RoenDi is a rotary encoder with a color display (Crowdfunding)

rotary encoder display

RoenDi is a rotary encoder with an integrated round color display. Based on an STM32L4 MCU, it can be programmed with the STM32CubeIDE or the Arduino IDE, and be used as an information display, an IoT controller, a locking mechanism, as well as in audio applications. RoenDi specifications: MCU – STMicro STM32L433 Arm Cortex-M4 microcontroller @ 80 MHz with 256 KB flash memory Storage – 128 Mbit SPI NOR flash Display – Round 1.28-inch TFT LCD display with 240 x 240  resolution, up to 262K colors Rotary Encoder – 15 pulses / 30 detents USB – Micro USB connector I/Os – Breakout pads for peripherals: I2C, GPIO, PWM, CAN; 5V tolerant Debugging – Adaptor board and cable for ST-LINK Misc – BOOT boot, RTC (built-in into STM32 MCU) Power Supply – 3V to 5V DC input, 3 V, 400 mA LDO Dimensions – 40 x 40 mm (PCB) Enclosure  – […]

Bee Motion Mini board combines ESP32-C3 with PIR sensor

Bee Motion Mini

Designed by Smart Bee Designs, the tiny Bee Motion Mini combines an ESP32-C3 wireless RISC-V SoC with a PIR sensor for motion detection reporting over WiFi, Bluetooth LE, or Bluetooh Mesh. The board was designed to be as small as possible to fit into a 3D printed case with a LiPo battery and placed/hidden anywhere you want. Motion detection range is up to 5 meters, and the Bee Motion Mini can connect to services like MQTT, ITTT, or NodeRed to trigger other devices upon motion. Bee Motion Mini specifications: Wireless module – Espressif Systems ESP32-C3-MINI-1 module with ESP32-C3 WiFi and Bluetooth LE 5.0 RISC-V SoC up to 160 MHz, 4 MB embedded flash PIR sensor – Passive infrared motion sensor with dome lens, 5-meter range I/O- UART Tx/Rx for flashing firmware, 3.3V, and GND Misc – BOOT and RESET buttons Power Supply JST PH.20 connector for LiPo battery 3.3V via […]

OASIS – ROS 2 based Smart Home operating system integrates with Kodi

OASIS Kinect 2 computer vision

OASIS is a Smart Home operating system based on ROS 2 that currently implements computer vision, input streaming, and general automation features, and can be integrated into Kodi media center. The operating system was recently released by Garrett Brown (a.k.a. garbear or eigendude), who is also known for being the RetroPlayer developer from Team Kodi/XBMC, and provides a complete implementation of the Firmata protocol for communicating with Arduino boards, plus additional support for temperature and humidity sensors, I2C, servos, sonar, SPI, stepper motors, and 4-wire CPU fans. Two main use cases are computer vision and input streaming at this time. The illustration above shows the former with the Kinect 2 driver ported to ROS 2, a background subtractor on all camera feeds using bgslibrary C++ background subtraction library, and Kodi as the visual interface. The second, input streaming, can be seen below with a Lego train (including a Falcon spaceship!) […]

Portenta X8 is the first Arm Linux Arduino board

Arduino Portenta X8

In simpler times, Raspberry Pi was making Arm Linux SBC’s, and Arduino MCU boards, but after Raspberry Pi got into the MCU business last year, it’s now time for Arduino to introduce its first Arm Linux board with the Arduino Portenta X8. The new board since comes with the same STM32H7 Cortex-M7/M4 microcontroller found in the Portenta H7 boards, but add a more powerful, Linux-capable NXP i.MX 8M Mini processor with four Cortex-A53 cores and a Cortex-M4 core, coupled with 2GB RAM and a 16GB eMMC flash. Arduino Portenta X8 specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Mini Arm Cortex-A53 quad-core up to 1.8 GHz,1x Cortex-M4 real-time core up to 400MHz. Microcontroller – STMicro STM32H747AII6 Cortex-M7 @ 480 MHz + M4 @ 240 MHz MCU  with 2MB dual-bank Flash memory, 1 MB RAM, Chrom-ART graphical hardware accelerator System Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash Connectivity Gigabit Ethernet interface […]

Arduino Braccio++ robotic arm is designed for high-school and university students

Arduino Braccio++ robotic arm

Arduino Education has just launched the Braccio++ robotic arm for advanced students in high school or at university in order to let them experiment with a 6 DOF, industrial, assembly line-inspired robot. The new robotic arm provides an upgrade to the Tinkerkit Braccio robot and has been designed to assist in teaching real-world manufacturing techniques,topics such as physics and robotics, and concepts like motions, forces, torque, gear ratio, stability, and weight of payload.   The Arduino Braccio++ is comprised of the Braccio carrier board equipped with an Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect that controls six Arduino RS485 Smart Servo Motors with specifically four SR418D servo motors for the arm joints, and two SR312 servo motors for the claw. Four lessons and two projects are included in the kit, and it’s made for up to three students. Arduino says the new robotic arm is made of recycled and eco-friendly materials with the […]

1.51-inch transparent OLED display works over GDI or SPI interface

transparent oled display

We’ve seen transparent, see-through displays at least since 2010 for retail applications, and over the years, these types of transparent displays or variants have made it to consumer devices like smartwatches and notch-free smartphones. But I don’t think I had ever seen transparent displays for the maker market, and DFRobot Fermion is 1.51-inch transparent OLED display with 128×64 resolution that is connected to the host MCU via SPI or GDI (General Display Interface) interface. Fermion specifications: 1.51-inch transparent OLED display with blue pixels based on SSD1309 driver Resolution – 128×64 (transparent part: 128×56) Display interface – 8-bit 68xx/80xx Parallel, 3-/4-wire SPI, I2C Adapter Interface – SPI, GDI Operating Voltage –  3.3V Dimensions Screen Size – 41.92 x 27.08mm Display Area – 35.05 x 15.32 mm Pixel Pitch – 0.274 x 0.274mm Pixel Size – 0.254 x 0.254mm Adapter Size – 18 x 28mm/0.71 x 1.10inch Temperature Range – -40~70°C There […]

LOLIN C3 Mini ESP32-C3 board is compatible with Wemos D1 Mini shields

Lolin C3 Mini

Wemos LOLIN C3 Mini board is powered by Espressif ESP32-C3 WiFi and BLE RISC-V microcontroller and follows the company’s earlier Wemos D1 Mini (ESP8266) and LOLIN S2 Mini (ESP32-S2) form factor for compatibility with the original stackable Wemos D1 shields. The tiny board comes with 4MB flash embedded in the ESP32-C3 chip, a USB Type-C connector, reset and user buttons, as well as sixteen through holes for GPIOs, VBUS, 3.3V, and ground signals. LOLIN C3 Mini V1.0.0 specifications: SoC – Espressif Systems ESP32-C3FH4 single-core 32-bit RISC-V (RV32IMC) microcontroller up to 160 MHz with 400 KB SRAM, 4MB Flash Connectivity – 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE (in SoC) Expansion headers – 2x 8-pin headers with up to 12x GPIO, ADC, I2C, SPI, UART (3.3V I/O voltage) USB – 1x Type-C USB for 5V power and programming Misc – Reset button and button 0 also used to enter Device […]

Waveshare CM4-Duino – An Arduino compatible carrier board for Raspberry Pi CM4

CM4-Duino

Waveshare CM4-Duino is a carrier board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) that follows Arduino UNO R3 form factor while offering HDMI output, a MIPI CSI camera interface, a USB interface, and even an M.2 M Key socket for expansion. This allows the board to reuse most Arduino shields while offering the flexibility of a more powerful Arm Linux platform that can further be expanded with an NVMe SSD or a wireless module through the included M.2 socket. Waveshare CM4-Duino specifications: Support SoM – All variants of Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 Storage MicroSD card socket for Compute Module 4 Lite (without eMMC) variants Optional NVMe SSD via M.2 socket Video Output – HDMI up to 4Kp30 (not sure why 4Kp60 would not be supported) Camera I/F – 1x MIPI CSI-2 connector USB – 1x USB 2.0 Type-A header, 1x USB Type-C for power and programming Expansion M.2 M […]

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