 Modem and Bluetooth LE Radio

LTE Cat M1 mini PCIe card

Gateworks has launched another mini PCIe card providing IoT connectivity for their NXP i.MX 6 and Cavium Octeon TX powered SBC’s. Last month we covered GW16130 Mini PCIe satellite modem, and the company has now announced GW16126 mini PCIe card with a Cat M1 (eMTC) modem and a Bluetooth Low Energy radio for the US market, and other regions or countries where LTE Cat M1 networks have been deployed. Gateworks GW16126 mini PCIe card specifications: LTE Cat M1 Module – U-blox SARA-R410M-52 LTE CAT M1 cellular modem with up to 375 kb/s upload and 300 kb/s download; LTE Bands 2,4,5,12,13 SIM card – nano-SIM socket with hologram starter SIM included with free 1MB/month starter plan included BLE module – u-blox NINA-B301 Open CPU Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy Radio based on Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 chipset, Zephyr RTOS with Bluetooth HCI UART Host Interface. BLE Rates up to  2Mbps Antennas – 2x […]

Aconno Bluetooth Beacons Come with Various Sensors, Nordic Semi nRF52 BLE SoC

Aconno Bluetooth Beacons

We first covered products from Aconno is 2017 with their Bluetooth LE development board powered by the company’s ACN52832 BLE module based on Nordic Semi nRF52832 ARM Cortex-M4 multi-procotol wireless SoC. Since then they’ve launched several small Bluetooth beacon modules based on ACN52832, and the company has what they call a presale promotion until May 21st, but it looks really like a group buying event for their existing BLE modules where the price goes down as more people purchase modules. Six Bluetooth modules are offered: acnSENSA multisensor Bluetooth tag with temperature, light, humidity, barometer, accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope acnBEACON programmable Bluetooth tag acnACT BLE beacon with button and RGD LED, magnetometer, phototransistor acnNFC programmable Bluetooth tag with NFC tag emulator acnRANGE distance measuring beacon with time-of-flight sensor acnFIND Bluetooth smart tag with LED, sound and accelerometer All modules come with a replaceable CR2450 battery, and IP65 enclosure. Pricing currently ranges from […]

MT3620 Mini Dev Board is a Cheaper Microsoft Azure Sphere Board

MT3620 Mini Dev Board

Announced nearly one year ago, Microsoft Azure Sphere is an ecosystem comprised of Azure MCUs with Microsoft Pluton Security System, Linux based Azure Sphere OS, and a secure cloud service called Azure Sphere Security Service. The first official Azure development board – MT3620 Development Board for Azure Sphere – was launched last year for $84.95. The kit may not have attracted a large number of developers, so there’s now a cheaper version – MT3620 Mini Dev board – going for $34.90 on Seeed Studio. Note that’s a pre-order and shipping is scheduled for May 13, 2019. MT3620 Mini dev board specifications: CPU Module – AI-Link WF-M620-RSA1 module with Mediatek MT3620AN single core Arm Cortex-A7 processor @ 500 MHz with 4MB SRAM, dual core Arm Cortex-M4F real-time core @ 200 MHz with 64KB RAM, Pluton security sub-system, and WiFi. Storage – 2x 8MB dual channel quad SPI (TBC) Connectivity –  Dual band […]

STMicro Introduces STEVAL-FKI001V1 Dual-Radio Bluetooth/LPWAN IoT Development Kit

STEVAL-FKI001V1

STMicro has just launched a new development kit – STEVAL-FKI001V1 – that integrates two radios, one at 2.4 GHz for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and another sub-GHz radio for LPWAN IoT standards such as Sigfox. The devkit targets the development of IoT devices such as smart sensors, finders, and trackers for smart-home or smart-building scenarios, asset-tracking, energy-management, smart-farming and industrial monitoring, and control use cases. STEVAL-FKI001V1 devkit key features & specifications: Jorjin WS2118-00 Sigfox & BLE module Embedded BlueNRG-132 Bluetooth LE Arm Cortex-M0 SoC with up to +8 dBm BLE RF output power, receiver sensitivity of -88 dBm Embedded S2-LPQTR ultra-low power sub-1 GHz transceiver tuned for 826-958 MHz frequency bands Up to +16 dBm sub-1GHz RF output power, receiver sensitivity down to -130 dBm Modulation schemes: 2-(G)FSK, 4-(G)FSK, OOK, and ASK Air data rate from 0.1 to 500 kbps Ultra-low power consumption: 7 mA RX, 10 mA TX @ +10 dBm; low duty cycle RX/TX operation mode, […]

TTGO T-Camera ESP32 Camera Board Comes with OLED Display, Sensors

TTGO T-Camera ESP32 OLED Display

ESP32 is now being used for AI workloads such as face detection with camera boards like ESP32-CAM, or the upcoming ESP-EYE board from Espressif Systems themselves, combined with ESP-WHO face detection and recognition framework. The two aforementioned board require you to use a phone to vizualize the results, unless you blink some LEDs or connect your own display. But the just released TTGO T-Camera board includes a 128×64 OLED display which should allow you to display face detection and/or recognition results, as well as a BME280 environmental sensor, a PIR sensor, and an optional fisheye lens. TTGO T-Camera board specifications: ESP32-WROVER-B Wireless Module SoC –  ESP32 dual core Tensilica LX6 processor Memory – 8MB PSRAM Storage – 4MB SPI flash Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11n WiFi 4, Bluetooth 4.2 LE Camera – 2MP OV2640 camera with normal or fisheye lens Display – 0.96″ 128×64 OLED display connected via SSD1306 I2C […]

SDTxArm Pelion Kit is a Modular IoT Devkit Designed for Arm Mbed Cloud Platform

SDTxArm Pelion Kit

South Korea based Sigma Delta Technologies’ SDTxArm Pelion Kit is a modular development kit comprised of a baseboard, as well as CPU and interface modules that is specifically designed to work with Arm Pelion cloud based device management service and Mbed OS for wearables and IoT applications. DAP (Debug Access Port) Station Ver.2 baseboard key features and specifications: USB – 1x micro USB 2.0 port Expansion I/Os via rows of through-holes 3x UART Interfaces 4x SPI Interfaces 3x I²C Interfaces 7x GPIO 4x analog inputs Debugging / Programming 1x TC2050 tag connection designed to allow programming without purchasing additional Interface if the user already has an appropriate Interface Module from other companies. I assume this is related to Tag Connect TC2050-IDC. 1x SD-TAG with JTAG/SWD signals Power Supply – 5V via micro USB port The DAP station takes an SDT Board (i.e. CPU board), as well as an interface board […]

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