IoT News - Page 160 of 181 - CNX Software

August 21, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Orchard is an Open Source Hardware Multi-Radio IoT Board Used to Learn Coding, Hardware Design and Manufacturing

Sutajio Ko-Usagi’s wiki is the place where you find documentation for open source hardware projects such as Novena laptop or Fernvale IoT board. There’s another IoT board supporting 900 MHz and Bluetooth radios called Orchard. Orchard board specifications: MCU – Kinetis MKW01 ARM Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 128KB flash, 16KB RAM Connectivity 900 MHz radio with +13dBm transmit power (for long-range applications) Bluetooth LE radio (for short-range, low power connection to IP gateways) Display – 128×64 OLED Sensors – 3-axis Accelerometer, microphone sensor Debugging – FTDI serial port header, SWD provisioning & debug header Misc Captouch button controller WS2812B LED strip driver Lithium ion battery solution Gas gauge for accurate battery life determination Charging solution that can support high-capacity batteries Integral 5V boost The hardware files and ChibiOS 3.0 firmware source code are all available. The board does not appear to be for sale, but instead students taking […]

August 18, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

$5 Amazon Dash Buttons Can Be Hacked as WiFi Logging Buttons

Amazon launched Dash buttons earlier this year in order to allow Amazon Prime customers to order products by simply pressing them. The small WiFi enabled buttons only cost $5, and looked like a nice thing to hack. And that’s exactly what Ted Benson did, and managed to use them to log his baby’s patterns like the number of time he poos, or wakes up at night by pressing some buttons, and storing the results in a spreadsheet. The hack does not involve any firmware or hardware modifications, and instead he noticed that the Dash was disconnected and sleeping, except when the button was pressed. So all he does is to detect ARP requests from the Dash using some Python code relying on Scapy library, and when the MAC address matches one of the dash MAC addresses (hard coded in the Python program), data is sent to a Google Spreadsheet using […]

August 10, 2015August 10, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Weightless-P Standard is Designed for High Performance, Low Power, 2-Way Communication for IoT

Weightless was unveiled over two years ago, as a new standards for IoT leveraging “white space” spectrum, previously used by analog TV broadcasts, for free M2M / IoT communication using low power (10 years battery life) and cost-efficient hardware ($2 hardware) offering a range of 5 to 10 km. Development kits and base stations were scheduled for Q2 2014, but there’s either been some delays or they are only available to Weightless members, as you need to register to get notified once hardware becomes available. The Weightless SIG (Special Interest Group) has not stopped working on the standard as there are now three Weightless standards: Weightless-W (using White band spectrum), Weightless-N (sub-GHz spectrum), and and newly announced Weightless-P offering similar features as 3GPP carrier grade solutions, but at lower costs and lower power consumption. The key features of Weightless-P are shown below: Excellent capacity and scalability for IoT deployment FDMA+TDMA […]

August 3, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Espressif is Working on a New Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE Chip with Hardware SSL Support

Espressif came to fame thanks to its low cost ESP8266 WiFi chip which was originally designed for connected lightbulbs, but soon got used in a variety of applications, and ESP8266 modules must now be the most popular solutions to add WiFi to IoT projects, as long as they are not battery powered. The company has recently announced they were working on a new chip, whose name as yet to be decided, that will support both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy. Details are sparse, but we do know the chip will come with 500KB RAM, support hardware SSL and possibly ECDH, deliver 500 DMIPS of performance, and consume 5 uA in deep sleep mode. The company asked for beta testers via their twitter account around 2 weeks ago, so I guess it’s a bit too late to apply. John Lee, working for Espressif, also said the new part should become available […]

July 30, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Orvibo Wiwo S20 Smart Socket Now Sells for $16

Kankun KK-SP3 used to be the cheapest smart socket on the market at around $20, and it is hackable too, but only available with a Chinese / Australian plug, and for some reasons, many sellers stopped selling the device. Last year, a similar product called Orvibo Wiwo S20 launched with US, UK, EU or AU plug types, but sold for nearly twice as much as KK-SP3 at the time. The good news is that the price has gone down considerably, as it can be purchased for around $16 on GearBest, and it’s available on others for $20 to $26 including on Amazon US, DealExtreme, and GeekBuying. Let’s remind us of the specifications first: Material – ABC 94V-0 (fireproof) Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n Security – WEP, WPA-PSK or WPA2-PSK Power Plug – US, Europe, United Kingdom or Australia plug Output Current – 10A Output Power – 2000W max. Voltage Range – 100-240V […]

July 17, 2015August 19, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

MXCHIP EMW3165 is an $8 CE/FCC Certified WiFi Module with an STM32F4 Cortex M4 MCU

A few months ago, Seeed Studio started selling MXCHIP EMW3162 Wi-Fi module with a STM32F2 Cortex M3 MCU clocked at 120Mhz for $9.95. It’s more capable than ESP8266 modules but also around 3 times more expensive. The company has now launched another WiFi module called MXCHIP EMW3165 with an STM32F4 Cortex M4 MCU @ 100 MHz, FCC certification, and listed for $7.95. EMW3165 module specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32F411CE ARM Cortex M4 micro-controller @ 100 MHz with 512KB flash, 128KB RAM, DSP, and FPU Storage – 2MB SPI flash Wi-Fi connectivity 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n (single stream) WEP, WPA/WPA2 PSK/Enterprise 16.5dBm@11b; 14.5dBm@11g; 13.5dBm@11n Receiver Sensitivity – 87 dBm Station, Soft AP and Wi-Fi direct Support EasyLink On-board PCB antenna (EMW3165-P model) or IPEX connector for external antenna (EMW3165-E model) CE & FCC compliant Peripherals: 22 GPIOs USART, I2C ADC, DAC Timer/PWM JTAG/SWD debug interface Connectors – 1×20 + 1x 21 half-through […]

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Freescale Introduces a Coin-sized Single Chip Module (SCM) Based on Freescale i.MX 6Dual

As the Freescale Technology Forum 2015 is taking place in Austin, Texas, the company will announce a few new products over the 4-day conference. After the official launch of Freescale i.MX 7 series processors, Freescale unveiled a new product based on their existing i.MX6 platform with “i.MX 6Dual SCM” (Single Chip Module) that integrate a dual core i.MX 6Dual processor with 1 or 2 GB LPDDR2 (PoP), a 16MB NOR flash and a PMIC in a tiny, coin-sized module. Key feature of SCM-i.MX6D module: Freescale i.MX 6Dual application processor with two ARM Cortex A9 core @ 800 MHz and Vivante GPUs (2D/3D) System Memory – 1 or 2 GB LPDDR2 (PoP configuration) Storage – 16 MB SPI NOR (Micron N25Q128A13) Power Supply – Freescale PMIC PF0100 Dimensions – 17mm x 14mm x 1.7mm There are also 109 discrete components on the module. BSPs for Linux and Android will be provided. […]

June 23, 2015March 18, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Freescale Launches i.MX 7 Series Cortex A7 + Cortex M4 Processors for IoT Applications

Freescale announced plans for i.MX 7 and i.MX 8 processors in 2013, but it’s only in the last few months there have been some patchsets submitted to the ARM Linux Kernel mailing list, and so far all documentation was only available to companies and developers under NDA. Now the company has officially launched i.MX 7 series, and although all documents are not available yet, Freescale has released a factsheet providing an overview about the processors. Freescale i.MX 7 series processors targets applications such as wearables, e-readers, secure point-of-sale equipment, smart home controls, industrial automation products and other IoT solutions. Two processors are currently available: the single core i.MX 7Solo processor, and the dual core i.MX 7Dual processor. Both basically share the same specifications, but beside the extra Cortex A7 core, i.MX 7Dual also adds on extra USB host port, a PCIe interface, an extra Gigabit Ethernet port, and a 4th […]