kickstarter News - Page 26 of 48 - CNX Software

April 30, 2018April 30, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Easily Make DIY Battery Packs with this Building Kit for 18650 Batteries (Crowdfunding)

If you have a project that requires some serious battery power, and can’t find a battery pack that matches your requirements, making your own is possible, but usually expensive as the commonly used spot welding method requires expensive tools. Vruzend has created a modular lithium-ion battery building kit that greatly ease the making of DIY battery pack using 18650 battery cells using caps, nuts and bolts. There are two versions of the kit: V1.5 kit which supports up to 3.5A continuous and 7A peak per cell, and for higher power levels, the new V2.0 kit can handle up to 20A continuous (25A peak) per cell thanks to nickel plated copper-based conductors. It makes it suitable for EV racing, high power battery banks, and other power-hungry projects. The short video below explains how the kit works. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1354698863/diy-li-ion-battery-building-kit-make-your-own-1865?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=diy%20battery Vruzend battery build kit is now offered on Kickstarter, and the projects has been […]

April 27, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Eufy EverCam Full HD Waterproof WiFi Security Camera Works for Up to a Year on a Single Battery Charge

Wired security cameras can be troublesome to installed due to the cabling required, but luckily there are solutions to avoid all those long cables with solar powered IP cameras, or battery powered IP cameras. A few years ago I wrote about Immedia Blink WiFi HD camera that claimed to last a year on a charge, and despite several complains on Kickstarter, they seem to still be in business. There’s now a more advanced model by Eufy – an Anker brand – that supports 1080p video recording with motion sensing and face recognition, that also lasts up to one year on a charge, and offers free storage. Eufy EverCam specifications: Resolution – 1080p Video Format – H.264 High profile Image Sensor – Sony Exmor IMX323, 1/2 9-inch Field of View (FoV) – 140° Night Vision Range – up to 10 meters Digital Pan & Zoom – Yes, up to 8x Motion […]

April 24, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Kite is an Open Source Hardware Android Smartphone Powered by Snapdragon 450 Processor (Crowdfunding)

Kite is an open source hardware Android phone kit specifically targeting makers which you can assemble yourself into a Kitephone. The phone is based on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 mainboard (Kiteboard v2), and comes with a 720p touchscreen display module, a 12MP camera, antennas, buttons, a 3,000 mAh battery, and a Raspberry Pi HAT compatibility board to optionally interface to external hardware. Kiteboard v2 specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core Arm Cortex A53 @ 1.8 GHz with Adreno 506 GPU System Memory – 2 GB RAM Storage – 16 GB storage + microSD card slot Connectivity Cellular LTE Cat. 6/3G/2G, 2x nano SIM slots (dual-SIM dual standby) Two variant North America with LTE FDD Bands: 2,4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 14, 25, 26 LTE TDD Bands: 41 WCDMA 850, 1700, 1900, 2100 GSM 850, 1900 Rest of the World (Europe, Russia, etc…) LTE FDD Bands: 1, 3, 5, 7, […]

April 17, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Flatmax Studio Audio Injector Ultra Sound Card is Designed for Raspberry Pi Boards (Crowdfunding)

Flatmax Studio has launched several audio cards for Raspberry Pi boards on Kickstarter in recent years, and their latest board is called “Audio Injector Ultra Sound Card”. The board is said to give high fidelity input and output audio @ 192 kHz, is equipped with digital output (S/PDIF) and offers dual microphone capability. An extra balanced HAT – will send and receive balanced stereo input and output – is also available. Specifications: Direct Inputs – Unpopulated Analogue Connectors (stereo RCAs provided) Direct Outputs – Unpopulated Analogue Connectors (stereo RCAs provided), Digital Optical SPDIF (Optical transducer provided) Potentiometer Inputs – Unpopulated Connectors and potentiometer (stereo pot. not provided). Potentiometer Outputs – Unpopulated Connectors and potentiometer (stereo pot. not provided). Microphone – 2x high quality ultrasound (model – SPU0410LR5H) surface mount microphones populated Audio Codec – Cirrus Logic CS4265 stereo codec Sample rate – 192 kHz, 24 bit Jitter control – Low […]

April 6, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Fipsy is a $10 Breadboard-Friendly FPGA Board for Education (Crowdfunding)

We’ve already seen several cheap FPGA boards in the past with the $25 miniSpartan3 (Xilinx), $34 Spartixed (Xilinx), or 40 Euros Olimex iCE40HX8K-EVB boards (Lattice), but if you have a really tight budget you can now plat with FPGA for just $10 thanks to Fipsy board. With its 256 LUTs Lattice Semi MachXO2 FPGA, you’ll be limited to what you can do for specific projects, but it could be useful to teach yourself or students FPGA programming, especially it also happens to be breadboard-friendly. Fipsy specifications: FPGA – Lattice Semiconductors MachXO2 (LCMXO2-256HC-4SG32C) FPGA @ 269 MHz max. with 256 LUTs, 2 kbit Distributed RAM, 32 LABs (Logic Array Blocks) Programmable by SPI and I2C Expansion – 2x 10-pin header supporting various interfaces including: LVCMOS 3.3/2.5/1.8/1.5/1.2 LVTTL LVDS Bus-LVDS MLVDS RSDS LVPECL SSTL 25/18 HSTL 18 Schmitt trigger inputs, up to 0.5 V hysteresis Misc – Onboard LED Operating Supply Voltage – 3.3 […]

March 6, 2018March 6, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

C.H.I.P, PocketCHIP & Voder’s Maker Next Thing Co. Is Still Up and Running (Correction)

[Update: Next Thing Co. CEO (Dave) contacted me to inform me the company was not closed, but there was just several unfortunate events: DNS problem with the site leading to the blog issue Next Thing Co Facebook page was closed months ago (due to too many requests from different sources) The Google Maps listing is not managed by Next Things Co themselves. I’ve left the rest of the post unchanged. (except the last sentence) ] Next Thing Co. introduced the $9 C.H.I.P computer powered by Allwinner A13/R8 in 2015, and worked with Free Electrons (now Bootlin) to bring mainline Linux to the platform. They also launched PocketCHIP portable Linux game console based on the module, and lateron introduced C.H.I.P Pro WiFi + BLE module based on Allwinner GR8 processor, and found in their Voder (previously Dashbot) car dashboard assistant. I’m actually still using a C.H.I.P board as a printer server, […]

February 25, 2018February 25, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

SODAQ SARA is an Arduino Compatible Cellular IoT Board with LTE-M, NB-IoT, and GNSS (Crowdfunding)

There really seems to be a push for cellular IoT those days, with new hardware coming up every week. Following up on their NB-IoT shield for Arduino last year, SODAQ has now launched two versions of SARA boards based on u-blox SARA LTE-IoT modules, and u-blox M8Q GPS/GNSS module. Both boards are Arduino compatible thanks to a Microchip SAMD21 MCU, and while u-blox SARA board follows the Arduino form factor, u-box SARA SFF is much more compact (50×25.4 mm) and potentially easier to integrate into a project or product. Another pretty unique feature (AFAICT) is that you can power the board directly with a solar panel. u-blox SARA board specifications: Wireless module (three options) with external antenna: SARA-N211 NB-IoT, band 8 and 20, for the European and African market SARA-R410M Dual mode LTE-M and NB-IoT module for all global bands SARA-R412M Triple mode module with LTE-M, NB-IoT and 2G for […]

January 27, 2018January 27, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Mycroft Mark II Smart Speaker / Voice Assistant Works with Open Source Software (Crowdfunding)

Smart speakers have gain a lot of traction over the last few years, but many of the solutions are based on Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa voice services, with both companies likely tracking your voice searches the same way they track your online searches to provide a “personalized experience” and sell you products or server ads that match your interests. If you don’t like being tracked that way, a solution is to use an open source voice assistant such as Mycroft, and install it on a Linux computer, Raspberry Pi 3 board, or Android device. The company also introduced Mark I reference hardware platform based on Raspberry Pi 2 in 2015, and while all those hardware options should be fine for the technically inclined, but not really suited to the typical end user, and AFAIK they all lack a microphone array for better hot word detection. So Mycroft has come […]