ATCwatch Arduino Firmware Works with PineTime, COLMI P8, “Da Fit” Smartwatches

ACTWatch Arduino Firmware

Earlier this week, we wrote about fake heart rate sensors found in ultra-low-cost fitness trackers as reported by Aaron Christophel. It turns out he also maintains an open-source project specific to P8 watch, PineTime, and other smartwatches compatible with Da Fit Android app: ATCwatch Arduino firmware. The firmware provides a basic menu system, notifications, and the latest implementation enables direct HTTP or HTTPS GET requests to control IoT devices and get info from the Internet. The current firmware consumes about 150-200uA standby current, and last roughly 92 hours on a charge with heavy notification and usage. While it’s possible to connect an SWD St-Link V2 to flash the bootloader and firmware, it’s not necessary, as it’s possible to flash ATCwatch Arduino firmware without having to open the watch by using over-the-air update function with DaFlasherFiles for PineTime or P8 watch together with DaFlasher Android app. Once the update is done, […]

KitDuino Proto – An Arduino Compatible Board with a Built-in Prototyping Area

KitDuino Proto

At the initial stage of development, many people would connect their Arduino board to a circuit build on a breadboard, and once this is done, some may either want to design their own board or for simpler circuits, simply move from the breadboard to a perfboard with components soldered to it. With Microchip ATMega32U4 based KitDuino Proto you could do that directly on the Arduino board itself since it comes with a small prototyping area. KitDuino Proto specifications: MCU – Microchip ATMega32u4 8-bit AVR MCU @ 8 MHz with 32 KB flash program memory, 2.5 KB SRAM, 1 KB EEPROM Expansion Arduino Leonardo compatible headers 6-pin SPI header Built-in 15 x 13 prototyping area. 3.3V or 5V I/Os Misc – Power LED, Tx/Rx LEDs, 1x user LED Power Supply 5V via Micro USB port (3.8V after regulation) 7+V via DC barrel jack or Vin pin for stable 5V rail 3.3V […]

Waveshare Launches an Affordable 7-Color e-Paper Display

Most e-paper displays are black or white with sometimes red or yellow color being added to the mix. But E-Ink has recently launched several color e-Paper display at prices that will not make it affordable to most projects. Waveshare has launched its fair share of e-Paper displays in the past, and now the company is coming with a relatively affordable 5.65″ color e-Paper display with seven different colors for $74.99 plus shipping. Main features and specifications: Display 5.65″ display (114.9 × 85.8mm) Resolution – 600 × 448 pixels Viewing angle – >170° ACeP (Advanced Color ePaper) 7-color with black, white, green, blue, red, yellow, and orange Greyscale – 2 levels Full refresh time – 15s Dot pitch – 0.1915 × 0.1915mm Host Interface – 3-wire SPI or 4-wire SPI Operating voltage – 3.3V/5V Power Consumption 50mW (typ.) during refresh Standby current – <0.01uA (almost none) Dimensions – Board – 138.5 […]

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Gemini Lake & Arduino SBC Review with Windows 10 Enterprise

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Review

I’ve recently received ODYSSEY-X86J4105 SBC with Re_Computer case, and we’ve had a look at the SBC hardware, installed some internal components like an M.2 SATA SSD, and play around Re_Computer case using Raspberry Pi 4, Beaglebone Green Wireless and Jetson Nano SBC, before assembling the Intel SBC into the enclosure. I’ve now taken the time to test the combo using the pre-installed Windows 10 Enterprise operating systems. ODYSSEY-X86J4105 is very much like any Intel Gemini Lake mini PC, but with the addition of Arduino and Raspberry Pi headers, so we’ll look at those as well. Connections and First Boot For the first boot, I connect USB mouse and keyboard, a HDMI cable to a 4K TV, an Ethernet cable, a USB 3.0 hard drive, and finally the power supply. I actually had a small problem during boot, but we’ll talk about it later as it’s really specific to my setup, […]

RFCat N32 Long Range nRF52832 Bluetooth Board Delivers 30x the Transmission Power with an Amplifier

RFCat N32 Long Range Bluetooth Board

Bluetooth 5.0 has two main new features: high speed (2Mbps) and long-range. But as we’ve seen in our nRF52840 vs nRF52832 vs nRF52810 comparison is that only nRF52840 supports Bluetooth 5.x long range. Bluetooth 5 long range is achieved with two new lower bit rates of 500 kbps and 125 kbps. So what do you do if you’d like a longer range and keep using the higher bit rates? You add a power amplifier and LNA to your board, and that’s exactly what Nikolaj (RFCat) did with RFCat N32 board based on Nordic Semi nRF52832 wireless SoC. RFCat N32 board specifications: Wireless module – Meshtek-H52 Smart Mesh Module with integrated PCB antenna based on Nordic Semi nRF52832 Arm Cortex-M4F Bluetooth 5-ready SoC (See datasheet) Skyworks RFX2401C PA &LNA with 18.9dBm TX gain and 11dBm RX gain USB – 1x USB-C port for power, programming and debugging via CP2102N USB to […]

PoE FeatherWing Brings PoE, Unique MAC Address to Adafruit Feather Boards (Crowdfunding)

PoE FeatherWing

[Update: In the initial version of this post, Giant Board was wrongly attributed to Silicognition LLC (Patrick Van Oosterwijck). It was actually made by Groguard] Silicognition LLC (Patrick Van Oosterwijck)’s PoE FeatherWing is an expansion board that adds PoE support to Adafruit Feather boards and can handle up to 4 Watts of power. The expansion board also comes with a built-in globally unique MAC address. It’s similar to the official Ethernet FeatherWing, but with the addition of PoE and a unique MAC address. PoE FeatherWing key hardware features and specifications: WIZnet W5500 Ethernet controller up to ~13 Mbps Microchip 24AA02E48 2 Kbit serial EEPROM with built-in globally unique MAC address to avoid having to change and recompile the code for each device. Power Isolated IEEE 802.3at Class 1, Mode A and Mode B Power over Ethernet (PoE) with up to 4W of output power available via an RJ45 Ethernet port […]

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 SBC Unboxing and Re_Computer Case Review

ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Re_Computer Case Review

Seeed Studio ODYSSEY-X86J4105 is an Intel Celeron J4105 Gemini Lake SBC that also happens to integrate an Arduino compatible Microchip SAMD21 Arm Cortex M0+ microcontroller that makes it suitable as an all-in-one Arduino platform. But it can do much more with 8GB RAM, an optional 64GB eMMC flash, HDMI & USB-C DisplayPort 4K video outputs, dual Gigabit Ethernet, and support for both SATA and NVMe storage. The board runs Windows 10 Enterprise by default (if you purchase the board with an eMMC flash), and supports Linux distributions as well. Seeed Studio sent me a review sample, so I’ll start by checking out the hardware first. ODYSSEY-X86J4105 Unboxing I received ODYSSEY-X86J4105864 with a built-in 64GB eMMC flash pre-loaded with Windows 10 Enterprise. Let’s have a quick look at the board with USB, Ethernet and video output ports previously described, as well as built-in dual-band Wi-Fi 5 & Bluetooth 5.0 module, and […]

Feather-Sized Evo M51 Board Combines Atmel SAMD51 MCU with Intel MAX 10 FPGA

Evo M51 FPGA Arduino

Arduino unveiled its first FPGA board around two years ago with MKR Vidor 4000 combining an Intel Cyclone FPGA with Microchip SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ MCU in a form factor similar to Arduino Zero. But in case you are looking for an even smaller Arduino compatible FPGA board, Alorium Technology’s Evo M51 might be exactly what you are after. The Adafruit Feather-sized board is equipped with an Atmel SAMD51 Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller coupled with an Intel MAX 10 FPGA. Evo M51 specifications: MCU – Microchip (Atmel) SAMD51 Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller clocked at 120 MHz with 512KB flash, 192 KB SRAM FPGA – Intel MAX 10 (10M25) FPGA with 25K LEs, 675Kbit block memory Storage – 2MB external flash USB – 1x micro USB port for power and programming I/O Digital 55x Total Digital I/O – 21x through-hole/castellated vias, 34x additional castellated-only 6x digital pins shared with analog pins 3.3V Inputs, 3.3V Outputs […]

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