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Arduino Alvik is a 3-wheel robot designed for STEAM education

Arduino Education’s Arduino Alvik is a 3-wheel educational robot that was initially unveiled at the Bett 2024 show in London and designed to teach robotics, programming, and other STEAM subjects. The robot is based on an Arduino Nano ESP32 board and comes with a set of nineteen lessons designed by Arduino Education’s team in collaboration with teachers so that students can learn the basics of IoT, get started with MicroPython, and get themselves familiar with various physics and engineering concepts. The company has yet to provide the full specifications for the Alvik robot, but here’s what we know at this stage: Mainboard – Arduino Nano ESP32 2x wheels plus 1x ball wheel Sensors – “High-quality sensors” that include a ToF ranging sensor, line-following sensors, a 6-axis accelerometer & gyroscope, a proximity sensor, and color sensors. Expansion 2x Grove I2C connectors 2x Qwiic connectors 6-pin servo motor header for up to […]

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SparkFun M7E Hecto is a simultaneous RFID Reader with USB-C connectivity and a range of up to 5m

SparkFun has announced the M7E Hecto, a ‘simultaneous’ RFID reader in a compact form factor and high-performance capabilities. The RFID reader is powered by Jadak’s Hecto module (M7E-HECTO) from the ThingMagic series which offers a wide RF output range from 0 dBm to +27 dBm and reads up to 300 tags/second. SparkFun M7E Hecto builds on the much older M6E Nano RFID reader, adding a USB-C port, increasing the read rate from 150 tags/second, and reducing power consumption. It supports an external antenna (sold separately) which extends the scanning distance up to 16 ft (4.8m) from the 1 to 2 ft (0.3m – 0.6m) range supported by the onboard antenna. It does come with a warning to ensure that personnel are not directly in the radiation beam of the antenna while they are within 21cm of the antenna (to adhere to FCC limits for long-term exposure to RF emissions). The […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Rockchip RK2118G/RK2118M dual-core Star-SE Armv8-M microcontrollers target smart audio applications

Rockchip RK2118G and RK2118M smart audio microcontrollers based on a dual-core Star-SE Armv8-M processor, an NPU for smart AI audio processor, three DSPs, 1024KB SRAM, optional DDR memory in package, and a range of peripherals. I first noticed the RK2118M in slides from the Rockchip Developer Conference 2024 last March, but I did not have enough information for an article at the time. Things have now changed since I’ve just received a bunch of datasheets including the one for the RK2118G and RK2118G microcontrollers, which look identical except for the DDR interface and optional built-in 64MB RAM for the RK2118G. The datasheets have only one reference to Arm with the string “Arm-V8M” and nothing else, and Cortex is not mentioned at all. But the slide above reveals the STAR-SE core looks to be an Arm Cortex-M33 core. We also learn the top frequencies for the “STAR-M33″/”STAR-SE” core  (300MHz) and the […]

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Radxa Zero 3E SBC offers gigabit Ethernet and PoE in Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W form factor

Last December, we wrote about the Rockchip RK3566-powered Radxa Zero 3W WiFi 6 SBC and noted that the Radxa Zero 3E with gigabit Ethernet and optional PoE supports would be coming soon with about the same dimensions as the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. “Soon” is now as the Radxa Zero 3E is now available on Aliexpress or Amazon with RAM capacities from 1GB to 8GB LPDDR4. The small SBC also comes with optional eMMC flash up to 64GB, a microSD card slot for storage, a micro HDMI video output port, a MIPI CSI connector compatible with Raspberry Pi Camera V1 and V2, two USB-C ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion. Radxa Zero 3E specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.6 GHz GPU – Arm Mali G52-2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 2.0 NPU – 0.8 TOPS […]

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Convert your tablet or smartphone into a touchscreen display for your PC, motherboard, etc… with the AURGA Viewer

The AURGA viewer is an HDMI and USB dongle with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity that plugs into any system with HDMI output and can convert any smartphone, tablet, or laptop with a touchscreen display into a KVM solution by sending video data, as well as keyboard and mouse events wirelessly. We’ve recently written about Openterface Mini-KVM KVM-over-USB device that allows users to use their laptop to control another device with HDMI output locally without any additional display, keyboard, and mouse. But I’ve just been informed the AURGA Viewer, launched in 2022 on Kickstarter, can do something similar wirelessly. AURGA Viewer specifications and features: SoC – Allwinner S3 Cortex-A7 processor with 128MB DDR3 HDMI input – Male HDMI port with Toshiba TC35874x HDMI to MIPI CSI-2 bridge internally (See comments section); Works with VGA, mini HDMI, micro HDMI, etc… using adapters Wireless – Broadcom BCM4345C5 SDIO 802.11AC WiFi 5 and Bluetooth […]

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Linux 6.9 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.9 on LKML: So Thorsten is still reporting a few regression fixes that haven’t made it to me yet, but none of them look big or worrisome enough to delay the release for another week. We’ll have to backport them when they get resolved and hit upstream. So 6.9 is now out, and last week has looked quite stable (and the whole release has felt pretty normal). Below is the shortlog for the last week, with the changes mostly being dominated by some driver updates (gpu and networking being the big ones, but “big” is still pretty small, and there’s various other driver noise in there too). Outside of drivers, it’s some filesystem fixes (bcachefs still stands out, but ksmbd shows up too), some late selftest fixes, and some core networking fixes. And I now have a more powerful arm64 machine […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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ESP32-S3-Matrix board features 64 LEDs, GPIO pins, 9-axis “attitude” sensor for robotics and motion control applications

The Waveshare ESP32-S3-Matrix is a microcontroller development board designed for AIoT applications, featuring a larger 8×8 RGB LED matrix (64 LEDs) compared to the 5×5 RGB LED matrix (25 LEDs) on the ESP32-C3/ESP32 based “C3FH4 RGB” / “PICO D4 RGB” board. In addition to that the Waveshare board features two 10-headers for GPIOs, UART, and power signals, along with an integrated QMI8658C attitude sensor (9-axis IMU sensor), making it ideal for robotics and motion control projects. Recently we have seen Waveshare introduce affordable products that are perfect for embedded development like the $15 1.69-inch IPS touch LCD module, the $6.99 ESP32-C6-Pico Board, the $4.99 ESP32-S3-Tiny board and much more feel free to check those out if you are interested in those. Waveshare ESP32-S3-Matrix dev board specifications: MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3FH4R2 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 @ up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration Memory – 512KB RAM, […]

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Lattice FeatherWing – An iCE40-powered add-on FPGA board for Adafruit Feather

Oak Development Technologies has recently announced Lattice FeatherWing – An iCE40-based development board designed to be controlled by Adafruit Feather. Previously we wrote about the IcyBlue Feather V2, a standalone development built around a Lattice Semi iCE5LP4K FPGA. But this FeatherWing board is designed to add functionality to your existing Adafruit Feather board. The Lattice FeatherWing expands your Adafruit Feather with a Lattice iCE5LP4K FPGA. It connects and gets programmed over SPI so you can use all the FPGA’s GPIO pins through the header blocks. There’s also a built-in RGB LED directly connected to the FPGA’s open-drain pins, for visual feedback. Previously, we have written about many Lattice Semi FPGA-based development boards, such as the tinyVision.ai Pico-Ice board, Silicon Witchery S1, and ULX3S Education Board. Feel free to check those out if you want a standalone FPGA board. FPGA – Lattice Semi iCE40 Family ICE5LP4K-SG48ITR Logic Cells – Approximately 3520 logic cells Memory – 80 Kbits […]

Khadas VIM4 SBC