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May 1, 2025 by Debashis Das - No Comments

Adafruit Sparkle Motion – An ESP32-based addressable LED controller with four outputs, 100W USB-C power, and WLED/xLights support

The Adafruit Sparkle Motion is an ESP32-based LED controller board designed to drive addressable LEDs, including WS2812B, APA102, SK6812, LPD8806, UCS2904, and SM16704. It supports both WLED and xLights projects and features an onboard 100W USB-C PD port to drive even high-voltage LED setups. The board includes dual power input options (USB-C PD with 5/12/20V selection and 2.1mm DC jack), a 5A fuse, and level-shifted output terminals for controlling addressable LEDs. The board also features a built-in I2S digital microphone, IR receiver, Stemma QT I2C port, USB-serial with auto-reset, GPIO breakout pads, onboard NeoPixel and status LED, and multiple JST and terminal connectors for sensor and control integration. It comes pre-assembled with terminal blocks for easy wiring, making it suitable for applications such as wearable electronics, home decor lighting, audio-reactive displays, and remote-controlled installations. Adafruit Sparkle Motion Specifications: SoC – ESP32-S3 dual-core Xtensa LX7 MCU @ 240MHz with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and […]

April 23, 2025April 23, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

SPARK Microsystems SR1120 UWB ultra-low-power transceiver delivers up to 41 Mbps throughput

SPARK Microsystems SR1120 is the company’s second-generation ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless transceiver capable of up to 41 Mbps throughput at ultra-low power and up to 100 times lower power ranging than UWB competitors. The Canadian company also highlights the outperformance of their UWB solution over Bluetooth with the new SR1120 offering 40 times higher data rates than Bluetooth chips, while consuming 25 times less power than Bluetooth and offering 60 times lower latency. However, readers should note that Bluetooth LE is supposed to support up to 2 Mbps, so it should (only) be up to about 20 times faster, and Bluetooth HDT is coming soon with data rates of up to 7.5 Mbps to further narrow the gap. SPARK SR1120 key features and specifications: Compliant with the upcoming IEEE 802.15.4ab low-energy UWB PHY standard Dynamically reconfigurable UWB spectrum 6.2–9.5 GHz band Up to 3 dBm TX power RX sensitivity of -81 […]

April 16, 2025April 15, 2025 by Debashis Das - 4 Comments

Luckfox Nova Audio IoT board features 8-channel mic input, voice activity detection, and PoE

Luckfox has recently released the Luckfox Nova Audio IoT board built around the Rockchip RK3308B quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A35 SoC clocked at up to 1.3GHz, and featuring 8-channel microphone inputs and voice activity detection (VAD). The board comes with 512MB DDR3 RAM, 8GB eMMC flash storage, and a microSD card slot. It also features dual 26-pin GPIO headers that support UART, SPI, I2C, and more. The Luckfox Nova is also equipped with a PoE-capable Ethernet RJ45 port, and optionally supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2/BLE. Other onboard interfaces include a USB Type-C port for power and programming, a speaker, microphone headers, and more. All these features and various I/O options make this device suitable for applications where multi-channel audio capture, voice recognition, and real-time audio signal processing are required. Luckfox Nova specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3308B Quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A35 @ up to 1.3GHz Integrated high-performance audio codec Built-in Voice Activity […]

April 3, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

LILYGO T-Deck Pro – An ESP32-S3 LoRa messenger with e-paper touch display, keyboard, and 4G LTE or audio codec option

LILYGO T-Deck Pro is a LoRa messenger based on an ESP32-S3 WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.x SoC, and offered with a 3.1-inch e-paper display with touchscreen, a Blackberry-like QWERTY keyboard, a GPS module, speaker, microphone, and a 3.5mm audio, as well as IMU and light sensors. It builds upon the T-Deck Plus design, but replacing the 2.8-inch IPS display with a 3.1-inch e-paper display allows for a slimmer design and should offer longer battery life despite the smaller 1,400 mAh battery used in the new model. Two versions of the T-Deck Pro are available: one with a Simcom 4G LTE modem and a cheaper one with a PCM5102A audio codec. LILYGO T-Deck Pro specifications: SoC – ESP32-S3FN16R8 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller @ up to 240 MHz 2.4 GHz 802.11n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE connectivity Memory – 8MB PSRAM Storage – 16MB SPI flash Storage – MicroSD card […]

March 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

A LoRa-based Walkie-Talkie? Meet LILYGO T3-S3 MVSR LoRa voice communication kit

LoRa Voice Communication Kit Walkie Talkie

With its low-power, long-range capabilities, LoRa has been used for P2P and Mesh messaging with firmware like MeshTastic, but due to its limited bandwidth, we haven’t seen quite as many LoRa audio applications. This has not stopped LILYGO from designing the T3-S3 MVSR LoRa voice communication kit, integrating LoRa radio, a microphone, and a speaker to use the board as a walkie-talkie solution working over Semtech SX1262 or SX1280 RF transceiver. LILYGO T3-S3 MVSR specifications: SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3FH4R2 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller @ up to 240 MHz Wireless – 2.4 GHz 802.11n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE connectivity Memory – 2MB PSRAM Storage – 4MB SPI flash Storage – MicroSD card slot Display – 0.96-inch 128×64 OLED display with SSD1306 I2C driver Audio MAX98357A Speaker MSM261S4030HOR Microphone LoRa module (one or the other) LORA32 SX1262 with 868MHz or 915 MHz radio LoRa 2.4G module based […]

March 14, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

UNIHIKER K10 low-cost TinyML education platform supports image detection and voice recognition

UNIHIKER K10 is a low-cost STEM education platform for TinyML applications that leverages the ESP32-S3 wireless microcontroller with vector extensions for workloads such as image detection or voice recognition. The UNIHIKER K10 also features a built-in 2.8-inch color display, a camera, a speaker, a 2-microphone array, a few sensors, a microSD card, and a BBC Micro:bit-like edge connector for power signals and GPIOs. It’s a cost-optimized version of its Linux-based big brother – the UNIHIKER M10 – first unveiled in 2022. Arnon also reviewed the UNIHIKER in 2023, showing how to configure it, use the SIoT platform with MQTT message, and program it with Jupyter Notebook, Python, or Visual Studio Code. Let’s have a closer look at the new ESP32-S3 variant. UNIHIKER K10 specifications: Core module – ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 MCU – ESP32-S3N16R8 dual-core Tensilica LX7 up to 240 MHz with 512KB SRAM, 8MB PSRAM, 16MB flash Wireless – WiFi 4 and […]

March 4, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

The One Smart AI Pen – A ballpoint pen with Bluetooth and a microphone for translation, LLM integration, note taking (Crowdfunding)

You may have seen the “Sell me that pen. It’s AI-powered” meme if you are a social media user. It may have started as a joke, but Zakwan Ahmad made the meme become reality with “The One Smart AI Pen” which is basically a standard ballpoint pen with a battery, Bluetooth connectivity, a microSD card, and a microphone. The AI part is not exactly inside the pen per se, but in a smartphone’s app called Hearit.ai that allows the user to translate his/her voice input, use a range of LLMs such as ChatGPT, recording a meeting, or taking notes, for example, to schedule events or meetings. The One Smart AI Pen specifications: “AI chip” – Not clear why it’s needed here… unless it transcribes audio into text inside the pen (as opposed to inside the phone) Storage – MicroSD card slot inside the pen Wireless – Bluetooth 5.2 with up […]

February 24, 2025February 25, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

The OpenVoiceOS Foundation aims to enable open-source privacy and customization for voice assistants

The OpenVoiceOS Foundation, or OVOS Foundation for shorts, is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing open-source voice assistant technology and offers an open-source privacy-focus alternative to voice assistant by large companies like Amazon, Google, and Apple. One of the founders, Peter Steenbergen (j1nx), explained to us it all started when he read an article on CNX Software about Mycroft Mark II voice assistant hardware in 2018. He ended up being involved and created “MycroftOS“, later renamed to “OpenVoiceOS – Mycroft Edition”, as a Just Enough OS utilizing Buildroot and working on the Mark II. There were some tensions with the open-source community at some point, and the Mycroft project went south from there and the company had to close in 2023. Eventually, OpenVoiceOS took over the codebase of Mycroft A.I. and managed to merge lingering PR from the open-source community. Together with NEON A.I., they took over the Mycroft A.I. community […]