When Thomas McKahan had been playing with ESP32 for a while, he found the need to use Raspberry Pi HAT boards and enclosure with his new hardware, so he went ahead and designed his own ESP32 board compatible with Raspberry Pi accessories, and following the smaller Raspberry Pi Model A / 3 Model A+ form factor. Obsidian ESP32 specifications: Wireless module – Espressif Systems ESP32-WROVER-B 802.11 b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth 4.2 / BLE module with 16 MB flash, 8 MB PSRAM USB – 1x micro USB port for power and programming Audio – 3.5mm TRS audio jack connected to ESP32 DACs Expansion 40-pin GPIO header compatible with popular HAT expansion boards with 3.3 V signalling, I²S for audio DAC, I²C and SPI, Serial UART available on header or via microUSB, I²C GPIO expander with interrupts & address selection 8-pim unpopulated header from remaining I/Os accessible through GPIO expander 5-pin unpopulated […]
REFLO Air is a $200 Open Source Hardware Portable PCB Reflow Machine (Crowdfunding)
While possible, it can be challenging to solder SMD components with a soldering iron or a heat gun, and going with a reflow oven is much easier and normally yields better results. But reflow ovens are usually fairly bulky, and somewhat expensive. MagixBox’ REFLO Air PCB reflow machine is much more compact making it more portable, open source hardware, and affordably priced since the early bird pledge starts at $199 on Crowd Supply. REFLO Air specifications: Control panel with LCD segment display and buttons Heat Control 100-300°C temperature control K-type thermometer Cooling fan Power Supply-110V-220VAC Max Power – 200 Watts Dimensions – 138 x 138 x 51 mm Weight – 900 g The company also offers optional accessories for its PCB reflow machine with a 3D-printed phone holder to use the phone’s camera to magnify the reflow area, a mini vice made of aluminum, and a semi-automated XY table. The […]
Onion Omega2 LTE Board Combines WiFi, 4G LTE and GNSS Connectivity (Crowdfunding)
Onion has launched several compact OpenWrt WiFi boards for IoT projects over the years starting with their Onion Omega board in 2015, and the latest so far being Onion Omega2 Pro with a massive 8GB storage. The company has now launched a new model with 4G LTE connectivity called Onion Omega2 LTE, based on Omega2S+ module, and also featuring GNSS global satellite positioning capability. Onion Omega2 LTE specifications: WiFi Module – Onion Omega2S+ IoT computer module with MediaTek MT7688 MIPS CPU @ 580 MHz, 128 MB RAM, 32 MB storage Cellular and GNS Module – Quectel EC25 LTE Cat 4 modem that delivers 150 Mbps downlink and 50 Mbps uplink data rates, provided either for North America or global markets External Storage – MicroSD card slot up to 2 TB (once such cards become available…) Connectivity 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi 4 + onboard 2 dBi direction chip antenna & […]
Programmable-Air is an Arduino Nano Powered Pneumatics Kit (Crowdfunding)
Programmable-Air is a hardware toolkit that allows you to inflate and deflate objects. Powered by an Arduino Nano board, the kit comes with high pressure and vacuum pumps, valves, and a pressure sensor that enables users to experiement and learn about pneumatics and inflatables. Some of the potential applications include vacuum pick and place machines, soft robots able to walk, soft robotics hands, using a syringe as a linear actuator, inflatable bras, arts projects and more. Programmable-Air specifications: MCU Board – Arduino Nano board based on Microchip ATMega328P microcontroller Pneumatics – Full channel control, i.e. high pressure through atmospheric pressure to vacuum output in the same tube. Max pressure – 0.5 atmosphere (7.5 PSI / 50 kPa) Min Pressure – -0.5 atmosphere (-7.5 PSI / -50 kPa) Flow rate: 2 liters per minute per motor Expansion Grove I²C connector to easily add sensors (Not shown in prototype photo above) Expandable […]
Low Power TinyPICO ESP32 Board Ships with Micropython (Crowdfunding)
There are so many ESP32 boards available now, so why bother with another ones. Some of the key selling points of TinyPICO are that it is really small at 32 x 18 mm, it’s easy to use out of the box with MicroPython firmware pre-loaded, and supports LiPo batteries with an optimized power path for low-power battery usage. The developer, named Unexpected Maker, also provides various shields for TinyPICO adding a display, sensors, an audio amplifier, an RTC, Grove headers, and more. TinyPICO board specifications: System-in-Package – Espressif Systems ESP32-PICO-D4 SiP with ESP32 dual-core processor operating at 240 MHz, 4 MB SPI flash External System Memory – 4 MB PSRAM Connectivity – 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2 LE, 3D antenna Expansion – 14x GPIO broken out to standard pitch headers Debugging / Programming – USB + serial/UART for programming Misc – Power (red) & charge (orange) LED’s, APA102 […]
Split Home Energy Meter Combines ESP32 with Microchip ATM90E32 IC (Crowdfunding)
It’s always useful to monitor the electricity consumption of your house, as you can easily and quickly find out whether an appliance is suddenly consuming a large amount of electricity before finding out from your next utility bill. It can also help remotely monitoring if an appliance has stopped working and fix it as soon as possible, for example an electric pipe heater making sure your pipe do not freeze in a holiday home. In many cases, a qualified electrician needs to be involved for the installation of whole home energy meters both for safety and insurance matters. We’ve seen in the past energy meters fit easily into a circuit breaker box but they may not be suitable for all setups. I’ve previously reviewed an inexpensive digital clamp meter that you just need to clip on one of the wire connected to your home without having to mess with dangerous […]
Amungo NUT2NT+ is an Open Source High Precision GNSS Board (Crowdfunding)
Amungo Navigation NUT2NT+ is an open-source hardware four-channel, all-frequency, GNSS RF-to-bits receiver for precision, satellite-based positioning. Connected to the right antennas, the board can achieve centimeter positioning resolution by connecting to multiple navigation satellite systems including GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, and IRNSS. Amungo claims that while several startups and large companies already offer proprietary GNSS positioning solutions NUT2NT+ is the only open source option in this class of GNSS devices. NUT2NT+ key features and specifications: Receiver chip – NTLab NT1065 4-Channel RF Front-End IC FPGA – Lattice ECP5 with 12K LUTs + 28 DSP blocks (LFE5U-12) opened for custom design USB – 1x USB 3.1 Type-C port via CYUSB3014 USB 3.0 controller: Clock – 10 MHz TCXO, soldered RF inputs – 2x bands dedicated; – 5 dB referred noise floor ADC – 2-bit resolution up to 99 MHz Samples transfer – Continuous full stream, from 10 to 50 Mbytes/sec GNSS […]
NiteFury Puts Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA into an M.2 Card (Crowdfunding)
NiteFury is an FPGA development board, but it works differently than most, as RHS Research LLC put a Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA into an M.2 Key M card that you can easily insert into a laptop or mini PC with a 80mm M.2 socket. The board also includes DDR3 memory, and exposes a few configurable I/Os. You can use NiteFury to experiment with Xilinx PCIe IP, but also as FPGA co-processor for example to handle encryption, and encoding/decoding data. NiteFury card specifications: FPGA – Xilinx Artix XC7A200T-2FBG484E delivering up to ~1000 GMAC/s, with 215,360 Logic cells, 33,650 Slices, 269,200 CLB flip-flops, and 740 DSP slices. System Memory – 8 Gbit DDR3 (512 MB x 16) Host Interface – PCIe 4x gen 2 (2 Gb/s) External I/Os Via I/O connectors – 12x I/O including 4x selectable analog or digital – JTAG ready Via PCIe connector – 1x 3.3 V digital I/O (LED), […]