firmware News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

December 4, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

PicoUART6 6x UART to USB bridge supports up to 6 Raspberry Pi 5 boards

PicoUART6 Raspberry Pi 5 UART USB bridge

PicoUART6 is a small USB to UART bridge board that takes a Raspberry Pi Pico board and exposes six UART ports to connect up to six Raspberry Pi 5 SBC’s over the new 3-pin UART connector. The Raspberry Pi 5 has created a lot of buzz since its announcement in September 2023, and people most talked about its higher performance compared to a Raspberry Pi 4 and its new (non-standard) FCP PCIe connector, but the new Raspberry Pi SBC also features a 3-pin JST UART connector that was not used in earlier and frees 3-pin on the 40-pin GPIO header. The PicoUART6 board makes use of this new connector to interface multiple Raspberry Pi 5 over UART and control them through the USB board of the Pico board. PicoUART6 specifications: Footprint for Raspberry Pi Pico board Serial – 6x 3-pin JST UART connectors Expansion – STEMMA QT/Qwiic I2C connector Debugging […]

October 14, 2023October 13, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

M5Stack Cardputer – A $30 card-sized ESP32-S3 computer with display and keyboard

M5Stack Cardputer is a card-sized portable computer based on the ESP32-S3-powered M5Stamp S3 wireless module and equipped with a 56-key keyboard and 1.14-inch TFT display, plus some sensors and peripheral expansion ports. At first, it’s hard to imagine what it could be used for apart from being a hardware hacking toy, but the company says the card-sized WiFi computer can be used for rapid functional verification, industrial control, and home automation systems. M5Stack Cardputer specifications: Wireless MCU module – M5Stack M5Stamp S3 with SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3FN8 dual-core 32-bit Xtensa LX7 microcontroller with AI vector instructions up to 240MHz, RISC-V ULP co-processor, 512KB SRAM, 2.4GHz WiFi 4 (802.11b/g/n), Bluetooth 5.0 BLE + Mesh, 8MB flash 2.4GHz 3D antenna USB – 1x USB Type-C port Expansion connectors for I/Os such as SPI, I2C, UART, ADC, and more Storage – MicroSD card socket Display – 1.14-inch IPS LCD with 240×135 resolution […]

October 2, 2023October 2, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Ollie v2 USB to UART/CAN/RS485/RS232 converter gets USB-C port, plastic enclosure, and more (Crowdfunding)

USB-C to UART, CAN Bus, RS485, and RS232 converter

Ollie v2 is an improved version of the Ollie USB to isolated UART, CAN Bus, RS232, and RS485 converter that gains a USB-C port, a plastic case, the ability to set the voltage from the target board, and various other minor improvements. Like the first version, the Ollie v2 is a portable tool designed for hackers and field engineers that allows them to work with a single device instead of a bunch of USB converters, each handling a single protocol, and isolation makes sure the host, such as a laptop, is protected from high voltages. Ollie V2 specifications: Serial chip – WCH CH344 quad-serial port chip (instead of XR21V1414 in the first design) Host interface – USB Type-C port Isolated interfaces (all with ESD protection) 2x UART ports up to 6 Mbps with 1.8/3.3/5 V or target voltage levels (set by slide switch) CAN 2.0A/B up to 1 Mbps bus […]

September 11, 2023September 10, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

SMLIGHT SLZB-06M Zigbee 3.0 PoE adapter gets Silabs EFR32MG21 microcontroller

SMLIGHT SLZB-06M is a Zigbee 3.0 to Ethernet, PoE, USB, or WiFi adapter designed to work with multi-vendor software systems such as Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant ZHA. This will let you integrate any supported Zigbee devices into smart home automation systems like Home Assistant, OpenHub, or HomeSeer. The SLZB-06M is a variant of the SLZB-06 Zigbee PoE adapter introduced last year with the main difference being the Zigbee chip as the new model is equipped with Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 microcontroller instead of Texas Instruments СС2652Р. An ESP32 WiFi and BLE chip is still used to work with peripherals such as the LAN8720 Ethernet chip and a CP2102N USB/UART converter chip. SMLIGHT SLZB-06M specifications: Wireless SoCs Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller @ 80 MHz with 352KB flash, 1024KB ROM for protocols and library functions, 96KB SRAM, integrated power amplifier, Bluetooth 5.2 Low Energy and 802.15.4 radios (Zigbee and Thread) Espressif […]

August 29, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

LoRaWAN IoT Button ships with open-source firmware, bootloader, and Android app

LoRaWAN is often used for asset tracking or environmental monitoring, for example, to track cattle location, or monitor temperature and humidity in a field, but n-Fuse’s “LoRaWAN IoT Action Button” enables human interaction and comes with open-source firmware, bootloader, and soon the source code for the Android app. Most of the n-Fuse STx-LR family of LoRaWAN nodes integrates environmental sensors but the LoRaWAN IoT Action Button is different with support supports single, double, and long presses, as well as tactile feedback. n-Fuse STx-LR family comes in three variants with the following key features: MCU – STMicro STM32L071KZU6 Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller @ 32 MHz with 192KB flash, 20KB RAM sta-lr – Action button with tactile feedback. stx-lr – TI HDC2080 environmental sensor (Temperature, Humidity), BMA400 motion sensor (acceleration), magnetic field sensitive Reed switch, ambient light sensor, and proximity sensor. ste-lr – Bosch BME680 environmental sensor with temperature, humidity, air pressure, and […]

August 21, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

ESP ZeroCode web application creates custom Matter-certifiable firmware for ESP32 targets

Low-code/no-code platforms keep on coming and Espressif Systems ESP ZeroCode adds to the list. It is a web application designed to prepare Matter-certifiable firmware for ESP32 devices as per the user’s requirements. The website is supposed to streamline the product development where the firmware is developed for you (no need for those costly software/firmware engineers!) and future OTA updates are also guaranteed for a period of three years. It’s a bit similar to the Tuya platform, but for ESP32 devkits, modules, and/or rebranded products with Matter-certified firmware. So I went to the website to give it a try in Firefox in Ubuntu. After registration and login, we are given three options: Your products, Create a new product, and Rebrand a Certified Product I went with the second option and named by new product “CNX Software Gizmo”. In the next step, we can select the device type between socket, plug, light, […]

August 18, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Quansheng multiband radios’ firmware can be flashed and customized from a web browser

WebSerial Interface Flash Quansheng UV K5 multiband radio

We’ve recently written about the Quansheng UV-K5 multiband radio which supports experimental firmware to work in a wider 18 MHz – 1300 MHz frequency range than with the stock firmware so it can be used for amateur radio, air traffic control, Citizens Band (CB) radio, and other fun stuff. But flashing the firmware requires downloading the manufacturer’s Windows-only programming software and customizations are provided through multiple firmware files. But it has now become much easier to flash the firmware for Quansheng devices thanks to the work of whosmatt who developed the UVMOD web interface using WebSerial to flash the firmware and even customize it from Windows or Linux. The interface supports Quansheng UV-K5, UV-K6, UV-K5(8), and UV-5R Plus handheld radios, and you’ll need a web browser that supports the WebSerial API to flash the firmware directly from the web browser directly, which means only the desktop versions of Chrome, Edge, […]

July 12, 2023July 12, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

smolOS brings a Linux-like command line interface to ESP8266 microcontroller

smolOS (pronounced small OS) is an open-source, lightweight MicroPython program that implements a POSIX-style (Linux-like) command line interface for the ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller. Krzysztof Jankowski (w84death) designed smolOS to be easy to use, allowing the listing and removing of files and also including the smolEDitor which, as its name implies, is a simple text editor. There are currently eight commands with the familiar ls, cat, and rm, plus ed to launch the text editor, welcome to show the welcome screen above, cls to clear the screen, mhz to set the processor speed to 80 or 160 MHz, and info to display some hardware and software information. The project looks to be a work in progress, and the developer highlights the editor is at the alpha stage of development, so more features may be implemented over time by Krzysztof himself or by the community of developers. I also assume other microcontrollers […]