You’ve probably already watched a video featuring Boston Dynamics Spot, a headless robot dog used in various industries including healthcare, public safety, construction, oil & gas, etc.. It could also be yours if you wanted a robotic pet dog at home, as long as you have $75,000 US to spare. Petoi Bittle looks eerily similar, but it’s much smaller as it fits in your palm, and could be yours for $225 on KickStarter as a kit to assemble yourself that you may get as soon as December. Bittle robot dog is designed for STEM education and can be programmed using the Arduino IDE, Python, or even Codecraft visual programming IDE. Bittle is comprised of 4 main hardware components: Plastic parts and fixtures – Body, four legs, head (which can be used to hold Arduino modules), springs, screws, etc… Actuators – 9x P1S servo with a controllable angle of 270 degrees, […]
CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 Education Laptop Review
I started my review of CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 Learning Kit a while ago and at the time I showed content from the kit and its first boot. I’ve now spent more time with this very special Raspberry Pi 4 laptop and will focus this review on the education part, namely CrowPi2 software, but will also look at thermal cooling under stress with and without a fan, and try to install another Raspberry Pi compatible board inside the laptop shell. CrowPi2 Education Software It’s quite important to read the user manual before getting started as there are a few non-intuitive steps you may have to take. First I assume the wireless keyboard would just connect after pressing the power button, but it did not. The user manual explains the RF dongle is inside the mouse, and once you connect it you’ll be able to use the keyboard that has some […]
VIA Pixetto Hi3518E V300 HD Camera Board Targets Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Education
VIA Technologies has launched the VIA Pixetto vision sensor aims to teach artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to students aged twelve and above. The Linux board features an Hisilicon Hi3518E V300 Cortex-A7 HD camera SoC combined with 64MB RAM, 128MB SPI flash, a MicroSD slot, as well as GalaxyCore GC2053 2M CMOS sensor offering 1920 x 1080 resolution and a 130° field of view. VIA Pixetto hardware specifications: SoC – Hisilicon Hi3518E V300 Cortex-A7 HD camera SoC @ 900 MHz with H.264, H.265, MJPEG/JPEG encoder System Memory – 64MB DDR, MicroSD card slot Storage – 128MB SPI flash Camera – GalaxyCore GC2053 2M CMOS sensor with 1920 x 1080 resolution, 130° FoV Audio – Microphone USB – 1x Micro USB 2.0 port Connectivity – WiFi 4 via Hisilicon Hi1131 low-power Wi-Fi chip and ceramic antenna Expansion – Grove connector Misc – 3x LEDs (Power, OS boot, active status), […]
CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 Learning Kit Review – Part 1 – Unboxing and First Boot
Last month, we wrote about Elecrow introducing CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 laptop and electronics learning kit for its launch on Kickstarter crowdfunding website. The company has now sent one of its kits to CNX Software for evaluation and review. I’ll start by checking out the content of the package, and boot it up, before publishing a more detailed review in a few weeks. The package is fairly big and highlights it’s made for kids over 8 years old with close to 100 course resources and over 20 electronics modules. The back of the package list the main features and package contents with for example a 11.6″ Full HD display, Raspberry Pi 4 4GB board running a customized (Linux) system or Retropie for game emulation, electronics components and modules like servos and motors, as well as some resources for gaming including two USB gamepads. The first things we get when opening […]
Kano PC 2-in-1 DIY Hybrid Laptop is Powered by an Intel Celeron N4000 Gemini Lake SoC
Kano PC DIY computer kit was launched last year with a low-end Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor and designed to help kids learn about computers. The company has now launched the second-generation Kano PC with a faster Intel Celeron N4000 dual-core processor, and longer battery life making the 2-in-1 DIY Hybrid laptop/tablet capable of rivaling with entry-level laptops and Chromebooks. Kano PC specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N4000 dual-core Gemini Lake processor @ 1.10 GHz with Intel UHD graphics; 6W TDP System Memory – 4GB DDR3L RAM Storage – 64GB eMMC flash with 164 MB/s write speed, MicroSD slot Display – 11.6″ touchscreen with 1366 x 768 resolution Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack, 3.5mm speaker level jack, 1x microphone Video 1x HDMI port Connectivity – Dual-band Wi-Fi 4 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 5.0 USB – 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB-C LEDs – 1x power on (red), 1x barrel connector (red), 1x battery […]
CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 Laptop Doubles as Electronics Learning Kit (Crowdfunding)
CrowPi portable learning kit for Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and Pi Zero boards was launched in 2018. It comes with a 7″ display, several sensors, buttons, a breadboard, and more all packed in a small suitcase. Elecrow has now started a new crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to fund the second generation portable electronics learning kit: CrowPi2 which looks much more like a laptop than a suitcase found in the first model thanks to a large display, and a detachable keyboard placed on top of the electronic prototyping/learning area. It’s also more powerful thanks to the latest Raspberry Pi 4 SBC. CrowPi2 specifications: Compatible Raspberry Pi boards – Raspberry Pi 3B/B+, Raspberry Pi 4 Display – 11.6-inch 1920×1080 IPS screen Camera – 2MP camera Audio – Built-in microphone and stereo speaker; 3.5mm audio jack Keyboard – 2.4GHz detachable wireless keyboard (QWERTY only) with touchpad Sensors and Modules under the keyboard: Displays […]
MARK AI Robot Kit Aims to Teach AI & Robotics to 12+ Years Old (Crowdfunding)
We’ve written about Kendryte K210 RISC-V AI processor, and Sipeed M1 module several times including in our getting started for Maixduino and GroveAI HAT boards for low-power AI inference such as object recognition or face detection using Arduino and Micropython programming. Shenzhen-based Tinkergen, a STEM Education owned by Seeed Studio, has now leveraged the low-cost processor to design MARK AI robot kit, where MARK stands for Make A Robot Kit, in order to processor an educational AI Robotics platform for children ages 12 years old and more. MARK will ship as a kit with the main parts and components including a chassis, a cover, two wheels, stepper motors, a pan-tilt camera with K210 processor, a 2.4″ LCD display, Grove & Arduino compatible MARKduino interface board, some sensors, and six AA batteries. Tinkergen offers pre-trained model to recognized objects like humans, books, pens, or smartphones, as well as traffic signs, numbers […]
Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino Features Arduino UNO Compatible Board & Ten Pre-wired Modules
Arduino boards are great to get started with electronics has they offer an ecosystem of expansion modules and libraries, as well as tutorials, that may it easy to get started with almost any projects. Seeed Studio Grove is a family of standardized modules with 4-pin headers using digital I/O, analog I/O, UART or I2C interfaces and allowing you to easily connect to compatible board such as Seeeduino Lotus board. You still need to connect the Grove module via cables, so Seeed Studio decided to create a big board called Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino that features Seeduino Lotus at the center and ten pre-wired and detachable Grove modules so no cabling is required to get started apart from a USB cable. List of Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino board and modules: Seeeduino Lotus ATmega320p board compatible with Arduino UNO compatible board and featuring 12 Grove connectors 10 pre-wired modules without […]