Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft), Author at CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

January 10, 2020February 16, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

SimplePnP is a Low-Cost, Open Source Hardware Pick-and-Place Machine (Crowdfunding)

If you have a small production run for your board, it may not be cost-effective to ask a factory to manufacture it for you, and assembling the boards entirely by hand will be a time-consuming process. Getting a pick-and-place machine to automate the process would save time, but even the cheaper models on Aliexpress cost several thousand dollars. Citrus CNC tries to address the cost issue with the SimplePnP open source hardware pick-and-place machine that brings the price down to several hundred dollars. SimplePnP key features and specifications: MCU – Microchip Atmega328p running GRBL firmware Motor Drivers – TMC2209 stepper for two-phase stepper motors Word Area – 300 mm (X) x 300 mm (Y) Z Travel – 23 mm Components per Hour – 750 with vision assist Component Size – As small as 0402 (1005 metric) Vacuum Heads – Single vacuum head (base model), or optional dual-head Nozzle System – […]

January 10, 2020April 23, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Seeeduino XIAO is a Tiny Arduino Zero Compatible Board with Battery Support

Seeeduino XIAO is the smallest Arduino compatible board from SeeedStudio’s Seeduino family. Measuring just 23.5×17.5 mm, the board is equipped with Microchip SAMD21 Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller and exposes various digital and analog I/Os. Seeduino XIAO specifications: MCU – Microchip SAMD21G18 ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller at up to 48MHz with 256KB Flash,32KB SRAM USB – 1x USB type C port for power and programming Expansion I/Os 2x 7-pin headers with 11x analog inputs, 11x digital I/Os, 1x DAC, SPI, UART, and I2C 3.3V I/O voltage (not 5V tolerant) Misc – 1x user LED, power LED, 2x LEDs for serial port downloading, Reset pads, SWD pads, 32.768KHz crystal oscillator Power Supply – 5V via USB-C power, power pads (VIN/GND) for battery Dimensions – 23.5×17.5×3.5 mm All main components are placed under a shield, but there may be some charger chip (nope: see comments) as the company explains the board supports batteries via the […]

January 9, 2020February 29, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments

NComputing RX420(HDX) Raspberry Pi 4 Thin Client Works with Citrix HDX

NComputing RX300 Raspberry Pi 3 thin client was launched in 2017 with support for the company’ vSpace Pro desktop virtualization solution for Linux and Windows, and I tested it accessing a Windows Server 2006 host located in Singapore, and performance was pretty good for a remote system as I could play 1080p YouTube videos, browse multiple tabs in Chrome, etc.. relatively smoothly. This type of solution is aimed at businesses, for which it may be easier and cheaper to handle a fleet of devices using thin clients and servers, instead of traditional PC’s. Beside its vSpace Pro RX300 thin client, NComputing also introduced another Raspberry Pi 3 thin client that same year with RX-HDX using a design similar to RX300 but instead integrating support for Citrix HDX virtualization technology. NComputing now unveiled an update for the latter with RX420(HDX) thin client based on Raspberry Pi 4 SBC with 2GB RAM. […]

January 8, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

LivingPackets THE BOX Reusable Packaging Comes with an E-ink Display, Removes the Need for Filling Materials

E-commerce and online shopping have flourished over the years whether you shop on Amazon and from sites in China. But that also means lots of carton board packages are being used and often thrown away after use, although personally I like to reuse them if I need to send packages myself. So it would be good if there was a way to reduce carton board package waste, and that’s exactly what LivingPackets is attempting to do with “THE BOX” which features an E-Ink display to display the recipient address and other information, and is meant to be re-used up to 1000 times. Here are some of the key features of THE BOX: E-Ink Display – Replaces the usual printed address label. It can be updated easily and does not consume power when not updated. Button to allow easy returns Integrated Holding Mechanism – Patented a holding system to replace bubble […]

January 8, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

OmniVision OA805 4K Video Camera SoC Supports 100 ms Boot Time, 4K HEVC Encoding

OmniVision OA805 Arm Cortex-A5 4K video camera processor is specifically designed for battery operated security and surveillance cameras, including video doorbells, with the ability to encode 4K30p video streams with HEVC/H.265 video codec at very low power consumption. The processor also has a very short boot-up time of just 100ms, meaning it can go from completely powered off to fully functional upon trigger by a motion detection sensor. That short boot time removes the need for standby or sleep mode further lowering the power consumption and allowing the camera to have up to two years of battery life (albeit no mention of battery capacity was made…). OmniVision OA805 specifications: CPU Main CPU – Arm Cortex-A5 processor with NEON, 32KB I-cache, 32KB D-cache Secondary CPU (SPU) – Arm Cortex-A5 processor with NEON, 32KB I-cache, 32KB D-cache Media Processing Unit (MPU) – 32-bit RISC MCU with 8KB I-cache, 8KB D-cache System Memory […]

January 8, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Silicon Labs BG22 Secure Bluetooth 5.2 SoC Promises 10-Year Coin-Cell Battery Life

Yesterday, we wrote about the new Bluetooth LE Audio standard which promises smaller Bluetooth audio devices, or longer battery life, as well as support for multi-stream and broadcast audio. But there has been some other Bluetooth developments with the release of Bluetooth 5.2 specification on December 31st, and the announcement of the first Bluetooth 5.2 SoC courtesy of Silicon Labs. Bluetooth 5.2 Main Changes Bluetooth 5.2 builds upon Bluetooth 5.1 with the following key changes: Enhanced Attribute Protocol (EATT) – Improved version of the Attribute Protocol (ATT), which supports concurrent transactions, allows the interleaving of L2CAP packets relating to ATT packets from different applications and allows the ATT Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) to be changed during a connection. This can reduce latency and improves the responsiveness of Bluetooth LE applications. LE Power Control – Devices can dynamically optimize the transmission power used in communication between connected devices with BLE receivers […]

January 8, 2020June 10, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Arduino Portenta H7 STM32H7 Cortex- M7/M4 Industrial Board Runs Arduino Code, Python and JavaScript

Arduino is now at CES 2020 promoting its Arduino Pro all-in-all IoT solution for professionals with the Arduino Pro IDE, Arm Pelion IoT platform for device management, and a new Portenta industry-grade board family starting with Arduino Portenta H7 board powered by STMicro STM32H7 dual-core Arm Cortex-M7/M4 microcontroller. Arduino Portenta H7 Specifications: Microcontroller – STMicro STM32H747XI Cortex-M7 @ 480 MHz + M4 @ 200 MHz MCU with 2MB dual-bank Flash memory, 1 MB RAM, Chrom-ART graphical hardware accelerator System Memory – 2MB SDRAM (upgradeable up to 64MB) Storage – 16MB QSPI NOR Flash (Upgradeable up to 128MB) Connectivity 2.4GHz WiFi 802.11b/g/n up to 65 Mbps and Bluetooth 5.1 BR/EDR/LE via Murata 1DX module On-board 10/100M PHY Video I/F – MIPI DSI & 8-bit camera interfaces via 80-pin expansion connector, DisplayPort over USB-C port USB – 1x USB 2.0 Type-C port for power (PD), programming, and DisplayPort output I/Os Arduino MKR […]

January 7, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Bluetooth LE Audio Supports LC3 Codec, Multi-stream & Broadcast Audio, Nordic Semi Evaluation Kit Unveiled

I first heard about Bluetooth LE (Low Energy)- part of Bluetooth 4.0- in 2013 with RFDuino board, and it came to prominence once Android 4.3 added support later this year. Bluetooth LE is using to transmit messages using as little as energy as possible for example to synchronize data between a smartphone and a smartwatch. But if you ever had to transmit audio, you had to rely on Bluetooth Classic which, albeit considering low power, consumes more energy. But you should soon have much longer battery life on your Bluetooth headphone or battery-operated speaker, as the Bluetooth SIG has just announced Bluetooth LE Audio which adds a new codec and support for multi-stream and broadcast audio. The new high-quality, low-power audio codec used in the new Bluetooth standard is called the Low Complexity Communications Codec (LC3). The chart above shows the results of listening tests between LC3 and SBC codecs […]