Printing a 3D model usually takes hours, if not days, so anything that can speed up the printing time while keeping the same quality should be welcomed. LOTMAXX SC-10 SHARK 3D printer promises to reduce the standard print time by up to 30%. How did they exactly make a faster 3D printer? Thanks to “Aeolus Heat Dissipation system” (AHDS) with four fans to cool the nozzle and “S Move System” (SMS) helping the motors travel at a high speed. The printer also happens to be a multifunction printer with support for laser engraving and bicolor printing. SC-10 SHARK launched on Kickstarter several weeks ago and raised over $200,000 US from around 620 backers with 12 days to go. SC-10 SHARK 3D printer key features & specifications: Molding technology – FDM Print Speed – Up to 200mm/s; normal speed: 45-90mm/s Printing Accuracy – +/-0.1mm Layer thickness – 0.1 to 0.4 mm […]
Getting a 3-inch Smartphone in 2020? You can with Unihertz Jelly 2 (Crowdfunding)
Most smartphones have 5″ or larger displays these days as it’s just more convenient to read emails, browse the web, or play games, than the smaller displays we had ten years ago. But some people may still prefer smaller smartphones that are lighter and really fit into any pockets. Those are just pretty hard to find, luckily some companies such as Unihertz are filling the needs for this niche market. Two years ago, the company introduced the Unihertz Atom smartphone with a 2.4″ display, and earlier this year launched Atom XL 4″ smartphone, but the company is now preparing to launch a new crowdfunding campaign for Jelly 2 smartphone powered by a MediaTek Helio P60 processor and equipped with a 3-inch display. Unihertz Jelly 2 specifications: SoC – MediaTek Helio P60 octa-core with four Arm Cortex-A73 up 2.0 GHz and four Arm Cortex-A53 up to 2.0 GHz, Arm Mali-G72 MP3 […]
AirTab 15.6″ Portable Display Provides 2x USB-C Inputs (Crowdfunding)
While portable displays have been available as far back as at least 2012, they’ve become more popular in recent years as they can both offer a secondary display to your laptop, or add a larger screen to your smartphone. In the last two years, we’ve already covered BlitzWolf BW-PCM1, T-bao T15A, TAIHE Gemini (which ended up being a failure), Airview, and Desklab among others. But apparently, there’s room for more with the launch of AirTab, a 15.6″ portable touchscreen or non-touch monitor, on Kickstarter that’s already surpassed its $10,000 funding target. AirTab specifications: 15.6″ display with 1920×1080 resolution up to 60 Hz refresh rate; 4ms response time; 256 cd/m2 brightness Touchscreen – Air Touch model only USB – 2x USB-C ports Power Supply – Dimensions – 335 x 245 x 4.9 mm Weight – 500 grams AirTab comes with a foldable magnetic cover that allows the display to be used […]
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 […]
STM32 based Indoor Air Quality Sensor Connects to Raspberry Pi or Arduino (Crowdfunding)
Even before the COVID-19 lockdown, people spent most of their time indoors (around 90% according to some studies), so it’s important to monitor air quality and other metrics like light and sound levels in our homes, workplaces, schools, cars, etc… Metriful Sense indoor environment monitor does just that by reporting multiple metrics such as temperature, humidity, particle concentration, etc… over I2C to microcontroller or processor boards such as Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Sense hardware specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32G071KB Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller @ 64 MHz with 128 KB Flash, 36 KB SRAM Sensors Bosch Sensortec BME680 4-in-1 air quality sensor with relative humidity, barometric pressure, ambient temperature, and gas (VOC). Vishay VEML6030 ambient light sensor Knowles SPH0645LM4H-B MEMS microphone Optional – Shinyei PPD42 particle sensor unit I/Os – 10-pin unpopulated header with air particles sensor input, light and sound interrupt outputs, I2C, VPU pin for 3.3V/5V selection, GND, VDD, VIN […]
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 […]
Pi-oT ESP Module Leverages ESP32, Screw Terminals for IoT & Automation (Crowdfunding)
Last year, we covered Pi-oT Raspberry Pi add-on board designed for commercial and industrial IoT applications with five SPDT relays and eight analog outputs housed in a DIN rail enclosure, although some noted it may not be suitable for all industrial applications due to the lack of 24V DC input and protected outputs. But there seems to be a market anyway, as the company has now come up with a similar product, except that Pi-oT ESP module replaces the Raspberry Pi board with an ESP32 board, namely ESP32-DevKitC-D32. Pi-oT ESP module key features and specification: Board – ESP32-DevKitC-D32 based on ESP32-WROOM-D32 module with ESP32 dual-core processor, 32Mbit SPI flash Relays – 4x Panasonic SPDT relays controlled via GPIO pins Screws terminals for Relay outputs 6x analog inputs configurable as GPIO if needed 2x analog outputs configurable as GPIO if needed 2x GPIO 5V input, 3.3V, and GND Power Supply – […]
Connect up to 32 Relays to Raspberry Pi with a Stackable 4-Relay Board (Crowdfunding)
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 […]