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Single’s Day 2019 Coupon Codes and Promotions

Singles’ Day, taking place on November 11 (11.11) every year, is the Chinese equivalent of Black Friday with shops in China offering deep discounts on their products. Popular Chinese online shopping websites catering to oversea markets also take advantage of the event to organize events and promotions for their customers. So just like I did in 2017 and 2018, I posted a list of Singles’ Day 2019 promotions in shops such as Banggood, GeekBuying, Aliexpress, GearBest, and others. Aliexpress Aliexpress Global Shopping Festival 2019 is already started in the sense you can browse products on the website, add them to your cart, and pay a lower price if you check out on November 11. Most shops will have discounts, but some of the most relevant to this site include Shenzhen Xunlong Software which will offer discounts of up to $8 for their Orange Pi Boards, Rak Wireless lowered the price […]

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Tuya helps you easily Design & Manufacture your own Smart Home Solutions

I was recently informed about LSC Smart Connect 3 door sensor selling on Action discounter with over 600 stores across the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, and Poland. The door sensor is based on ESP8266, and people have bought a few and flashed their own open source firmware converting the device into a multi-purpose sensor device with ESPNOW protocol that enables direct and low-power control of Espressif devices without the need of a router. The module inside the door sensor is called TYWE3S, which one document on the FCC website refers to as “Tuya WiFi module” and further mentions “TYWE3S is a low-power consumption module with built-in Wi-Fi solution designed by Hangzhou Tuya Technology Corporation” that is based on ESP8266 WiSoC with 1MB flash, 50 kB RAM. One person in the LetsControlIt forum thread linked above explains the stock firmware can be updated over-the-air via a Raspberry Pi 3/3+ […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Giveaway Week – ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit

Leon ANAVI makes from fun little boards for home automation, either ESP8266 based, or pHAT for Raspberry Pi boards. Earlier this year, I wrote about my experience getting ANAVI Gas Detector with Home Assistant. Now that’s I’m done, I’m giving away the starter kit that includes the ESP8266 board, an acrylic case, an OLED display, a USB to serial adapter, and MQ135 air quality sensor. The board is open-source hardware, meaning everything is open source from the KiCAD files to the Android sketch running on the board. It’s very easy to get started, as you can just connect a USB cable for power, and after configuring WiFi you can see the air quality  – either Poor, Moderate or Good – displayed on the OLED display, and you can easily see the data in a web dashboard after setting up Home Assistant. Everything shown in the top photo will be given […]

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YABA is a Backplane Architecture Controller for Automation and IIoT (Crowdfunding)

Automation and IIoT Through YABA YABA is an acronym and a concept being developed. The acronym is Yet Another Backplane Architecture (YABA). The concept is to bridge the gap between PLC/PAC and open source hardware. The YABA Bridge to IoT YABA is designed to be a robust, open hardware controller that will be a simple but effective midpoint or bridge to the approach of modern industrial technologies in the automation and IoT sector, especially production lines in industrial settings. Where YABA is in Process The process is midstage right now, with a prototype coming. There is an IndieGoGo campaign, but it is at the development stage right at this moment. The developer has reported that the team is about two months out of a working prototype, which should put them an efficient schedule timeline. The project has the backplane, CPU, I/O boards at about 75% complete, and just working towards […]

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Giveaway Week – Balena Fin Developer Kit

We’ve been organizing “giveaway weeks” every year since 2014 on CNX Software to send some of the review samples to our readers. Let’s do it again in 2019 starting with Balena Fin developer kit based on Raspberry Pi 3+ Computer Module (CM3+) with 8GB flash and a carrier board in order to get started with BalenaOS operating system and the company’s balenaCloud service. Instead of a traditional review, we wrote a getting started guide for balenaFin Developer Kit, balenaOS and balenaCloud, where we explain how to flash the OS to the board, configure it, run a container, and manage the device, including container updates, from Balenacloud. The winner will receive the full kit below with carrier board, Raspberry Pi CM3+ module, CR1225 battery, enclosure, power supply, and MicroUSB cable. It will come already assembled as shown in the first photo. To enter the draw simply leave a comment below. Other […]

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Pantahub Enables Seamless, Remote Linux Firmware Updates Over-the-Air

Let’s say you’re running Raspbian on your Raspberry Pi 4 board, but would like to check out the latest Ubuntu 19.10 for the board. What would you normally have to do? After downloading the firmware and turning off your Raspberry Pi 4, you’d normally need physical access to your Raspberry Pi 4 to remove the MicroSD card, insert it into your computer and start balenaEtcher or other utility to flash the image. Once it’s done remove the MicroSD card from your PC and insert it back into the Raspberry Pi SBC, before booting it up. That’s fine for experimentation, but time-consuming if you had to do this for multiple boards that may be placed in various locations. That’s where Pantacor’s PantaHub, PantaVisor, and PVR utility come in. Pantahub is a web dashboard used for registration, to monitor your devices, and documentation, Pantavisor is an Alpine Linux based  device init system […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Anycubic Photon S Review – Part 1: Getting Started with an SLA 3D Printer

Hey, Karl here with something different. I will be breaking this one down into at least 2 posts. There is a lot to cover. In this first post, I will be sharing my initial experiences with the Anycubic Photon S. It is an LCD based SLA 3D printer. You might ask what is that? If you are a long-time reader you may have ran across my traditional FDM printer reviews. FDM printers use plastic filament on a roll. The filament is fed to a hot end which melts the plastic and deposits layers. Most everyone is familiar with this kind of 3D printing and is easy to understand. LCD based SLA printers work a little differently. We’ll start from the bottom. At the bottom of this printer is a bunch of ultraviolet 405nm LEDs. The LEDs turn on and shine through a 2k LCD screen. Above that is a vat […]

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Khadas VIM3L SBC Review with Android 9 Firmware

Khadas VIM3L is the first and so far only Amlogic S905D3 SBC on the market, so I first ran some benchmarks and checked system info. But it is also designed to be an HTPC, I’ll continue the review with some 4K video and audio playback testing, some gaming, and I/O benchmarks. Khadas VIM3L Unboxing As you may remember (or not), VIM3L ships either as a bare board pre-loaded with Android 9 or as an HTPC kit with the board running CoreELEC. I’ve received the bare board which also comes with two WiFi antennas. It can do much more than a simple TV box however, since it also comes with an M.2 NVMe socket (extra adapter board required), and sockets with MIPI DSI + touchscreen, and MIPI CSI camera. It’s one of the few boards with a low profile Ethernet connector, so if you ever wanted to build a farm of […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC