Posted on

MicroBlocks is a visual programming IDE for 32-bit microcontrollers

MicroBlocks is a visual programming IDE for 32-bit microcontrollers currently supporting the BBC Micro:bit V1/V2, Calliope mini (aka the German Micro:bit), Adafruit Circuit Playground Express and Bluefruit, Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W, and various other boards including ESP32 and ESP8266-based boards. I discovered MicroBlocks in the list of talks for FOSDEM 2023, and although it did not make it to my virtual schedule, I thought it was interesting to look into and write about it. In their upcoming FOSDEM talk, Bernat Romagosa and Kathy Giori refer to MicroBlocks as small, fast, and human-friendly with development guided by four guiding principles: liveness, parallelism, portability, and autonomy. The IDE is inspired by Scratch, and as such, looks very similar to other visual programming interfaces I have used over the years. You can launch MicroBlocks from Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge on a PC (not a mobile device) without having to install […]

Posted on

FOSDEM 2023 schedule – Open-source Embedded, Mobile, IoT, Arm, RISC-V, etc… projects

After two years of taking place exclusively online, FOSDEM 2023 is back in Brussels, Belgium with thousands expected to attend the 2023 version of the “Free and Open Source Developers’ European Meeting” both onsite and online. FOSDEM 2023 will take place on February 4-5 with 776 speakers, 762 events, and 63 tracks. As usual, I’ve made my own little virtual schedule below mostly with sessions from the Embedded, Mobile and Automotive devroom, but also other devrooms including “Open Media”, “FOSS Educational Programming Languages devroom”, “RISC-V”, and others. FOSDEM Day 1 – Saturday February 4, 2023 10:30 – 10:55 – GStreamer State of the Union 2023 by Olivier Crête GStreamer is a popular multimedia framework making it possible to create a large variety of applications dealing with audio and video. Since the last FOSDEM, it has received a lot of new features: its RTP & WebRTC stack has greatly improved, Rust […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
Posted on

ESP32 OpenMQTTGateway smart plug acts as an BLE MQTT gateway and a power meter

The Theengs Plug ESP32 smart plug runs OpenMQTTGateway firmware to serve as a BLE MQTT gateway and power meter compatible with Home Assistant, Homebridge, OpenHAB, DomoticZ, FHEM, Jeedom, NodeRed, AWS, and any MQTT-compatible IoT or Smart Home system. While the Matter standard should improve interoperability between Smart Home frameworks over time, there are still millions of devices already produced that are not Matter compatible, and the Theengs Plug aims to at least partially address this issue by helping users reduce the number of hubs required and have only one that supports different ecosystems. Theengs Plug hardware specifications: Microcontroller – ESP32 dual-core wireless MCU with 2.4 GHz WiFi and Bluetooth LE connectivity Network Protocol – MQTT Power Supply – 100-120VAC, 60Hz, up to 15A Dimensions – 103 x 61 x 34.6mm Temperature Range – Operating: 0ºC ~ 40ºC; storage: -10°C ~ 50°C Humidity – 0%～95% (no condensation) Certification – UL Some […]

Posted on

ultraArm P340 Arduino-based robotic arm draws, engraves, and grabs

Elephant Robotics ultraArm P340 is a robot arm with an Arduino-compatible ATMega2560 control board with a 340mm working radius whose arm can be attached with different accessories for drawing, laser engraving, and grabbing objects. We’ve previously written and reviewed the myCobot 280 Pi robotic arm with a built-in Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, but the lower-cost ultraArm P340 works a little differently since it only contains the electronics for controlling the servos and attachments, and needs to be connected to a host computer running Windows or a Raspberry Pi over USB. ultraArm P340 specifications: Control board based on Microchip ATMega2560 8-bit AVR microcontroller @ 16MHz with 256KB flash, 4Kb EEPROM, 8KB SRAM DOF – 3 to 4 axis depending on accessories Working radius – 340mm Positioning Accuracy – ±0.1 mm Payload – Up to 650 grams High-performance stepper motor Maximum speed – 100mm/s Communication interfaces – RS485 and USB serial Attachment […]

Posted on

EDATEC CM4 Sensing industrial computer offers CAN bus, RS485, and RS232 interfaces

EDATEC CM4 Sensing is a compact industrial computer based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) with multiple RS485, RS232, and CAN bus interfaces, an HDMI port, two USB ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and optional WiFi, Bluetooth, and/or 4G LTE connectivity. The industrial mini PC can operate in the -25 to 70°C temperature range, supports 8 to 28V DC wide voltage input, includes an RTC, and the single board computer also features a MIPI DSI interface to connect the official Raspberry Pi 7-inch display as well as an FPC interface with HDMI and USB touch.   EDATEC CM4 Sensing specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi CM4 module with Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 SoC, 1GB to 8GB LPDDR4 RAM, and up to 32GB eMMC flash Storage – MicroSD card socket for data storage. It can work with the eMMC flash on the CM4 module Display I/F 1x HDMI 2.0 Type-A port up […]

Posted on

433 MHz is not dead! Using an ESP32 board with LoRa module to talk to 433 MHz sensors

CNXSoft: This is a guest post by Florian Robert (1technophile) of the OpenMQTTGateway project about using a 433 MHz LoRa transceiver on an ESP32 board for home automation, specifically to talk to 433 MHz sensors Everyone is talking about Matter, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Zwave, but before these complex communication technologies, we had one simple, robust one that our sensors and devices used to leverage: 433MHz. It may be too simplistic to talk about 433 MHz as a technology as there are different and various usages of this frequency. You can find it being used in numerous devices around your home, from your outdoor temperature sensors, and security sensors to the tire pressure sensors in your car. If we want to be specific, we can talk about the different radio frequencies (433 MHz, 915MHz, 868MHz, 315MHz, or 350MHz) and signal modulations OOK, ASK, FSK that we encounter behind the keyword 433MHz. […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
Posted on

MistySoM Renesas RZ/G2L or RZ/V2L SoM and devkit goes for $112 and up

We’ve previously written about several system-on-modules and SBCs based on Renesas RZ/G2L or RZ/V2L Cortex-A55/M33 processors such as Geniatech “AHAURA” RS-G2L100 and “AKITIO” RS-V2L100 single board computers, Forlinx FET-G2LD-C system-on-module, and SolidRun RZ/G2LC SOM and devkit. But most of those are hard to buy, and you need to contact the company, discuss your project, etc… before purchase, except for the SolidRun Renesas RZ/G2LC Evaluation Kit going for $249. Another option is the MistyWest MistySOM module offered for $112 and up on GroupGets with either Renesas RZ/G2L or RZ/V2L processor, as well as an optional carrier board. MistySOM system-on-module MistySOM-G2L (aka MW-G2L) and MistySOM-V2L (aka MW-V2L) specifications: SoC – Renesas RZ/G2L or RZ/V2L with dual-core Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.2 GHz, Arm Cortex-M33 core @ up to 200 MHz, Arm Mali-G31 GPU, and DRP-AI vision accelerator (RZ/V2L only) System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4/DDR4 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash 2x 120-pin high-speed mezzanine […]

Posted on

Year 2022 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics

It’s the last day of the year and the time to look at some of the highlights of 2022, some traffic statistics from CNX Software website, and speculate on what 2023 may bring us. The semiconductors shortage continued in 2022, but things are looking brighter in 2023 with the full reopening of the world mixed with forecasts of difficult economic times that should keep the demand/supply equation in check. On the Arm processor front the biggest news of the year, at least in this corner of the Internet, was the launch of the Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor together with interesting single board computers that we’ll discuss below. Announced last year, the Amlogic A311D2 octa-core Cortex-A73/A53 was finally made available in a few SBC’s, and we finally got some news about the Amlogic S928X Cortex-A76/A55 SoC showcased in 8K TV boxes, but we have yet to see it in action. […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products