ASRock Industrial upgrades mini-ITX, micro-ATX, and ATX motherboards for Intel Core 14th Gen Raptor Lake-S Refresh processors

ASROCK Industrial 14th gen mini-ITX micro-ATX ATX motherboards

ASRock Industrial has just announced 25 (twenty-five!) industrial motherboards powered by 14th gen Intel Core Raptor Lake-S Refresh hybrid processors with up to 24 cores and 32 threads introduced last October, and supporting up to 96GB DDR5 4800/5600 memory. The thin and high-rise mini-ITX, micro-ATX, and ATX industrial motherboards support up to four 4K displays, PCIe Gen5 interfaces,  up to three 2.5GbE ports (and 10GbE LAN for the IMB-X1316-10G model), and USB 3.2 Gen2x2 (20 Gbps) ports for factory automation, robotics, machine vision, smart retail, kiosks, digital signage, gaming, security, and more. I would usually list the specifications of the motherboards, but since we have 25 different models, I’ll skip that and provide a summary. One reason ASRock Industrial has so many models is that those are existing motherboards with socketed processors and the company offered 12th and 13th gen CPUs so far, and the company simply updated the BIOS […]

ESPHome compatible “Smart Powermeter” supports up to 6 CT clamps

ESP32 Smart PowerMeter

J.G.Aguado’s “Smart Powermeter” is an ESP32-S2 board with a 2.9-inch e-paper display designed to measure power consumption through up to six CT clamps, or Current Transformer clamps, that are each attached to one of the AC lines of a house or appliance. I used an MT87 Digital Clamp Multimeter nearly 10 years ago to easily and safely measure the power consumption of a whole house by simply clamping it on one of the cables outside and reading the results on the display. The Smart Powermeter works in the same way but can perform measurements for up to six devices, and besides seeing the results on the display the ESP32-S2 can also send the data to the cloud or local server for data gathering and analysis using ESPHome or Arduino firmware. Smart Powermeter specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-S2-MINI-1-N4R2 SoC – Espressif ESP32-S2FH4 CPU Single-core 32-bit LX7 microcontroller @ up to 240 […]

SONOFF iPlug S60 – A $10.9 compact WiFi smart socket with built-in energy monitoring function

SONOFF iPlug

SONOFF iPlug S60 is a compact ESP32-C3-based WiFi smart socket with built-in energy monitoring support and available with either Type E/F or Type G prongs for respectively European and British markets, as well as other countries using those types of sockets. ITEAD has manufactured home automation devices that measure power consumption for years, such as the SONOFF POW switch directly connected to the mains or the SONOFF S31 smart socket, but those are/were much larger devices, and the new SONOFF iPlus S60 is fairly small and barely larger than some other smart sockets that lack an energy monitoring function, whiling handling up to 16A or 4,000W at 220-250V. SONOFF iPlug specifications: Wireless MCU – ESP32-C3 RISC-V microcontroller with 2.4GHz WiFi 4 802.11b/g/n  S60TPG Plug type – Type G (UK) Input – 250V, 50/60Hz, 13A max Max load –  3,250 Watts Dimensions – 58 x 58 x 42 mm Weight – […]

Renesas’ RX23E-B MCU offers a low-drift 24-bit A/D converter with a 125 kSPS sampling rate

Renesas' new RX23E-B MUC offers a low-drift 24-bit delta-sigma A/D converter with up to 125 kS/S Sampling Rate - That is eight times faster than its predecessor.

Renesas’ new RX23E-B MCU offers a low-drift 24-bit delta-sigma A/D converter with up to 125 kS/S Sampling Rate – That is eight times faster than its predecessor. This controller is clocked at 32-MHz and offers up to 256 KB Flash memory rail-to-rail programmable gain instrumentation amplifiers, ±10 V input pins, a low-drift voltage reference, and on-chip excitation current sources. This year Renesas introduced a range of new products including, the RZ/T2L Arm Cortex-R52 with an EtherCAT controller, and the RA4E2 and RA6E2 Arm Cortex-M33 MCUs for wearables and appliances. Renecus also released its first 32-bit RISC-V CPU  this year, you can check those out if interested. Features of Renesas’ RX23E-B MCU: CPU: 32 MHz 32-bit RXv2 core Includes FPU/DSP instructions Memory: 256 KB code Flash 8 KB data Flash 32 KB SRAM 24-bit Delta-Sigma ADC with PGA: High data rate: max 125 kSPS Ultra-low noise: 190 nVRMS at 977 SPS/gain=64 […]

Silicon Labs partners with Nabu Casa to support Home Assistant development

Silicon Labs Nabu Casa partnership

Silicon Labs has entered an official partnership with Nabu Casa, the company behind the popular Home Assistant home automation software, to support the development of Home Assistant open-source software and Silicon Labs-based hardware platforms. Most open-source embedded software projects start as a one-person (or a small team) effort as the vendor-provided firmware and related software may not have the features set needed by this user or group of users. So they hack existing hardware to build something that better fits their requirements often without input/help from the silicon vendor or product manufacturer. But sometimes the project becomes popular enough that large companies start to help it with support and funding. That’s apparently the case for Home Assistant project with Silicon Lans and Nabu Case entering an official partnership. The announcement does not provide details about the partnership but explains this should lead to better support and improvements for both Home […]

RoomSense IQ – An ESP32-S3 modular room monitor with mmWave radar presence detection (Crowdfunding)

roomsense iq mount rotation v2

RoomSense IQ is a modular room monitor for presence-based home automation based on the ESP32-S3 module with Bluetooth Wi-Fi connectivity. It uses physical presence detection to automate your smart home devices. It comes with multiple sensors that can be used to detect human activity and track ambient light, temperature, and humidity levels. It uses mmWave radar technology to determine when rooms are empty and when they are occupied. It also features built-in temperature, humidity, and light sensors for indoor climate monitoring and control. Rather than relying on schedules, or voice detection, RoomSense IQ triggers automations or alerts based on whether people are in a room or not. It is therefore possible to set it to automatically turn off lights or air conditioning in rooms that are empty to save on energy. In addition, the device offers distance to target measurement that can be adjusted to trigger certain actions. RoomSense IQ […]

AMD Ryzen Embedded V3000 COM Express Type 7 module supports up to 64GB DDR5 memory

AMD Ryzen V3000 COM Express Module

ADLINK Express VR7 is a COM Express Basic size Type 7 computer-on-module powered by the eight-core AMD Ryzen Embedded V3000 processor with two 10GbE interfaces, fourteen PCIe Gen 4 lanes, and optional support for the “extreme temperature range” between -40°C and 85°C. The COM Express module supports up to 64GB dual-channel DDR5 SO-DIMM  (ECC/non-ECC) memory and targets headless embedded applications such as edge networking equipment, 5G infrastructure at the edge, video storage analytics, intelligent surveillance, industrial automation and control, and rugged edge servers. Express-VR7 specifications: SoC – AMD Embedded Ryzen V3000 (one or the other Ryzen V3C48 8-core/16-thread processor @ 3.3/3.8GHz; TDP: 45W Ryzen V3C44 4-core/8-thread processor @ 3.5/3.8GHz; TDP: 45W Ryzen V3C18I 8-core/16-thread processor 1.9/3.8GHz; TDP: 15W (useful in the extreme temperature range) Ryzen V3C16 6-core/12-thread processor 2.0/3.8GHz; TDP: 15W Ryzen V3C14 4-core/8-thread processor 2.3/3.8GHz; TDP: 15W System Memory – Up to 64GB (2x 32GB) dual-channel ECC/non-ECC DDR5 memory […]

Theengs Bridge BLE to MQTT gateway supports Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Jeedom, NodeRed, and more

Theengs Bridge

The Theengs Bridge is a new WiFi & Ethernet BLE to MQTT gateway running the open-source OpenMQTTGateway firmware, compatible with a range of sensors, and supporting Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Jeedom, NodeRed, and other MQTT-compatible systems. It follows the Theengs Plug smart socket introduced at the beginning of the board with many of the same features (minus the socket part…) but adds Ethernet and an external antenna for improved range, and improves modularity with a Grove I2C connector and mounting holes for a LoRa-E5-based Grove module and a prototyping area where you can solder your own circuitry with DIP components. Theengs Bridge specifications: Wireless module MCU – ESP32 microcontroller with WiFi and Bluetooth Storage – 8MB flash PCB antenna and u.FL antenna connector Connectivity 10/100M Ethernet RJ45 port 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE with 6dBi 50Ohm external antenna Optional LoRa module via Grove I2C connector MQTT protocol Expansion – […]

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