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WizziKit is a DASH7, LoRa and Sigfox Wireless Sensor & Actuator Network Kit

Over the last few years, I’ve written several article about LoRaWAN, Cellular IoT, and Sigfox based long range low power IoT solutions. DASH7 is another LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) standard that operates on the same 868 and 915 MHz ISM bands as LoRa and Sigfox, but has much lower power consumption, and the cost of a shorter range up to 500 meters, instead of the 5+km associated with LoRa or SigFox. The DASH7 Alliance Protocol (D7A) is an Open Standard, and if you want more details you can download version 1.1 of the specifications on DASH7 Alliance website. I’m writing about DASH7 today thanks to an article on ST blog about Wizzilab’s Wizzikit, an evaluation kit and framework for DASH7 with a gateway, and several nodes that can also optionally support LoRaWAN and Sigfox protocols. The kit is comprised of the following items: WizziGate GW2120 Ethernet/Wifi/Dash7 gateway – based […]

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RadioShuttle Network Protocol is an Efficient, Fast & Secure Alternative to LoRaWAN Protocol

LoRaWAN protocol is one of the most popular LPWAN standards used for the Internet of Things today, but some people found it “lacked efficiency, did not support direct node-to-node communication, and was too costly and far too complicated for many applications”, so they developed their own LoRa wireless protocol software called RadioShuttle, which they claim is “capable of efficiently sending messages in a fast and secure way between simple LoRa modules”. Some of the key features of the protocol include: Support for secure or insecure (less time/energy) message transmission, multiple messages transmission in parallel Unique 32-bit device ID (device number) per LoRa member, unique 16-bit app ID (program number for the communication) Security – Login with SHA-256 encrypt password; AES-128 message encryption Air Traffic Control – Nodes only send if no LoRa signal is active on that channel. Optimized protocol –  Message delivery within 110 ms (SF7, 125 kHz, free […]

ArmSoM CM5 Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC
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Grid-EYE Breakout Board is a $49 Low Resolution Thermal Camera Module

Thermal cameras can be really expensive pieces of equipment, and even the cheap 60×60 thermal cameras available on Aliexpress costs a little over $200. However, PURE Engineering has made an breakout board with Panasonic Grid-EYE infrared 8×8 array sensor that allows you to experiment with the technology, or integrate into your own projects for just $49. Grid-EYE breakout board features: Panasonic Grid-EYE AMG8834 64 pixel infrared / thermal camera sensor with 60 degree viewing angle using MEMS thermopile technology Pinout compatible with Arduino Zero,  ST-NUCLEO board, and other 3.3V boards with I2C, VDD, GND, INT, and AD pins PUREModules PCB edge connectors with UART, GPIO, to interface with the company’s IoT board Power Supply – On-board regulator handles 3 to 5V input The Panasonic sensor transfers thermal presence, direction, and temperature values over I2C. The company wrote a demo for the module with an Arduino sketech and a Processing sketch […]

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Samsung JerryScript is a Lightweight Open Source JavaScript Engine for the Internet of Things

In the old days, micro-controller programming was all done in assembly or C, but in recent years higher level languages, included interpreted ones such as Python and JavaScript, have made their ways into MCUs with projects such as MicroPython or Espruino (JS) often running on STMicro STM32 ARM Cortex M micro-controllers, but also other platforms such as ESP8266. As I browsed through the Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2016 schedule, I discovered that Samsung worked on it own implementation of a JavaScript engine for the Internet of Things: JerryScript. It is a full implementation of ECMAScript 5.1 standard written in C that can run on micro-controllers with less than 64KB RAM, and less than 200KB storage (160KB footprint with ARM Thumb-2 compilation). JerryScript is comprised of two main components: Parser and Virtual Machine (VM), with the parser performing translation of input ECMAScript application into byte-code than is then executed by the Virtual […]

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STMicro STM32 ARM Cortex M3 Boards List and Wiki

STMicro STM32 has popular Cortex-M micro-controller found in the $2 “Blue Pill” board, STMicro’s own Nucleo Board, as well as many other variants. Olavi Kamppari (OliviliK), working on hard real-time control with EmBitz IDE, has created a detailed Wiki for STMicro STM32 on Github with lots of information, including an interesting comparison table of various STM32 Cortex M3 boards (and one GD32 board). I’ve reproduced the table in his wiki below, made is sortable & filterable, and added links to Aliexpress store found in other parts of the wiki. You can find much more details about each board in the Wiki. Thanks to Zoobab for the tip.

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STMicro Unveils Two Low Cost STM32F7 ARM Cortex M7 Development Boards

STMicroelectronics introduiced its STM32F7 ARM Cortex M7 micro-controller family in 2014, and they released a $49 STM32F746G discovery board later in 2015. The company has now launched two new low cost development boards with the $23 STM32 Nucleo-144 board based on STM32F767 MCU, and a $79 Discovery Kit powered by STM32F746 MCU with TFT-LCD and MIPI-DSI support. STM32 Nucleo-144 development board Key feature of NUCLEO-F767ZI board: MCU – STMicro STM32F767ZI ARM Cortex M7 microcontroller @ 216 MHz with FPU, DSP, MMU, 2MB flash, 512 KB SRAM, 16 KB instruction TCM RAM (for critical real-time routines), and 4 KB backup SRAM Connectivity – IEEE-802.3-2002 compliant Ethernet connector USB – 1x micro USB OTG or full speed device  Extension: ST Zio connector including support for Arduino UNO v3 connectivity, and additional signals (A6 to A8, D16 to D72) ST morpho extension pin header footprints for full access to all STM32 I/Os On-board […]

Rockchip RK3568, RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs abd SoMs
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STMicro Releases Linux based STM32 MCU Development Tools

Until a few years ago, most development tools for micro-controllers were only available for Windows, but as Linux gained popularity among developers and engineers, community of developers designed development tools running in Linux, but only a few companies are providing tools that run on Linux operating systems. The good news is that STMicro has just announced the release of STM32CubeMX configurator and System Workbench for STM32, for both Linux and Windows, with Mac OS supporting coming on Q2 2016. Developped by Ac6 embedded systems company, System Workbench for STM32 relies on Eclipse IDE, supports the ST-LINK/V2 debugging tool under Linux through an adapted version of the OpenOCD project, and can be used with various STMicro STM32 boards including Nucleo boards, Discovery kits, and other Evaluation boards. You can give it a try by visiting OpenSTM32 Community, but for some reasons they ask you to register before accessing the installation instructions. […]

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Mediatek Helio X20 Processor to Features 10 Cores in Three Clusters

ARM first announced big.LITTLE processing on 2011, and since then we’ve seem several mobile processors providing two CPU clusters with “big” cores such as Cortex A15 or A57 and “LITTLE” core such as Cortex A7 and A53 to optimize performance and power consumption. With its latest Helio X20 (MT6797), Mediatek brings TINY.medium.huge processing with the first mobile processor using three CPU clusters, although a 3-level architecture has also been used before in Dhanush wearables SoC. The three clusters are divided as follows: TINY – Four ARM Cortex A53 core @ up to 1.4 GHz for best power efficiency medium – Four ARM Cortex A53 cores @ up to 2.0 GHz for a good performance / power balance huge – Two ARM Cortex A72 cores @ up to 2.5 GHz for maximum performance All three clusters are linked together and the memory bus via Mediatek Coherence System Interconnect (MCSI). Mediatek claims their […]

Boardcon Rockchip RK3588S SBC with 8K, WiFI 6, 4G LTE, NVME SSD, HDMI 2.1...