Mastak Modular Air Quality Monitor Kit Supports CO2, Dust, Formaldehyde, Ozone and other Sensor Modules

The Mastak Indoor Air Quality Monitor Kit Medium Systems Limited, a UK company has released the Mastak, SoMs designed in a mechanical range that allows for indoor air quality monitoring, with a data IoT cloud service, and communications that include NB-IoT, 5G, WiFi, BLE, and LTE-M.  The system is a new addition to the air monitoring market place. There have been reports on other air quality monitors in past articles that covered quick start and user experience with Sonoff SC WiFi, vThings WiFi CO2 Monitor, and the ANAVI Gas Detector. The Specs The ecological modules are all compatible and contain processor, peripherals and the sensors for data monitoring and collection, as well as the necessary power electronics. The modules were designed too and allow the user to arrange the systems into custom arrangements and place in unique form factors. There are a number of options also, for even further expandability […]

PT100 Resistance Temperature Detector (RTD) Probes Support Extreme Temperature Ranges

WZP-187-PT100 Temperature Probe

I’ve been playing with temperature measurements in several hardware platforms such as Texas Instruments eZ430-Chronos Watch, Sonoff SC environmental monitor, Wemos D1 board with aDHT21 temperature sensor, or more recently ANAVI Thermometer with the last three platforms based on ESP8266 WiSoC. All four devices/boards above have temperature sensors designed to measure ambient temperature with for example DHT22 having a range of -40 to +125 degrees Celsius.  I had also come across DS18B20 waterproof temperature probe to measure liquid temperature several times with a range of  -55 to 125°C. Good for most use cases, and for example you could check boiling water with the later. But I had never really thought about measuring data for much lower or much higher temperatures, and this morning I came across two “PT100” temperature probes on IC Station new arrivals feed namely WZP-187 ($4.89) and an unnamed probe ($3.42) respectively capable of -200°C to +400°C […]

Getting Started with ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit and Home Assistant

ANAVI ESP8266 Gas Detector Display

ANAVI Gas Detector is an ESP8266 based board designed for MQ gas sensors supported by Arduino. This allows you to easily monitor air quality, or more accurately air conductivity using MQ-135 sensor as part of the starter kit either visually on the OLED display, or through your smartphone or computer using MQTT via automation platform such as Home Assistant. Leon Anavi sent me an ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit to have a look, and I’ll report my experience with the kit using it standalone, and through Home Assistant. Starter Kit Unboxing The kit contains the open-source hardware, ESP8266 based ANAVI Gas Detector board, a plastic stand, an OLED display, a USB to serial adapter, a gas sensor, and a few KiCad and ANAVI stickers. The board itself comes with an ESP8266MOD module, features a micro USB port for power, a reset button, four LEDs, a UART console, a 4-pin GPIO […]

Espressif Rolls out ESP32 Boards for Microsoft Azure IoT & Google Cloud IoT Core Services

ESP32 Azure IoT Kit

Espressif ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth processor is pretty versatile, and you could connect any ESP32 board to any cloud services with some efforts. But to make things even easier Espressif Systems worked with Microsoft and Google to release versions of ESP32 boards specifically designed to connect to Microsoft Azure IoT or Google Cloud IoT core. Meet ESP32-Azure IoT Kit and ESP32-DevKitC Google Cloud IoT. ESP32-Azure IoT Kit Hardware specifications: Wireless Module – ESP32-WROVER-B WiFi and Bluetooth module Storage – MicroSD card socket Display – 0.96” blue and yellow OLED display driven by SSD1306 I2C driver chip Sensors InvenSense MPU6050 motion sensor NXP MAG3110 magnetometer FBM320 barometer STMicro HTS221 humidity & temperature sensor ROHM BH1750FVI light sensor Expansion – 16-pin header Debugging – USB to UART bridge for serial debugging & programming Misc – Reset button, user button, 2x charge LED’s, 2x user LED’s, 1x passive buzzer Power Supply – 5V […]

Getting Started with Temperature & Humidity Sensors on ESP8266 using ANAVI Thermometer

ANAVI Thermometer Air / Humidity / Water

ANAVI Thermometer was launched on CrowdSupply in January.  It is an ESP8266 WiFi board with a built-in DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor, support for external DS18B20 waterproof temperature sensor, as well as other sensors thanks to three I2C sensors. I received the ANAVI Thermometer starter kit last month, and I’ve only found time to play with it in the last few days. I’ll start with a unboxing, assembly guide, before showing it action, and I’ll try to make it interface with Home Assistant over MQTT. ANAVI Thermometer Starter Kit Unboxing The kit comes with ANAVI Thermometer board, a plastic stand, a USB to TTL debug board, an I2C OLED display, a few nuts and bolts, and a couple of KiCad and ANAVI stickers. Leon ANAVI also added a traffic light board and LEDs, but it’s not normally part of the kit 🙂 ANAVI Thermometer board include an ESP8266 module, AM2302 […]

ANAVI Thermometer WiFi Board is Designed for Home Automation (Crowdfunding)

ESP8266 Thermostat

ANAVI Technology launched several open source hardware boards for the Raspberry Pi and ESP8266 maker communities in the past, starting with RabbitMax Flex home automation HAT for Raspberry Pi, and several others including ANAVI Light Controller ESP8266 board to control LED strips. All boards are designed with KiCad opensource EDA software, and I’ve tested several already such as ANAVI Infrared pHAT or ANAVI Light Controller, and found documentation to be very good and easy to follow. The company has now launched another ESP8266 board with ANAVI Thermometer that allows you to monitor temperature and humidity, effectively acting as a thermostat for home automation. ANAVI Thermometer specifications: SoC –  Espressif Systems ESP8266 Tensilica L106 32-bit processor Connectivity – WiFi 802.11 b/g/n Display – Mini OLED display Build-in sensor – AM2302 (DHT22) temperature and humidity sensor Expansion Terminal block for DS18B20 waterproof temperature sensor UART pins 3x slots for I2C sensors Misc – […]

TTGO T-Camera ESP32 Camera Board Comes with OLED Display, Sensors

TTGO T-Camera ESP32 OLED Display

ESP32 is now being used for AI workloads such as face detection with camera boards like ESP32-CAM, or the upcoming ESP-EYE board from Espressif Systems themselves, combined with ESP-WHO face detection and recognition framework. The two aforementioned board require you to use a phone to vizualize the results, unless you blink some LEDs or connect your own display. But the just released TTGO T-Camera board includes a 128×64 OLED display which should allow you to display face detection and/or recognition results, as well as a BME280 environmental sensor, a PIR sensor, and an optional fisheye lens. TTGO T-Camera board specifications: ESP32-WROVER-B Wireless Module SoC –  ESP32 dual core Tensilica LX6 processor Memory – 8MB PSRAM Storage – 4MB SPI flash Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11n WiFi 4, Bluetooth 4.2 LE Camera – 2MP OV2640 camera with normal or fisheye lens Display – 0.96″ 128×64 OLED display connected via SSD1306 I2C […]

Wistrio LoRa Tracker RK5205 Complies with 96Boards IoT Edition Specification

Wistrio LoRa Tracker RK5205

  It’s not hard to find a LoRa GPS tracker board such as Rak Wireless RAK811 these days, but if for some reasons, you’d also like your board to comply with 96Boards IoT Edition form factor, Rak Wireless just launched Wistrio LoRa Tracker RK5205 for $49.50 plus shipping on Aliexpress and Amazon. Wistrio specifications: LoRa Module – RAK5205 module with SX1276 LoRa chipset, STM32L1 Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller LoRa Connectivity LoRaWAN 1.0.2 protocol OTAA/ABP activation Programmable bitrate up to 300 Kbps Support for global bands: EU433, CN470, EU868, US915, AS923, AU915, KR920, and IN865 SMA & iPEX antenna options Location – Quectel L76-L GNNS chip supporting GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and QZSS system (pin-to-pin compatible with u-blox Max7) Sensors – LIS3DH 3-axis accelerometer, BME680 environmental sensor reporting gas, pressure, humidity and temperature data Expansion Header – I2C, GPIOs, UART and ADC Power Supply – Rechargeable battery via micro USB port, or 5V […]

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