smart home News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

April 15, 2025April 15, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

SONOFF SNZB-02LD and SNZB-02WD IP65-rated Zigbee LCD Smart thermometers work with liquids or outdoors

SONOFF SNZB-02LD IP65 Zigbee LCD Thermometer

ITEAD has introduced two new SONOFF devices: the IP65-rated SNZB-02LD and SNZB-02WD Zigbee 3.0 LCD Smart thermometers designed to work in liquids or enclosed spaces such as bathtubs or refrigerators, or outdoors in gardens or other humid environments, respectively. Both devices look similar and can measure temperature with +/- 0.5°C accuracy, but the SONOFF SNZB-02LD model ships with a 1.5m long probe to measure the temperature of liquids in a pool, a bathtub, or fermentation vessel (for beer or wine making), as well as in refrigerators. On the other end, the SNZB-02WD features a built-in temperature and humidity sensor. SONOFF SNZB-02WD/LD specifications: MCU – Telink TLSR8656F512ET32 (part of the TSL8656 family – See PDF datasheet ) Zigbee/RF4CE SoC with 32-bit RISC MCU, 64kB SRAM, 512kB internal Flash Display – 2.2-inch LCD Wireless – Zibgee 3.0 (802.15.4 radio on TSL8656) Temperature and Humidity sensor SNZB-02WD (internal) Temperature Range – -20°C to […]

April 13, 2025April 14, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Battery-powered Seeed Studio IoT Button features ESP32-C6 SoC, supports ESPHome or Zigbee firmware

Seeed Studio IoT Button is an inexpensive ESP32-C6 button powered by a rechargeable 18650 battery and designed to easily and quickly control Smart Home devices over WiFi 6 or Zigbee wireless protocol. It will be especially handy to Home Assistant users since the device is pre-flashed with ESPHome firmware for easy integration (over WiFi), and the company also provides a Zigbee firmware for Zigbee Home Assistant (ZHA) integration. The hardware is pretty basic with a button, three LEDs, and a USB-C port for charging the replaceable 18650 battery. Seeed Studio IoT Button specifications: SoC – ESP32-C6FH4 CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V clocked up to 160 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ up to 20 MHz Memory – 512KB SRAM, 16KB low-power SRAM Storage – 320KB ROM, 4MB flash Wireless – 2.4 GHz WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0 LE/Mesh (somehow not used here), 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee 3.0 and Thread. Matter compatible. USB – […]

April 4, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Seeed Studio XIAO 7.5″ ePaper panel supports ESPHome firmware, Arduino programming

Seeed Studio XIAO 7.5″ ePaper Panel interfaces an XIAO ESP32-C3 USB-C board and mainly targets the Smart Home market with support for ESPHome, but the monochrome ePaper display is also programmable with the Arduino IDE for a wider range of applications. The display offers a resolution of 800×400 and includes a 2,000mAh battery good for three months per charge with updates every 6 hours. Seeed Studio says the display can operate in the -40°C to 85°C temperature range, so it would be suitable for outdoor use as long as it’s not exposed to rain or dust. The USB-C port of the ESP32-C3 module and the Boot and Reset buttons are easily accessible for charging the display and programming it. XIAO 7.5″ ePaper Panel specifications: Wireless module – XIAO ESP32C3 SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-C3 CPU – Single-core RISC-V microcontroller @ 160 MHz Memory/Storage – 400KB SRAM, 384KB ROM, 4MB flash […]

April 3, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

WattWise – A command line tool for smart power plugs with energy monitoring

Smart Power plugs help users monitor their appliances’ power consumption, and they’d usually check measurements in a mobile app or a web dashboard. Naveen was not satisfied with this workflow while using a TP-link Kasa EP25 Smart Plug to monitor his LLM workstation’s power consumption. So he wrote the WattWise command-line interface (CLI) for power monitoring smart plugs to allow him to throttle his power-hungry, dual AMD Ryzen EPYC 7C13 workstation following his utility’s Time of Use (ToU) pricing in order to lower his electric bill. The Python tool pulls power usage data from smart plugs directly or through Home Assistant and presents it in a neat terminal-based UI. Key features: Real-time power monitoring with wattage and current display Color-coded power values (green < 300W, yellow 300-1200W, red > 1200W) Historical consumption charts directly in the terminal Automatic CPU/GPU throttling based on time-of-use electricity pricing Configurable power thresholds and performance […]

April 1, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

ESP LowCode Matter splits system and application firmware for simpler ESP32 device development

Espressif released the ESP ZeroCode web application in the summer of 2023 to create custom Matter-certifiable firmware for ESP32 targets. However, if your application requires some more customization, but you don’t have the budget or need for a software engineering team, the company has now launched ESP LowCode Matter. It retains most of the simplicity of ESP ZeroCode, but also provides the ability to further customize the application without having to use the ESP Matter SDK, which requires more advanced coding skills to build your own firmware. The ESP LowCode Matter divides firmware into two components to simplify the development, maintenance, and certification process: System Firmware – Managed by Espressif, handling the Matter protocol, wireless stacks, OTA updates, and security management. Application Firmware – Developed by device makers, focusing on hardware interfacing, event and state indication, and user interaction. Development is done right in the web browser thanks to VS […]

March 31, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Geniatech APC680 Edge AI and TV Box is powered by Synaptics VS680 AI SoC with 7.9 TOPS NPU

Geniatech APC680 is described as an “AI-powered TV box” powered by Synaptics VS680 quad-core Cortex-A73 SoC with a built-in 7.9 TOPS NPU and designed for smart entertainment and edge computing. The system comes with 4GB RAM and 16GB eMMC flash by default, 4K capable HDMI output and input ports, gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, a few USB ports, and a range of wireless options including 4G LTE, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and LoRa. Besides being just an AI-powered TV box, it could also be used as a Smart Home gateway in more ways than one. Geniatech APC680 specifications: SoC – Synaptics VS680 CPU – Quad-Core Arm Cortex-A73 processor GPU – Imagination PowerVR Series9XE GE9920 with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 1.2, Vulkan 1.1, and DirectFB VPU Up to 2160p60 decode with AV1, H.265, H.264, VP9, VP8, and MPEG-2 Up to 1080p60 encode with H.264, VP8 NPU – 7.9 TOPS with […]

March 24, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Shelly launches Gen4 multi-protocol smart switch family with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Matter

Shelly Group has just launched its Gen4 multi-protocol smart switch family supporting Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Matter protocols for the Smart Home. The company specifically introduced five new products: the Shelly 1 Gen4 one-channel, dry contact smart switch, the Shelly 1PM Gen4 smart switch with power monitoring, Shelly 1 Mini Gen4 compact smart switch for lights and small appliances, the Shelly 1PM Mini Gen4 compact smart switch with power metering, and the upcoming Shelly EM Mini Gen4 energy meter. Let’s have a quick at each product. Shelly 1 Gen4 smart switch Shelly 1 Gen4 specifications: Wireless SoC – ESP-Shelly-C68F Based on ESP32-C6 RISC-V SoC Storage – 8MB flash Wireless – 2.4 GHz WiFi 6, Bluetooth 4.2, and 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee and Matter Wireless parameters WiFi 6 Max. RF power – < 20 dBm Range – Up to 30m indoors, 50m outdoors Bluetooth 4.2 Max. RF power – < 4 […]

March 19, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

MediaTek Genio 720 and 520 AIoT SoCs target generative AI applications with 10 TOPS AI accelerator

The announcement of the MediaTek Genio 720 and Genio 520 octa-core Cortex-A78/A55 AIoT SoCs is one of the news I missed at Embedded World 2025. The new models appear to be updates to the Genio 700 and Genio 500 with a beefier NPU, and the Taiwanese company says the new Genio series supports generative AI models, human-machine interface (HMI), multimedia, and connectivity features for smart home, retail, industrial, and commercial IoT devices. Both are equipped with a 10 TOPS NPU/AI accelerator for transformer and convolutional neural network (CNN) models and support up to 16GB of LPDDR5 memory to handle “edge-optimized” (i.e. quantized) large language models (LLMs) such as Llama, Gemini, Phi, and DeepSeek, and other generative AI tasks. MediaTek Genio 720 and Genio 520 specifications: Octa-core CPU Genio 520 2x Arm Cortex-A78 up to 2.2 GHz (Commercial) or 2.0 GHz (Industrial) 6x Arm Cortex-A55 up to 2.0 GHz (Commercial) or […]