smart home News - Page 2 of 37 - CNX Software

May 23, 2025May 23, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Arduino launches Nano Connector Carrier and seven Modulino expansion nodes

Arduino Connector Carrier Board Modulino nodes

The Arduino Nano Connector Carrier is a compact add-on board designed for the Arduino Nano boards to allow easy connection to Qwiic, Grove, and Modulino expansion modules. The company also announced seven new Modulino nodes that are available individually for user input (e.g. button, knob), sensors (IMU, ToF), audio output, and a short RGB LED strip. Arduino Nano Connector Carrier specifications: Storage – MicroSD card reader (SPI) Expansion Interfaces 4x Grove analog/digital I/O connectors – 2x analog, 1x I2C, 1x UART Qwicc I2C connector Double female board header for Arduino Nano series boards I/O Voltage – Switch between 3.3V and 5V Dimensions – 43 x 28 mm The board works with Seeed Studio Grove modules and Arduino Modulino nodes connected over the Qwicc connector: Modulino Knob – a rotary encoder with push button Modulino Pixels – 8x addressable RGB LEDs Modulino Distance – a time-of-flight (ToF) sensor to measure proximity […]

May 22, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Silicon Labs SiXG301 and SiXG302 “Series 3” wireless SoCs are built for line-powered and battery-powered IoT applications

Silicon Labs SiMG301 Series 3 wireless SoC

Silicon Labs has just introduced the first 22nm Series 3 SoCs with the SiXG301 and SiXG302 Arm Cortex-M33 multiprotocol wireless SoCs designed for line-powered and battery-powered IoT devices, respectively. The SiXG301 is offered with 4MB flash and 512 KB SRAM, embeds an LED pre-driver for advanced LED smart lighting and smart home products, and supports 2.4 GHz wireless protocols such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Thread with support for Matter. The upcoming SiXG302 Bluetooth and Matter SoC offers an ultra-low-power consumption using only 15 µA/MHz active current, or 30% lower than competitive devices in its class, and as such is ideal for battery-powered wireless sensors and actuators. We’ll be focusing on the SiMG301 multi-protocol SoC and SiBG301 Bluetooth LE SoC in this article since the details are sparse for the SiXG302 parts (SiMG302 and SiBG302). Silicon Labs SiMG301 / SiBG301 specifications: MCU Core – 32-bit Arm Cortex-M33 with DSP instructions and […]

May 20, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Radxa NIO 5A credit card-sized Mediatek Genio 520 SBC showcased at Computex 2025

Radxa NIO 5A is an upcoming Mediatek Genio 520 SBC in credit card/Raspberry Pi form factor that should offer a more affordable entry into the MediaTek Genio family than Radxa Nio 12L equipped with a powerful Mediatek Genio 1200 SoC. There’s no public information on the web about it, but I was sent some photos of the board from Mediatek’s booth at Computex 2025, and we know it’s powered by the Genio 520 octa-core Cortex-A78/A55 SoC with a 10 TOPS AI accelerator and comes with “large memory and high-capacity storage”. Let’s see if we can derive more detailed specs from the photos and other public information about the SoC. Radxa NIO 5A specifications (preliminary): SoC – Mediatek Genio 520 (MT8371) CPU – Octa-core processor with 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 1.8 GHz (Industrial) GPU […]

May 16, 2025May 16, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Satellite1 Dev Kit is an Home Assistant-compatible DIY voice assistant with ESP32-S3 module, XMOS XU316 audio processor

DIY Voice Assistant in 3D printed enclosure

FutureProofHomes’ Satellite1 Dev Kit is a DIY voice assistant comprised of an ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth board running ESPHome and an audio “HAT” based on XMOS XU316 audio processor designed for Home Assistant compatibility. It can be used as a smart speaker with a 25W amplifier, a headphone jack, and a built-in 4-microphone array, a music player, and an environmental monitoring system with temperature, humidity, luminosity, and presence sensors. The HAT can also be used with a Raspberry Pi with a 40-pin GPIO header, and two extra 40-pin connectors are reserved for future accessories. Satellite1 Dev Kit specifications: Wireless SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3 CPU – Dual-core 32-bit LX7 processor running at 240 MHz Memory – 512 KB SRAM, 8 MB PSRAM. Storage – 16 MB Flash Wireless – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.x Audio Processor – XMOS XU316 (XU316-1024-QF60V-I32) 16-core 32-bit RISC processor running at 800 MHz with […]

May 15, 2025May 15, 2025 by Paisit Wongsongsarn - No Comments

SmartWings Smart Shade Review – An outdoor, solar-powered Matter shade tested with Apple HomeKit and Home Assistant

Recently, we received a custom-made-to-order smart shade from SmartWings for review. We never heard about SmartWings before, but the company claims to have been in the smart blind/shade and home automation industry for over 15 years. Their standout feature is the high degree of customisation they offer—whether it’s the type of shade, custom size up to almost 3 meters in width and height, various fabric styles, and compatibility with major Smart Home platforms like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, Home Assistant, and Hubitat. SmartWings asked us to select a location in the house where we wanted to review the smart shade. We wanted to review a solar-powered outdoor shade, so we selected a windowed door with direct sunlight. We carefully measured the dimensions following the instructions on the company’s website to understand the process. We had to select the shade type, privacy level of the fabric (openness), […]

May 12, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Luckfox-Pico-86-Panel – An 86-type Smart Home controller with a 4-inch display, Ethernet, RS485, two relays

Luckfox-Pico-86-Panel is a Smart Home controller powered by a Rockchip RV1106G2 or RV1106G63 SoC with 128MB or 256MB DDR3L and equipped with a 4-inch touchscreen display that fits into a standard 86-type junction box. The Linux device supports Ethernet, WiFi 6, and Bluetooth 5.2 LE connectivity and features terminal blocks for 6 to 30V DC input, RS485, and two relays. The controller includes a speaker and microphone for Smart Audio applications, and a USB-C port for programming and debugging. Luckfox-Pico-86-Panel specifications: SoC – Rockchip RV1106G2/G3 CPU – Arm Cortex A7 @ 1.2GHz with an integrated RISC-V co-processor. NPU 4th-gen Rockchip NPU with hybrid quantization (int4, int8, int16) 0.5 TOPS (RV1106G2) or 1 TOPS (RV1106G3) ISP – 3rd-gen 5MP high-performance ISP VPU – 3072×1728 (5M) @ 30fps H.265/H.264 encoding, 16M @ 60FPS JPEG snapshot System Memory – 128MB (RV1106G2) or 256MB (RV1106G3) DDR3L memory Storage – 8GB eMMC flash storage Display – 4-inch 5-point […]

May 8, 2025 by Debashis Das - 1 Comment

Everything Presence Lite ESP32-based mmWave presence sensor tracks up to three targets simultaneously

Designed by Everything Smart Home, the Everything Presence Lite is a compact, ESP32-based mmWave presence sensor designed to be easily integrated with Home Assistant open-source home automation framework via ESPHome firmware. This sensor features a 24GHz mmWave sensor designed to track up to three targets simultaneously with real-time distance, speed, and positional data (X, Y coordinates). It supports dynamic zone customization, ambient light sensing using a BH1750 sensor, and acts as a Bluetooth proxy to extend Home Assistant’s Bluetooth range. The sensor comes in an injection-molded case, and the company also provides 3D-printable STL files, which you can customize according to your needs. Key applications include human presence detection, smart lighting automation, home security zone monitoring, HVAC efficiency control, fall detection for the elderly, and much more. Everything Presence Lite specifications: Wireless controller – ESP32-WROOM-32E WiFi and Bluetooth module with 4MB Flash mmWave Sensor Built-in Hi-Link HLK-LD2450 24 GHz ISM […]

May 5, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

KSTR-IMX93 single board computer pairs NXP i.MX 93 SoC with Nordic Semi nRF5340, nRF9151, and nRF7002 wireless chips

Conclusive Engineering KSTR-IMX93 is a single board computer (SBC) powered by an NXP i.MX 93 Cortex-A55/M33 AI SoC and equipped with three Nordic Semi wireless solutions, namely nRF5340 SoC, nRF9151 SiP, and nRF7002 WiFi 6 coprocessor. This allows the board to offer a wide range of wireless and wired connectivity options with Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.4 LE, Zigbee, Thread, NB-IoT, LTE Cat-M1, and GNSS. In some way, the KSTR-IMX93 is the equivalent of combining a Nordic Thingy:91 X Cellular IoT development platform with an Arm Linux SBC. KSTR-IMX93 specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 93 CPU Single or dual-core Arm Cortex-A55 up to 1.7 GHz Arm Cortex-M33 up to 250 MHz GPU – PXP 2D GPU with blending/composition, resize, color space conversion NPU – Arm Ethos-U65 NPU @ 1 GHz up to 0.5 TOPS Memory – 640 KB OCRAM w/ ECC Security – EdgeLock Secure Enclave System Memory […]