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Semtech SX1302 LoRa Transceiver to Deliver Cheaper, More Efficient Gateways

After our interview with Rak Wireless CEO, we received a comment inquiring about the availability of SX1302 gateways. Semtech so far had two LoRa transceivers for gateways namely SX1301 and SX1308, but I had never heard about a third one. Semtech SX1302 is brand new, the latest generation of baseband LoRa chip for gateways that is said to reduce current consumption in order to simplify the thermal design of gateways, as well as the BoM (bill of materials) costs), while being capable of handling a higher amount of traffic. Semtech SX1302 LoRa Transceiver Key features: Up to -141 dBm sensitivity with SX1250 Tx/Rx front-end 125 kHz LoRa reception with: 8 x 8 channels LoRa packet detectors 8 x SF5-SF12 LoRa demodulators 8 x SF5-SF10 LoRa demodulators 125 /250 / 500 kHz LoRa demodulator (G)FSK demodulator Direct interface to Semtech transceivers SX1255, SX1257 and SX1250 SPI host interface Single 32 MHz […]

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LPWAN Market Update – An Interview with RAK Wireless CEO

CNX Software interviews Ken Yu, RAK Wireless’  founder & CEO, to learn  more about the company and the current & future state of the LPWAN (Low Power WAN) market especially with regards to NB-IoT and LoRaWAN. CNXSoft: We’ve already covered several products from RAK Wireless on CNX Software, starting with WiFi IoT boards several years ago, and more recently LPWAN products based on NB-IoT or LoRa. But for readers who may not be familiar with RAK Wireless yet, could you provide a short description of what the company does? Ken Yu: RAKwireless was founded in 2014. The core founder team consists of professionals coming from established leaders in the Networking industry as Qualcomm, H3C, etc. Because our engineers have more than 10 years of experience designing Wi-Fi solutions, this was the core of our business in the beginning. RAKwireless is working towards a vision of a connected world and In […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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TechNexion XORE is a tiny NXP i.MX 8M Mini LGA System-on-Module

There are several ways to design a system-on-module to carrier board interface, and the most common solutions are edge connectors (e.g. SO-DIMM), board-to-board connectors (placed under the module), and castellated holes where the board is soldered directly to the baseboard. Another less common method is to design an LGA (Land Grid Array) module, which also have to be soldered straight unto the carrier board, but enables much more compact system-on-modules, and that’s exacty what TechNexion has done with their XORE family of LGA system-on-module currently powered by the 14-nm NXP i.MX 8M Mini processor. XORE-IMX8M-Mini Module TechNexion XORE module specifications: SoC (one of the other) NXP i.MX8M Mini Solo single Arm Cortex-A53  @ 1.8 GHz + M4 processor, Vivante GC7000Lite 3D GPU NXP i.MX8M Mini Dual 2x Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.8 GHz + M4 processor, Vivante GC7000Lite 3D GPU NXP i.MX8M Mini Quad 4x Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.8 GHz + M4 […]

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HEGduino IoT Real-time Neurofeedback Platform Aims to Increase Brain Function (Crowdfunding)

The HEGduino Alaskit has developed a way to measure the blood-oxygen levels in the brain and create a biofeedback system that is said to increase brain function. The new tech is called HEGduino and is a connection between a biofeedback method and an IoT platform.  Past Reported Medical SBCs In the past, CNX has covered several health-based platforms for the Raspberry Pi (Healthy Pi HAT) and ESP32 (Hearty Patch, ECG reader) medical SBCs. HEG Particulars The HEG in HEGduino stands for Hemoencephalography, a neurofeedback technique similar to EEG measurements in brainwave activity. The difference is HEG can measure neural activity based on neurovascular coupling, which can be approached through near infrared and passive infrared techniques – both of which are ways to cerebral blood flow can be matched to metabolic activity. HEG Functions The HEG is a way to alter brain function through a series of “training” sessions based […]

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UpSwift – Manage IoT & Embedded Linux Devices Easily & Quickly

UpSwift offers a GUI based management interface to their customers to update, manage, control & diagnose IoT and embedded devices. The solution also supports OTA updates to any device which is running the Linux operating system including Raspberry Pi board and other Arm SBC’s. Because of the pull-based, client/server architecture, the client-side binary looks for updates in configurable frequent interval and executes the changes and updates. The communication between the client and the server is established over secured REST API’s. By monitoring the applications logs and other device parameters, UpSwift’s Cloud-Smart engine is capable of behaving intelligently by sending email alerts to the administrator. UpSwift Basic WorkFlow Post-registration and package selection with UpSwift Cloud-based dashboard, customers can start adding their devices into UpSwift dashboard. Depending upon the selected plans (number devices connected, features, etc.. will vary depends on the plan chosen), customers will be able to manage their products remotely. […]

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Real-Time Performance and Health Monitoring Using Netdata

Netdata is a real-time open source monitoring tool, that generates hundreds of metrics of performance and health monitoring parameters. Netdata is capable of  visualizing this data with real-time capabilities along with alerts and notifications. This monitoring agent can be installed in all variant of Linux systems, Mac OS, FreeBSD and in Raspberry Pi . Netdata provides options for archiving the metrics to a remote server by using TimeSeries Databases and processing engines, and can be visualized using Grafana or other tools. Architecture Overview Metrics collector Fetches various system &  health monitoring parameters (uptime, CPU load, CPU usage, RAM utilization, disk usage etc.) . Fetches application metrics including web servers, databases, containers, etc… Netdata’s Internal plugins  collect  most of the metrics from standard Linux system parameters such as /proc, /sys and other Linux kernel sources External plugins contains ready to use plugins developed by using other programing language and interfaced to […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Using Sony PS3 Eye Camera as an Inexpensive Microphone Array

Almost exactly two years ago to the day, we published an article showing how microphone arrays performed against a single USB microphone, and the latter started to have a poor wake word detection success rate at around 3 meters array even in a silent room, and it got worse with white noise or background music, while the microphone arrays would pick up the wake word with a much higher success rate in all conditions. The price of smart audio development kits varies a lot from $500 for Intel Speech Enabling Developer Kit to $129 for an Allwinner R18-based 3-Mic Far-Field Amazon AVS Development Kit, and $99 for ReSpeaker Core v2. If you’ve already got a Raspberry Pi 3/4 board, you can get cheaper options such as ReSpeaker 4-Mic Array for $25, but nothing beats the price of Sony PS3 Eye camera that comes with a 4 microphone array and sells […]

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Innocomm Unveils MediaTek i300/i500 SoMs for IoT and AI Applications

SB30 MTK i300 and SB50 MTK i500 AI IoT Platforms Just announced by Innocomm are the SB30 and the SB50 SoMs carrying the MediaTek i300 and i500 SoC’s, and running either Linux or Android. The rundown on the systems is the MediaTek AIoT processor series has been out for some time, and we reported on the latest SoC in the MediaTek i700 article last July. Innocomm is also known for its NXP-based compute modules such as the i.MX8M Mini driven W15 and i.MX8M powered W10. MediaTek i300 Specs The MediaTek i300 (MT8362) SoC is running a Cortex-A35 power-efficient quad-core processor clocking at 1.5 GHz. The SoC is further equipped with an Imagination PowerVR Series8XE GE8300 GPU. The i300 also integrates a PMIC, an RF chip for 2.4 GHz 802.11/b/g/n as well as Bluetooth 4.0. There is support for the MediaTek MT7668 chipset for 802.11ac (WiFi 5). Rounding out the system […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC