Add Z-Wave LR (Long Range) to Raspberry Pi or Home Assistant Yellow with Zooz 800 Series USB stick or GPIO Module

Z-Wave Long Range Raspberry Pi Home Assistant Yellow

We wrote about the new Z-Wave Long Range (LR) standard aka “Z-Wave Plus LR” promising four times the range and 10-year battery life in September 2020 but hadn’t heard much about it since then, at least until now, as Zooz has launched the ZST39 LR USB Stick and ZAC93 LR GPIO module based on a Z-Wave 800 Series chip, with the GPIO module compatible with Home Assistant Yellow and Raspberry Pi SBCs. Zooz 800 Series Z-Wave Long Range GPIO Module ZAC93 LR ZAC93 LR specifications: Z-Wave Frequency  – 908.42 MHz (US, CA, MX) / 921.4 MHz (AU, NZ) / 868.42 MHz (EU) Wireless Range – Up to 1 mile/1.6 km in open space with Long Range enabled (up to 300 meters in open space, up to 76 meters indoors in traditional mesh networks) Support for up to 200 devices in a single network Host interface – 10-pin header to Raspberry […]

Half-size mini PCIe card adds up to 4 CAN FD interfaces to embedded systems

mini PCIe card 4x CAN FD

esd electronics CAN-PCIeMiniHS/402 is a half-size mini PCIe card with four CAN FD Interfaces designed for embedded systems with one model adding extended temperature range support from -40C to 85°C. The company also introduced the CAN-Mini/402-4-DSUB9-150mm adapter to more easily connect the four CAN network interfaces via DSUB9 connectors. It comes with four individual small adapter boards, each equipped with a DSUB9 plug and a jumper for selectable onboard CAN termination, as well as 150 mm long wires. CAN-PCIeMiniHS/402 highlights: 4x CAN FD interfaces according to ISO 11898-2, no galvanic isolation, bit rates from 10 Kbit/s up to 8 Mbit/s Bus mastering and local data management by FPGA (Intel Cyclone IV EP4CGX) PCIe Mini interface according to Mini Card Electromechanical Spec. R1.2 Supports MSI (Message Signaled Interrupts) HW-Timestamp capable Dimensions – 30 mm x 27 mm (Half-size mini PCIe form factor) Temperature Range Standard – 0°C … +75°C Extended range: […]

KiCad 7.0.0 release – Custom fonts, text boxes, SpaceMouse, crash reporting, and much more

KiCad 7.0.0

KiCad 7.0.0 open-source EDA software has just been released with a range of new features from custom fonts to 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse integration to opt-in Sentry crash reporting, and many more. It took over three years between KiCad 5.0.0 and KiCad 6.0.0 announcements, but only a little over a year for the release of KiCad 7.0.0. Did KiCad developers acquire superhuman abilities or did AI get involved in the development somehow? Most probably not, and instead they change the release schedule to a yearly one, so we should get annual releases of the open-source EDA suite going forward, with KiCad 8.0.0 to be released in Q1 2024. Some notable changes to KiCad 7.0 include: Custom Fonts support is now available in the schematic, PCB, and worksheet editors to allow the use of any system font. Text box support was added in both the schematic and PCB editors. 3Dconnexion SpaceMouse support in […]

ESP32 MPY-Jama is a MicroPython IDE for ESP32 boards

ESP32 MPY-Jama

ESP32 MPY-Jama is a cross-platform MicroPython IDE specifically designed for ESP32 boards with a file manager, a  REPL terminal, real-time dashboards, and various ESP32-specific features. The IDE is an open-source Python program using pyWebView and pySerial plus some JavaScript for the user interface, and the developer of the program, Jean-Christophe Bos, provides binaries for Windows 64-bit and macOS 64-bit Arm or x86. It’s also possible to use it in Linux but needs to be built from source. Some of the key features of the ESP32 MPY-Jama IDE include: MicroPython code editor with syntax highlighting REPL interface Access to information dashboards with real-time data about WiFi and Bluetooth connections, system info with GPIO status, CPU frequency, memory and SPI flash details Easy 2-click methods to connect to WiFi and create an access point Graphical interface to install a new firmware through esptool Ability to create, import, and run “Jama Funcs” mini-applications […]

Luxonis OAK-D series 2 USB and PoE cameras integrate 3D depth and AI for robotics applications

Luxonis OAK-D S2 depth AI camera

Luxonis OAK-D Series 2 are the second-generation of USB or PoE cameras with 3D depth and a built-in AI accelerator mostly used for computer vision in robotics applications. We first wrote about Luxonis’ DepthAI module for Raspberry Pi based on the Intel Myriad X AI accelerator in 2019, and later found the module integrated into OpenCV AI Kit Lite, aka OAK-D Lite camera. The second-generation OAK-D cameras replace the module with a Robotics Vision Core 2 (RVC2) “chip-down design” equipped an SoC and Myriad X AI accelerator for up to 4 TOPS of processing power, including 1.4 TOPS for AI inference. Luxonis OAK-D Series 2 specifications and features: Robotics Vision Core 2 based on Myriad X AI accelerator 4 TOPS of processing power (1.4 TOPS for AI) Video encoding – H.264, H.265, MJPEG @ 4Kp3, 1080p60 Computer vision – Warp/dewarp, resize, crop via ImageManip node, edge detection, feature tracking, custom […]

Arduino IDE 2.0 is now officially released

Arduino IDE 2.0.0

The first stable release of Arduino IDE 2.0 is now out. Based on the Eclipse Theia framework, the new IDE provides a more modern and user-friendly user interface, faster compilation time, and more features we’ll discuss in this post. Arduino initially introduced the Arduino IDE 2.0 beta in March 2021 with a live debugger with breakpoints support, a revamped user interface with features such as autocompletion of variables and functions. After 18 months of debugging with the help of members of the community such as Paul Stoffregen (the maker of the Teensy boards), the Arduino IDE 2.0 is not an experimental software anymore, and it’s the first version you’d see in the download page. The Arduino IDE 2.0 is available for Windows 10 64-bit and newer, Linux X86-64, and macOS 10.14 “Mojave” or newer. If you’ve already installed Arduino 1.x, it will inform you of updates for your installed libraries […]

Mini-ITX motherboard combines AMD Ryzen Embedded R2314 SoC with two InferX X1 AI accelerators

InferX Hawk Mini-ITX motherboard AMD AI accelerators

Flex Logix has just announced the InferX Hawk mini-ITX motherboard equipped with an AMD Ryzen Embedded R2314 SoC and two InferX X1 AI accelerators from the company in order to help customers customize, build and deploy edge and embedded AI systems easily and quickly. The motherboard features up to 32GB RAM, supports SATA and M.2 MVMe/SATA storage, provides dual Gigabit Ethernet and optional WiFi/4F LTE connectivity, plus the usual USB 3.2, DisplayPort, and serial interfaces, and is meant to compete directly against solutions based on NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier.   InferX Hawk specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen Embedded R2314 quad-core processor @ 2.1/3.5 GHz (Turbo) with hexa-core Radeon Vega graphics; TDP: 12 to 35W AI accelerators – 2x InferX X1 accelerators System Memory – 2x DDR4 SO-DIMM up to 32GB capacity Storage M.2 M Key socket for NVMe or SATA SSD SATA 3.0 connector Video Output – 2x DisplayPort Networking […]

Thin Mini-ITX networking board features six 2.5GbE ports, Celeron J6412 Elkhart Lake SoC

Thin Mini-ITX networking board with 6x 2.5GbE

Powered by an Intel Celeron J6412 quad-core Elkhart Lake processor, the Jetway MI05-0XK thin mini-ITX networking board is equipped with six 2.5GbE ports, up to 16GB RAM via a single SO-DIMM socket, as well as M.2 sockets for storage, WiFi and/or cellular connectivity, some serial ports, and an optional HDMI port for video output. Four variants are offered: the standard MI05-00K model without eMMC flash nor TPM, the MI05-02K with a TPM 2.0 chip, the MI05-03K with a 32GB eMMC flash, and finally the MI05-07K with both the TPM 2.0 security chip and 32GB eMMC flash. Jetway MI05-0XK specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J6412 quad-core Elkhart Lake processor @ 2.0 GHz / 2.6GHz (Burst frequency) with 1.5MB cache, 16 EU Intel UHD Graphics; 10W TDP System Memory – Up to 16GB DDR4-3200 via SO-DIMM socket Storage 1x SATA III (6 Gb/s) port 1x M.2 M-key 2242 SATA/PCIe Gen.3 x2 interface […]