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Nadhat is an Add-on Board for Raspberry Pi Boards with 2G GSM/GPRS Support

Making Raspberry Pi HATs for fun seems to have become a popular hobby, as after checking out Leon Anavi’s Infrared pHAT a little while ago, I’ve just come across Nadhat add-on board with GSM/GPRS and Bluetooth 3.0 made by Frederic Pierson in his spare time. Nad stands for “Network Access Device”, and the device comes with the following specifications: SIM800C module with 2G GSM/GPRS support, and Bluetooth 3.0 + EDR (but Bluetooth is not mentioned by the developer, so it may not work right now) SIM card slot + connector for GSM antenna CR1225 cell battery slot for RTC 40-pin header provided, but not soldered Dimensions – 65 x30 mm, compatible with Raspberry Pi Zero He explains that he made the board himself and the  PCBs “are leaded reflow processed and do not follow regulations in Europe”. You’ll also have to provide your own GSM antenna and CR1225 battery. He’s […]

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Does That Crane or Drilling Rig Run mainline Linux?

Linux 4.11 has just been released, and as usual I looked into the changelog especially checking out work done on ARM architecture, and some newly supported SoCs or board. One line in the log caught my attention:  “Liebherr (LWN) monitor 6 based on i.MX6 Quad, no idea what this is”. So I had a look, and Liebherr-Werk Nenzing GmbH is a swiss company specializing in construction machines and maritime cranes such as “crawler cranes, duty-cycle crawler cranes, as well as piling and drilling rigs”. The DTS file for LWN Monitor 6 shows an NXP i.MX 6Quad processor is used in a product with an LVDS display and various interfaces such as I2C, PWM, SPI, and so on. So it could be some kind of control panel for one or more of their equipment. After looking into some PDF documentation, we can see  on page 10 that the company mentions Litronic […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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That USB Stick Looks Suspicious! Camera, Microphone and Battery Included.

I had previously read about USB flash drives dropped on the parking with some malware, so that if you pick it up and use it it infects your computer in order to spy on your activity. But I browser new arrivals on DealExtreme, I found another nefarious use case thanks to U8 Mini USB drive / spy camera sold for around $10 shipped. If we look the picture below, it looks just like any other USB flash drives.But once we have a closer look at U8 mini specifications: USB – 1x USB 2.0 male port Storage – micro SD slot up to 32GB (no internal storage) Camera Video up to 720 x 480 @ 25~30fps recording to AVI/M-JPEG Photo up to 1280×1024 in JPG format Audio recording with built-in microphone Misc – Motion detection camera button, power button, picture button, status LED Battery – 300 mAh good for about 60 […]

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NanoPi NEO2 Board, NanoHats, and BakeBit Starter Kit Review – Part 1: Hardware Overview & Assembly

NanoPi NEO 2 development board is an update of NanoPi NEO with a quad core 64-bit Allwinner H5 processor + 512 MB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, and an extra audio header, which can be a great little board for headless application since there’s no video output. FriendlyELEC ask me whether I wanted to review to board with some of their NanoHATs add-on boards, and while I asked for NanoHat PCM5102A audio board and NEO Hub which I intended to use with Grove modules from my Wio Link Started Kit, I get a bit more than expected, as the company included sets of NEO 2 boards and accessories, NanoHATs, two serial debug board, and their BakeBit Starter Kit with several Grove modules to play with. Since I have so many things to look at in this first post, I’ll just describe the hardware, assemble it, quickly check the paper documentation, and give […]

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How to Control Your Air Conditioner with Raspberry Pi Board and ANAVI Infrared pHAT

Leon ANAVI may be a full-time software engineer, but in his spare time he has started to develop open source hardware project with the help of others and by himself. Last year, I got hold of his RabbitMax Flex HAT for Raspberry Pi, and tested it with the provided LCD display, one temperature sensor, and a Raspberry Pi 2 board. The board also featured IR receiver & transmitter, and I tried to use it with my aircon remote control, but at the time I did not find a way to do it easily, and control my TV with LIRC instead. Leon has now made a simpler, smaller, and cheaper add-on board for Raspberry Pi Zero, and other Raspberry Pi boards with a 40-pin header, with 3x I2C headers, two IR transmitters, and one IR receiver. He sent me a sample of “ANAVI Infrared pHAT”, and after quickly describing the board, […]

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Oh Look… Espressif ESP32 Die-shot! That’s Pretty!

Espressif ESP32 was launched last year as a faster and upgraded version of ESP8266, with a dual core processor, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 LE. Boards based on the processor are still priced much higher than the ones based on ESP8266 ( although we’re only talking about $20 here), and shops have trouble keeping stocks, so either there’s a huge demand, there’s some manufacturing bottleneck, or maybe Espressif wants to take it slow at the beginning in case some hard to find bugs are found in the Silicon. Nevertheless, the guys at Zeptobar got hold of some ESP32 modules, and took some pretty die-shots. The die size is 2960×2850 µm. The prettiest part is clearly the RF section zoomed in below. If you wonder how it compares to ESP8266 die-shot, Zeptobar has you covered.

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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$99 Ping is a Tiny GPS Tracker that Works with Bluetooth and Cellular Connectivity (Crowdfunding)

Ping GPS Tracker is really small, last several months on a charge, and works with GPS, Bluetooth, and Cellular (GSM/EDGE or HSPA/UMTS) connectivity. It helps you track kids, pets, bags, keys, bicycles, cars or anything that may be lost or stolen using your iOS or Android smartphone. Ping GPS tracker specifications: Connectivity HSPA/GSM module + embedded 3G module Bluetooth Low Energy module GPS + GLONASS module Sensor – 3-axis accelerometer Misc – Inset tactile button for check-in & SOS, LED activity indicator Battery – 300 mAh custom lithium ion battery good for about 3 months Dimensions – 34 x 34 x 12 mm (PMMA silicone & elastomer materials) Weight – About 30 grams Waterproof – Up to 10 meters You’d use GPS + cellular connectivity when you are far from the tracked asset, and Bluetooth to locate it when it’s close. A button allows for your kid to send a […]

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Getting Started with RabbitMax Flex IoT and Automation Hat for Raspberry Pi

At the beginning of the month I showed how to assemble RabbitMax Flex, a Raspberry Pi HAT compliant add-on board for Raspberry Pi boards with 40-pin header, that targets IoT and home automation project with its relay, IR transmitter and receiver, I2C headers for sensors, buzzer, RGB LED, and more.  Since I’ve already described the hardware, I’ve spend some time this week-end following the user’s guide to play around with the board using a Raspberry Pi 2 board, and try various features. The user’s manual explains that you need the latest version of Raspbian, but I’d not played with my Raspberry Pi 2 board for a while, so the kernel and firmware were quite old:

So the first thing I had to do was to upgrade Raspbian. There are basically two options to upgrade, either downloading and dumping the latest Raspbian firmware image to your micro SD card, and […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC