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Giveaway Week – ANAVI Infrared pHat + Light pHat Starter Kit

Leon ANAVI works as a software engineer, but designs some open source hardware boards as a hobby, and usually sends me his creations for review. That means I have a bunch of his products, and today I’ll be giving away ANAVI Light pHat Starter Kit, and ANAVI Infrared pHat. The light sensor in the kit above will not be included, since I have no idea where it is… The winner still get the board and RGB LED string, and a few stickers. After connecting to a Raspberry Pi board and adding a 12V power supply, you’ll be able to control the LED as I did in “Getting Started with ANAVI Light pHat Starter Kit with RGB LED Strip, Light Sensor“. ANAVI Infrared pHat will also be part of the winning package, and you may consider reading the instructions showing how to control an air conditioner with a Raspberry Pi board. […]

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Giveaway Week – ThaiEasyElec 3G Raspberry Pi HAT

You’ll need a 40-pin Raspberry Pi board for this giveaway. Quectel UC20 based ThaiEasyElec 3G Raspberry Pi HAT adds 3G / 2G connectivity to the popular development board. I”l send the board with the full kit include GPS/GLONASS antenna, cellular antenna, headers and spacers. I explained how to use the board in “How to Use 3G and GPS on Raspberry Pi” post, and I found that it was pretty easy working with GPS and 3G using Hologram SIM card by following the instructions provided by ThaiEasyElec. I could also find alternative connection method for this type of board on the Internet. To enter the draw simply leave a comment below. Other rules are as follows: Only one entry per contest. I will filter out entries with the same IP and/or email address. Contests are open for 48 hours starting at 10am (Bangkok time) every day. Comments will be closed after […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Raspberry Pi TV HAT Adds a DVB-T2 Tuner to Raspberry Pi Boards

The Raspberry Pi foundation has just launched another official HAT for their maker boards with the Raspberry Pi TV HAT based on Raspberry Pi Zero form factor, and is equipped a DVB-T2/T tuner in order to convert your board into a Linux based digital TV receiver and recorder. Raspberry Pi TV HAT specifications: Sony CXD2880 TV tuner Supported TV standards DVB-T2 (1.7MHz, 5MHz, 6MHz, 7MHz, 8MHz channel bandwidth DVB-T (5MHz, 6MHz, 7MHz, 8MHz channel bandwidth) Reception frequency: VHF III, UHF IV, UHF V RF coaxial input for antenna connection RPi Interface – 40-pin RPi header Dimensions – 65 x 30 mm (half-size HAT) Operating temperature – 0–50°C The Raspberry Pi TV HAT is also known as the Raspberry Pi DVB TV μHAT based on the markings on the board’s silkscreen. The add-on boards follows a new HAT specification called the “half-size HAT” matching Raspberry Pi Zero board’s dimensions. Instructions to use […]

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Raspberry Pi PoE HAT Launches, But Refunds Offered due to Power Issues

The Raspberry Pi foundation has launched a good number of boards and  accessories, and although some people will question some of the design choices, their boards were fairly bug-free hardware-wise at launch, except for minor issues like the board rebooting while taking a photo with a Xenon flash. Recently they also had performance issues with Gigabit Ethernet in the  Raspberry Pi 3 B+ board, but that looks like more of a software issue. The Raspberry Pi PoE HAT announced with Raspberry Pi 3B+, but launched at the end of August for $20,  however suffers from a more serious issue as it somehow limits USB current to 200mA instead of the usual 500mA, meaning that’s fine with USB keyboard and mouse, but as soon as you connect more power hungry peripherals like a USB hard drive, all hell breaks loose. Let’s check out the specifications first: 802.3af PoE Fully isolated switched-mode […]

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ARCO is a Real Robot that Lives in Virtual Worlds (Crowdfunding)

Hicat launched HICAT.Livera machine vision board for robotics projects on Kickstarter two year ago. The company second project is still related to robotics and machine vision, but geared towards a different target audience, as ARCO robot aims to offer an augmented reality gaming experience to kids, although it’s still hackable/customizable as we’ll see below. The hardware part is mostly comprised of ARCO ROVER robot, and a Bluetooth controller that can be stored in ARCO’s inner capsule, where it recharges and communicates with ARCO through a magnetic pogo connection joint.  The listed specifications are rather limited: ARCO ROVER Bluetooth connectivity (nRF52 WiSoC) 10 RGB LEDs Battery – Good for about one hour Power Supply – Via USB type C port Dimensions – 8.9 x 7 x 6.5 cm Weight – ~180 grams Controller Bluetooth (nRF52) Sensor – 3-axis accelerometer for motion detection Trigger and rocker Battery – Good for about one […]

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MCC 118 DAQ HAT Enables Up to 64-Channel Voltage Measurement on Raspberry Pi Boards

Measurement Computing Corp. (MCC) has recently introduced their MCC 118 DAQ HAT for Raspberry Pi which includes 8 analog inputs for voltage measurements between +/- 10V at a 100kS/s data rate. You can also perform data acquisition on up to 64 channels by stacking up to 8 MCC-118 DAQ HATs on top of a single Raspberry Pi board. The maximum throughput is limited to 320 kS/s. MCC 118 DAQ HAT key features & specifications: 8x 12-bit voltage inputs 100 kS/s max sample rate (320 kS/s aggregate for stacked boards) ±10 V input range Onboard sample buffers allow for high-speed acquisition External scan clock I/O External digital trigger input Screw terminal connections Up to eight MCC HATs are stackable on top of a Raspberry Pi board The data acquisition / data logger systems based on the add-on board would run Raspbian (Lite) on the Raspberry Pi board, as well as a […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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ANAVI Play pHAT OSHW Board Adds 8 Buttons, I2C Headers to Raspberry Pi Boards (Crowdfunding)

Leon ANAVI has been learning KiCad open source EDA suite in his spare time, and developed several Raspberry Pi (p)HAT add-on boards such as ANAVI pHAT Light to control LED RGB strips, or ANAVI Infrared pHAT to handle IR signals. All his boards are open source hardware, and come with source code, and decent documentation as explained in the two aforelinked reviews. Leon has now come with another variant of his open source hardware certified add-on boards with ANAVI Play pHAT designed for playing games on the Raspberry Pi 3 / Pi Zero W boards, or other boards with a 40-pin header, thanks to 8 buttons, and just like his previous designs, three I2C headers are also included to connect sensors. Key specifications and features of the board: Gamepad with eight buttons for playing retro games 3x I2C header for sensors EEPROM with device tree binary overlay OSHW Certification – […]

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Three Add-on Boards for UP Board and UP Squared – UP-AUDIO HAT, UP-CAMERA HAT, UP-POE HAT

AAEON has announced three add-on boards for their Intel based UP board (Cherry Trail) and UP Squared board (Apollo Lake): UP-AUDIO HAT –  Features external ports for a microphone and speakers/headphones UP-CAMERA HAT – Comes with two FPC/FFC connectors for 2M security camera UP-POE HAT – Adds WAN and LAN Gigabit Ethernet ports and PoE support UP-AUDIO HAT AAEON’s UP-Audio HAT currently only works with UP board, and features the following: Audio Codec – Realtek ALC5672 3.5mm Audio Jacks – 1x Line out, 1x MIC Headers – 2x speaker Built-in Components – 2x digital microphones, 1x buzzer Connects to board via 40-pin GPIO female header Dimensions – 85 mm x 56 mm The board is supported in Windows 10, Android 6, and Ubuntu 16.04. UP-CAMERA HAT The camera board works with UP Board, UP Squared and UP Core boards. UP-CAMERA HAT specifications & features: 2x MIPI CSI-2/ DSI DPHY Re-timer […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC