TTGO T-Watch-2020 V3 ESP32 watch adds microphone for voice control

Lilygo TTGO T-Watch-2020 is a thin, ESP32 smartwatch programmable with Arduino that was introduced last year. The WiFi and Bluetooth-connected watch is equipped with a 1.54-inch LCD capacitive touch screen, a Class-D amplifier, buzzer, accelerometer, RTC, and a battery. The watch is one of the top-selling devices on Lilygo’s Aliexpress store, and they must have had requirements for voice control, so the company has now launched TTGO T-Watch-2020 V3 based on the same design but adding a PDM microphone. As far as I can TTGO T-Watch-2020 V3 specifications are the same as last year’s model, except for the microphone: SoC – Espressif ESP32 dual-core wireless processor with 520KB SRAM System Memory – 8MB PSRAM Storage – 16MB QSPI flash Display – 1.54-inch LCD capacitive touch screen Audio – Max98357 Class-D amplifier, buzzer/speaker, PDM microphone Connectivity – 802.11b/g/n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.x/5.1 via ESP32 Sensors – BMA423 three-axis accelerometer with […]

Feather compatible shield Integrates BG96 Module with LTE Cat-M1, NB-IoT, and GPS

qTop BG96 FeatherWing

Last week, I wrote about the Pebble Board, an nRF9160 based LTE-M and NB-IoT GPS tracker board that connects with Thingsboard. I was soon informed about a similar solution based on Quectel BG96 and compatible with the Feather form factor. Meet IoT-Bots.com’s qTop  Adafruit Feather Compatible shield. In case you wonder, why they did not call it a FeatherWing, that’s because as it’s slightly larger, and the boards are “Adafruit Feather Compatible (AFC) from the interface connection perspective only.” Key features and specifications: Wireless module – Quectel BG96 Cellular – LTE Cat M1, NB-IoT, and EGPRS module offering maximum data rates of 375 kbps downlink and uplink GNSS – GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou/Compass, Galileo, QZSS Nano SIM card holder and u.FL connector (3) for cellular connectivity u.FL connector (4) for GNSS Expansion Feather expansion connector (11) 6-pin qJam interface connector (12) with I2C for extra sensors Misc – Network status LED, […]

Watchy Pebble-like Smartwatch with E-paper display, ESP32 processor launched on Crowd Supply

Watchy

Pebble smartwatch was introduced in 2012 on Kickstarter. The Bluetooth smartwatch came with an E-Paper display, would connect to your Android smartphone or iPhone to receive notifications or other info, and the company also released an SDK for further customization. It was quite popular at the time having sold over one million units, the Pebble Time followed in 2015 with a color display, as well as other models. But despite selling millions of watches, the company folded in 2016, and the Pebble was discontinued after the intellectual property was purchased by Fitbit. Watchy is a new smartwatch that reminds me of the original pebble. It is based on ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth SoC, equipped with a 1.54-inch E-Paper display with 200×200 resolution, and the usual accelerometer for activity tracking and gesture detection. Watchy key features and specifications: SIP – Espressif Systems ESP32-PICO-D4 system-in-package with ESP32 dual-core processor with Bluetooth LE […]

microByte ESP32 portable game console comes with a 1.3-inch display (Crowdfunding)

microByte ESP32-portable-game console 1.3-inch display

We’ve previously seen programmable, portable game consoles powered by Espressif Systems ESP32 processor with the likes of ODROID-GO or WiFiBoy32 both equipped with a 2.4-inch display, and design to play retro games or create IoT projects with a small display thanks to I/O headers. But if for some reason, you’d like an even more compact ESP32 portable game console based on the WiFi & Bluetooth SoC, Byte-Mix Labs microByte may be what you are looking for thanks to a tiny 1.3-inch square display. microByte specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-WROVER-E module with ESP32 dual-core processor @ 240 MHz, 8 MB PSRAM, 16 MB flash, and integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antenna Storage – MIcroSD card slot Display – 1.3-inch ST7789 IPS Screen with 240 x 240 pixel resolution, 60 Hz max refresh frequency Audio – On-board speaker powered by a MAX98357AETE+T I2S amplifier Controls – 13x onboard buttons with 8x Inductive direction […]

Agromon smart agriculture wireless transmitter connects ModBus RS485 sensors to WiFi, LoRaWAN, Sigfox, or NB-IoT

Agromon ESP32 smart farming transmitter

The Internet of Things has many applications including smart agriculture . A few months ago, I talked to a local shrimp farm owner who used Arduino and ESP8266 boards to monitor water and activate pumps only when needed to get shrimps healthy and save on his electricity bill. He built his own solutions, but there are also companies offering easy-to-use smart farming solutions such as Malaysia-based Wondernica’s Agromon “interface wireless transmitter” designed specifically for smart agriculture applications. Agromon has two variants with support for 2 sensors (WR-AGRO-2S) or 3 sensors (WR-AGRO-3S) that share the following specifications: Connectivity – WiFi, Sigfox (RCZ 2/4), LoRaWAN, NB-IoT Sensor Interface – Modbus RS485 (analog input / 4-20mA / 12V-14V output) Power Supply – 12V DC (tolerance up to 14V); supports batteries, solar power, or power adapter Power Consumption – Sleep Mode: 3 mW Dimensions – 130 x 90 x 40mm Ingress Protection – IP67 […]

Mini replica of DEC PDP-11 computer runs 2.11 BSD UNIX on ESP32 SoC

ESP32 PDP-11 mini replica

The relatively popular Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-11 16-bit minicomputers started selling in the 70s, and were still available in the earlier 90s. While being stuck in Europe due to COVID-19 restrictions, Jeroen Domburg (aka Sprite_tm) decided to design a tiny replica of a DEC VT102 PDP-11 terminal based on ESP32 wireless SoC and running 2.11 BSD UNIX through SimH PDP11 emulator. Jeroen had to do significant work to make SimH works on ESP32 however, with notably the need to optimize the memory footprint: Obviously, ‘just port SIMH to an ESP32’ is a bit of a understatement for the effort that was needed. Even while SIMH is a pretty nice program when it comes to not using any unique APIs, it still is a system developed for a full-blown workstation and assumes RAM is cheap and plentiful. In order to get it running on an ESP32 and still have some […]

MicroMod modular ecosystem offers M.2 microcontrollers cards and carrier boards

MicroMod Processor Boards

MicroMod is a modular interface ecosystem for quick embedded development and prototyping. MicroMod comes with two components, that is a microcontroller “processor board” and a carrier board. PC industry’s M.2 connector is the interface between these two components. The carrier boards are for the usage of various peripherals and the processor board act as the brain of the application system.  MicroMod processor board has a dimension of 22×22 mm that can be easily fitted on the carrier boards. Although, the original M.2 standard was dedicated to swapping out peripherals where a user could swap one component with the other one. The MicroMod standard is for swapping out microcontrollers according to the functional and application requirements.  MicroMod Processor Boards Artemis Processor Board comes with an Ambiq Apollo 3 Blue Arm Cortex-M4F with BLE 5.0 running up to 96MHz and a power rating of less than 5mW. It also supports the TensorFlow […]

ClusBerry 9500-CM4 – A Raspberry Pi CM4 cluster, industrial style

ClusBerry Industrial Raspberry Pi CM4 Cluster

Raspberry Pi cluster boards / solutions pop-up from time to time. But so far, I think we’ve seen only one based on Raspberry Pi CM4 modules with the upcoming Turing Pi 2 mini-ITX cluster board supporting four of those. TECHBASE has now unveiled a different kind of Raspberry Pi CM4 cluster with ClusBerry 9500-CM4 integrating up to eight Raspberry Pi Computer Module 4 in a DIN-Rail housing for industrial applications. ClusBerry 9500-CM4 is designed to be customizable with a choice of Raspberry Pi CM4 based modules and I/O cards: Standard 9500-CM4 cluster module with Compute Module 4 and a selection of configuration that include: I/O Controller with DI, DO, AI, 1-Wire, RS-232/485 and CAN interfaces Communication Gateway with up to 2x Ethernet, serial ports, wireless connectivity: LTE-cat.M1, 4G, 5G, LoRa, ZigBee, Z-Wave, Wireless M-Bus AI Gateway with Coral Edge TPU via PCIe M.2, or up to 4x Coral Edge TPU […]