Thingpulse ePulse Feather is an ESP32 development board following Adafruit’s Feather form factor and optimized for low power with 12 to 27 uA deep sleep power consumption. The board is based on the ESP32-WROVER with 8MB Flash and 8MB SPRAM and comes with a USB-C connector for charging the battery and programming through a CH9102F UART chip, as well as the I/Os headers provided by the Feather form factor. The board can be especially useful in battery-operated WiFi remote controls for home automation or other purposes that sleep most of the time until the user presses one of the buttons. ThingPulse ePulse Feather specifications: Wireless module – Espressif Systems ESP32-WROVER-E-N8R8 module with ESP32-D0WD-V3 or ESP32-D0WDR2-V3 dual-core microcontroller @ 240 MHz with 8MB QSPI flash, 8MB QSPI PSRAM USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power/charging and programming via CH9102F UART to TTL chip. Expansions – 12-pin + 16-pin headers with […]
Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense Rev2 switches to BMI270 & BMM150 IMUs, HS3003 temperature & humidity sensor
Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense Rev2 is a new revision of the Nano 33 BLE Sense machine learning board with basically the same functionality but some sensors have changed along with some other modifications “to improve the experience of the users”. The main changes are that STMicro LSM9DS1 9-axis IMU has been replaced by two IMUs from Bosch SensorTech, namely the BMI270 6-axis accelerometer and gyroscope, and the BMM150 3-axis magnetometer, a Renesas HS3003 temperature & humidity sensor has taken the place of an STMicro HTS221, and the microphone is now an MP34DT06JTR from STMicro instead of an MP34DT05. All of the replaced parts are from STMicro, so it’s quite possible the second revision of the board was mostly to address supply issues. Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense Rev2 (ABX00069) specifications: Wireless Module – U-blox NINA-B306 module powered by a Nordic Semi nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 64MHz with 1MB […]
CH32V003 RISC-V MCU gets $1.5 development board, open source GCC toolchain and flasher utility
When we first wrote about the 10-cent CH32V003 RISC-V MCU it was offered in a $7 development board and the closed-source MounRiver Studio IDE had to be used for programming. But things have improved since October 2022, and now, you can buy a CH32V003 board for as little as $1.5 plus shipping, and an open-source GCC toolchain and flasher/downloader are now available. Let’s have a look at the hardware first with the low-cost nanoCH32V003 development board featuring a 48 MHz CH32V003 RISC-V microcontroller with 2KB SRAM and 16KB flash, a USB Type-C port for power, a reset button, and two rows of headers for the GPIOs. MuseLab nanoCH32V003 specifications: MCU – WCH CH32V003F4U6 32-bit RISC-V2A microcontroller up to 48 MHz with 2KB SRAM, 16KB flash (QFN20 package) Expansion – 2x 11-pin headers with up to 18x GPIOs, 1x USART, 1x I2C, 1x SPI, 8-channel 10-bit ADC, 5V, 3.3V, GND Debugging […]
Meet Puya PY32 – The 8-cent Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller
Puya Semiconductor (Shanghai) PY32 Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller family may be the world’s cheapest 32-bit Arm MCUs with one of the parts – PY32F002AL15S6TU – selling for under 8 cents per unit in 5K+ orders with 3KB SRAM, 20KB flash in an 8-pin SOP-8 package. Back in 2016, when I searched for the world’s cheapest MCU, I found Holtek HT48R002 8-bit microcontroller, and a few years later (2019), Padauk PMS150C “3 Cents” MCU came to my attention. However, both are 8-bit microcontrollers that come with OTG (One-Time Programming) ROM, meaning they can’t be easily used for development or updated. The Puya PY32 microcontrollers are in the same price range but offer a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M0+ core clocked at 24 to 48MHz, 16KB to 64KB flash storage, and 2KB to 8KB SRAM. There are three PY32 sub-families, but let’s check out the PY32F002 family in detail since those are the cheapest parts. […]
Eoxys Xeno+ Nano ML board combines NuMicro M2354 or STM32L4 MCU with Talaria TWO ultra low power WiFi & BLE 5.0 module
Eoxys Xeno+ Nano ML is a wireless machine learning (ML) board with either Nuvoton NuMicro M2354 or STMicro STM32L4 microcontroller, InnoPhase IoT’s Talaria TWO ultra-low power Wi-Fi and BLE 5.0 module, and the Syntiant Core 2 NDP120 neural decision processor we first noticed in the Arduino Nicla Voice module a few weeks ago. The boards/modules are designed for intelligent and secure IoT devices for smart home, industrial, and medical automation applications, and the company claims it can be used in Wi-Fi IoT sensors with up to 10+ years thanks to the low-power chips and circuitry used in the design. Eoxys Xeno+ Nano ML specifications: General purpose MCU (one or the other) STMicro STM32L4 Arm Cortex-M4 microcontroller at 80MHz with 1MB flash, 128KB/352KB SRAM Nuvoton NuMicro M2354 Arm Cortex-M23 microcontroller at 96MHz with 1MB flash, 128KB SRAM. Wireless module Innophase Talaria TWO ultra-low-power 2.4GHz 802.11b/n/g WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE 5.0 […]
VAR-SOM-AM62 System-on-Module features TI AM625x Cortex-A53/M4 SoC
Variscite VAR-SOM-AM62 is a System-on-Module (SoM) powered by a Texas Instruments Ti AM625x quad-core Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.4 GHz with a 400MHz Cortex-M4F cores and 333MHz PRU real-time co-processors to control I/Os. The module also supports up to 4GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash, features a single or dual-band WiFi + BT/BLE5.2 module, and offers up to 3x CAN Bus, dual GbE, audio, camera in, and dual USB, among other interfaces. It is designed for industrial applications with a -40 to 85°C operating temperature range. VAR-SOM-AM62 specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments Sitara AM62x (AM6252 or AM6254) with Up to 4x Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.4 GHz 1x Arm Cortex M4F up to @ 400 MHz 1x PRUSS up to @ 333 MHz (only in industrial-grade modules) GPUs – 3D GPU with OpenGL ES 3.1 & Vulkan1.2, 2D graphics engine System Memory – 512MB to 4GB DDR4-3200 RAM @ 800MHz […]
Coral Dev Board Micro combines NXP i.MX RT1176 MCU with Edge TPU in Pi Zero form factor
Coral Dev Board Micro is the latest iteration of Google’s Edge AI devkit with an NXP i.MX RT1176 Cortex-M7/M4 crossover processor/microcontroller coupled with the company’s 4 TOPS Edge TPU, a camera, and a microphone in a board that’s about the size of a Raspberry Pi Zero SBC. The new board follows the original NXP i.MX 8M-based Coral Dev board that was introduced in 2019, and Coral Dev Board mini based on MediaTek MT8167S processor launched in 2020, and keeps with the trend of providing more compact solutions with lower-end host processors for edge AI. Coral Dev Board Micro specifications: MCU – NXP i.MX RT1176 processor with an Arm Cortex-M7 core @ up to 1 GHz, Cortex-M4 core up to 400 MHz, 2MB internal SRAM, 2D graphics accelerators; System Memory – 512 Mbit (64 MB) RAM Storage – 1 Gbit (128 MB) flash memory ML accelerator – Coral Edge TPU coprocessor […]
Nordic Semi nRF7002 DK low-power dual-band WiFi 6 IoT development kit launched for $56 and up
Nordic Semi nRF7002 DK is an IoT development kit based on the nRF5340 dual-core Cortex-M33 multi-protocol wireless SoC and nRF7002 companion chip adding low-power dual-band (2.4GHz and 5.0 GHz) WiFi 6 connectivity. When Nordic Semi introduced the nRF7200 dual-band WiFi 6 companion chip for nRF52840 and nRF5340 wireless SoCs and nRF9160 cellular IoT SiP last summer, the “nRF7002-PDK” development kit was only mentioned in passing with a 3D render and not much else. The company has now announced the availability of the nRF7002 DK to help developers create low-power Wi-Fi 6 IoT applications. nRF7002 DK specifications: Wireless MCU – Nordic Semi nRF5340 dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller @ 128/64 MHz with 1 MB Flash + 512 KB RAM for the application core and 256 KB Flash + 64 KB RAM for the network core, Bluetooth 5.1 LE with direction-finding support, Bluetooth mesh, NFC, Thread, Zigbee, 802.15.4, ANT, and 2.4 GHz proprietary […]