In this circuit we use the output signal from a standard IR receiver (IC1 in the schematic of Figure 1) to drive a miniature loudspeaker. The IR receiver from Vishay used here is available for various frequencies ranging from 30 to 56 kHz. A large number of IR remote controls operate according to the so-called RC5 protocol that uses a frequency of 36 kHz. In our prototype we used a TSOP4836; and as the part number suggests, it is intended for 36 kHz operation. However, it will also ‘work’ at other frequencies, if they are not too different.
The signal at the output of the IR receiver is at too high a frequency to generate an appropriate sound signal; that is why we first pass the signal through a divide-by-2 IC (IC2). You can use the signal from any of the outputs, depending on your personal preference (we used output ‘0’ (pin 9) – the input signal divided by two).
We use this signal to drive a very simple push-pull output stage (T1/T2), that nevertheless has enough power to drive a small loudspeaker.
The circuit is powered from 3 V (two AA-batteries); the current consumption amounts to about 13 mA maximum (0.66 mA when idle). R1 and C1 decouple the power supply voltage for the IR receiver to prevent any potential interference from the output stage.
Using this circuit (which you can build on a breadboard or prototyping board) you cannot only check whether an IR remote control is still functional, but you can also compare different brands and models with each other.
PCB design software provider Altium has launched a new cloud-based application, A365 Viewer, to view and share electronic designs through a browser on any web-enabled desktop, phone or tablet. by Julien Happich [via]
Until now, designers have been forced to share their PCB designs through PDFs or static images. With the new A365 Viewer, an interactive experience is created that retains all of the key relevant information that’s typically lost when sharing static files. For example, the A365 Viewer allows users to search for, select, cross-probe and inspect components and nets while moving seamlessly between schematic, PCB and 3D views of their board. Using the A365 Viewer requires no CAD tools or experience.
The A365 Viewer is designed to work with multiple eCAD formats, currently supporting Autodesk Eagle and Altium Designer. Other popular PCB design software formats will be supported in the near future. The A365 Viewer is part of Altium’s cloud strategy and newly launched Altium 365 cloud platform.
Based on Kendryte K210 RISC-V AI processor, Maixduiono AI development board comes with MI AI module and ESP32 module for WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity in Arduino UNO form factor.
K210 comes with dual-core processor chip with independent FPU, 64 bits CPU bit width, 8 MB on-chip SRAM, 400 adjustable nominal frequency, and double-precision FPU supporting multiplication, division, and square root operation. Besides, Maixduino AI Development Board is equipped with neural network hardware accelerator KPU, voice processing unit (APU), programmable IO array (FPIOA/IOMUX) and Fast Fourier Transform Accelerator. In the AI processing, K210 can perform operations such as convolution, batch normalization, activation, and pooling. At the same time, the pre-processing of voice direction scanning and voice data output can also be performed.
The on-board wireless module of the product is the ESP32-WROOM-32 with dual-core ESP32 Xtensa LX6 processor, supporting 2.4GHz 802.11.b/g/n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2 LE connectivity. Besides, it has DVP camera connector, LCD display connector, built-in MEMS microphone, TM8211 I2S audio DAC, 3W power amplifier, USB 2.0 Device type C port for powering and programming via dual-channel CH522 chip to support for both K210 and ESP32, Arduino UNO compatible headers with digital I/Os / PWM, I2C, UART, and 6 analog inputs.
Application: smart home(Robotic vacuum cleaner and Smart speaker), medical device, industry 4.0, agriculture and education.
Maixduino Development Board and OV2640 Camera are included in the package.
Note: The shape and pins are compatible with Arduino UNO R3 but the voltage level is not compatible, which requires great attention, otherwise the board can be damaged. Maixduino supports 3.3V and 1.8V levels, and the pins are divided into several BANKs, each BANK can be set to a voltage of 1.8V or 3.3V by software, However, these pins are not 5V tolerated. Therefore, when using the peripheral device of Arduino, be careful not to short the 5V to the pin or RST (1.8V) pin.
Features
CPU: RISC-V Dual Core 64bit, built-in FPU, 400MHz standard frequency (overclockable)
Built-in neural network processor
OV2640 Camera: 200W pixel 24P camera
Connector: compatible with Arduino interface, TF card slot, speaker port
Wireless: support 2.4G 802.11.b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.2
A Busan-based company has been developing J.Flex, an advanced lithium-ion battery that is ultra-thin, flexible, and rechargeable for the past few years now. The company used terms like bend, roll, twist, scrunch, fold, flex to describe the battery. EJ Shin, head of strategic planning at Jenax says:
“What we’re doing at Jenax is putting batteries into locations where they couldn’t be before.” She goes on “we’re now interacting with machines on a different level from what we did before,”
The devices unveiled by Jenax includes a sensor-lined sports helmet developed by UK-based firm HP1 Technologies for measuring pressure and force of impact, a medical sensor patch designed in France that can be embedded in clothings, for monitoring a wearer’s heart rate, and wearable power banks in form of belts and bracelets for patients who continuously have to be hooked up to medical devices. Shin says:
“You don’t want to carry a big, bulky battery on your body all the time. It’s heavy, uncomfortable, and sticks out from your clothes that’s when you need very thin, flexible batteries.”
Nicholas Kotov, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan is of the opinion that such kind of batteries may one day power more than just wearables, He identifies unmanned aerial vehicles as one example. A flexible battery installed in the wings or landing gear of such a device could create more space in the body for other components.
J.Flex In Various Shapes
Jenax is not the only company developing flexible batteries. Companies like Panasonic, Samsung, and STMicroelectronics are developing flexible batteries of their own. But Jenax boasts of having “a higher degree of flexibility” compared with its competitors. To create flexible batteries, companies manipulate the components of a battery cell, which includes the cathode, anode, electrolyte, and membrane separator. According to Shin, the secret to its flexibility lies in
“a combination of materials, polymer electrolyte, and the know-how developed over the years.”
The J.Flex is made from graphite and lithium cobalt oxide, but its exact composition and architecture remain a secret. Jenax has more than 100 patents protecting its battery technology.
J.Flex can be sized to be as thin as 0.5 millimeters, which will fit suitably for sensors, and as tiny as 20 by 20 millimeters (mm) or as large as 200 by 200 mm. It has an operating voltage between 3 and 4.25 volts. Depending on the size, conventional batteries capacity varies from 10 mAh to 5 Ah, with close to 90 percent of this capacity remaining after 1,000 charge-discharge cycles. Each charge typically takes an hour. However, J. Flex’s battery life depends on how it’s used. According to Shin, a single charge can last for a month in a sensor, but wouldn’t last that long if the battery was powering a display.
Michigan’s Kotov says:
“Overall, I think it’s a very good battery.”
Michigan’s Kotov is developing electrolytes for flexible batteries made from lithium and zinc. He comments on the safety of J.Flex.
“The key [to safety] is to find good electrolytes or good ion-conducting membranes,” says Kotov.
Batteries can explode if their electrolytes are leaking out, or when the cathode and anode are in contact, as might be the case when you bend flexible batteries.
Due to this, Jenax developed a special semi-solid electrolyte. The new gel polymer will be incorporated into all J.Flex batteries this year. Shin says
“We went to one of the biggest causes of battery explosions and made it non-flammable.”
Jenax is setting up its first production line for the battery in South Korea by the end of 2020. Shin says this will make it cost-competitive with traditional lithium-ion batteries. Finally, shin says
“We’re changing the paradigm of batteries… They’re no longer a component you buy at the end of your product design. Instead, batteries are becoming one of the critical enabling technologies for the final product.”
The saying that “everything old is actually new again” finally became a reality for the Pro Micro board, as the popular Arduino compatible board gets revised with few additional features. The board that has been a favorite for about half a decade now received something of a great refresh, a Qwiic connector at the back and a USB Type-C at the front.
Speaking at the product launch, owner and creator of the Pro Micro board said that it is committed to adding a whole lot of improvement to its products “…we refuse to leave “good enough” alone – that’s why we’re adding to our line-up of Arduino compatible microcontrollers” says Sparkfun’s Xtopher.
According to them, even though the Qwiic Pro Micro board has the same size and overall functionality as the original Pro Micro board, the newly revised version has some features that the formal models lack.
“…the board is the same size as the original Pro Micro, but we shrunk down some components on the board and added a few more features, like as a reset button, Qwiic connector, USB-C and castellated pads (this makes it really handy for your custom keyboard creators).”
In order words, the Qwiic Pro Micro is just a Pro Micro with full USB functionality and ATMEGA32U4 on board.
The tiny little board runs at 5V/16MHz and cuts complexity by combining 3.3V and 5V operation on a single board. So with the Qwiic Pro Micro, there’s really no need to choose between 3.3V and 5V models. The board also has full compatibility with Arduino IDE and is capable of all the Arduino tricks you can think of.
Qwiic Pro Micro
Features include:
Nine 10-bit ADC pins
5 PWM pins (pulse Width Modulation)
12 Digital IOs, hardware serial connections Tx and Rx
Qwiic connector to add Qwiic enabled I2C devices to projects.
USB-C connector for programming
Reset regulator to quickly reset or place the board into the bootloader mode without having to use jumper wires
AP2112 3.3V regulator
Castellated pads
Meanwhile, the Qwiic Pro board can go just anywhere; the speed and power of the board make it great for small builds to go into the wild especially if you want to travel with them and packing size is a concern.
The board is available now at Sparkfun webshop for $19.95, slightly above the price of the 3.3V and 5V models that sells for $17.95.
App note from Vishay about how ESR in tantalum capacitors affects circuit performance. Link here (PDF)
When choosing a capacitor for any application, there are a few key characteristics that must be understood in order to analyze its suitability for the circuit. In a simple capacitor equivalent circuit model, there are three key characteristics that affect circuit performance: capacitance, equivalent series resistance (ESR), and inductance. The magnitude of these elements and how they change over temperature, frequency, and applied voltage are different for each capacitor technology.
Low ESR tantalum capacitors make a difference in circuit designs – [PDF]
The Debian based open-source Linux distribution Ubuntu finds its wide use across Desktop, Servers, Containers and now in IoT and cloud applications. Being very secure and its OpenStack support, it is further getting adapted widely in high end embedded computing applications as well.
iWave systems rich i.MX8 System on Module and SBC product portfolio is supported with Yocto Linux, Android and QNX BSP. Now iWave Systems is enabling the Bionic Beaver Ubuntu 18.04 LTS support to its latest i.MX8 Quad Max, Quad Plus and i.MX8M, i.MX8M mini system on Modules and SBC products.
Wayland support in the BSP brings better performance, code maintainability and security compare to X server. In Wayland, compositing is passive, which means the compositor receives pixel data directly from clients and hence it reduces the latency compared to the X server. The GUI with the Wayland Compositor on the iWave i.MX8 board is shown below;
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS – Google Chromium Bowser and Weston Terminal
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS – QT5 Applications on i.MX8QM board
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS – Gnome Calculator and GPU 3D Applications
Ubuntu 18.04LTS on iWave i.MX8 Quad Max / Quad Plus SOM & SBC
Ubuntu Bionic image with Wayland Compositor supports only Wayland graphical backend which is simpler than earlier X11 backend system and it includes below essential packages:
Linux Kernel Version 4.14.98
Ubuntu 18.04.03 LTS
Weston 5.0
QT 5.10
GPU driver 6.2.4.p4.0
Gstreamer 1.14.1
Bluez 5.48
GCC/G++ 7.3.0
Chromium Browser v71.0.3545.0
Supports Gnome-Calculator and Gnome-Calendar
iWave’s i.MX8 Single Board Computer and SMARC SOM
The following drivers are supported in the Ubuntu BSP with iWave i.MX8QM/QP SMARC SOM and SBC board
CPU and MCU – Dual Cortex® A72, Quad Cortex® A53 and Dual Cortex®-M4
Block/Storage devices – SD/eMMC, USB, SATA
Multimedia support – HDMI, MIPI-DSI, LVDS Display, GPU, VPU, Audio, Camera
Advantech, a global leader in the embedded computing market, is pleased to announce ROM-5720, a SMARC 2.0 module powered by the NXP ARM Cortex-A53 i.MX8M processor with excellent graphics performance and low power consumption. The ROM-5720 supports 4Kp60 resolution via HDMI 2.0 and 4Kp60 H.265 decoding with HDR. It features a variety of interfaces: USB3.0, PCIe, Dual Gigabit Ethernet, two MIPI-CSI, and a four-lane MIPI-DSI. ROM-5720 provides an ideal solution for a wide range of industrial applications such as infotainment, automation, HMI, and healthcare.
Excellent Graphics Performance for Machine Vision and Multimedia Applications
ROM-5720 adopts NXP i.MX8M SoC, which features up to four ARM Cortex-A53s and one additional general-purpose Cortex-M4 core processor for low-power processing. The ARM Cortex-A cores can be powered off while the Cortex-M4 subsystem performs low power, real-time system monitoring. The Vivante GPU supports the latest OpenGL ES, OpenCL , OpenVG, and Vulkan for advanced graphics and accelerated compute workloads such as the Deep Learning Inference. ROM-5720 supports display output with HDMI2.0 (4096 x 2160 @60Hz), 1×4 lanes MIPI-DSI for multiple display, and two MIPI-CSI camera input. It provides a high resolution display and meets camera requirements for different machine vision and multimedia applications.
High-Speed Connectivity Interfaces
To extend the flexibility of various applications, ROM-5720 offers a range of interfaces, such as dual USB3.0, dual Giga Ethernet, PCIe2.1, and four RS232. It provides efficient interfaces for extending peripheral devices like high-speed storage, camera, wireless modules, and it works with touch and legacy devices to empower self-service kiosks and interactive multimedia applications.
Advantech supports allied, industrial, and modular (AIM) frameworks for Linux to accelerate software development with flexible and responsive long-term support. AIM-Linux Services offers verified embedded OS platforms and industrial-focused apps and SDKs through which users can easily select the embedded software tools they need to focus on their vertical software development.
ROM-5720 Key Features
NXP i.MX8M with Quad/Dual Cortex A53 and Cortex-M4F up to 1.5GHz
Advantech ROM-5720 is available now! Please contact an Advantech sales office or authorized channel partners to learn more. For additional information on Advantech’s Arm computing products and services, visit risc.advantech.com now!
CircuitPython on an ARM Cortex M0 in 1 square inch! This “Just Add Solder” castellated module is perfect for incorporating into your own project. The CircuitBrains Basic board footprint is small enough to fit into narrow spaces and wearable projects.
Technical Specs
Dimensions: 25 x 25 x 3.5 millimeters / 1 x 1 x 0.15 inches
Atmel ATSAMD21E18 Microcontroller (32-bit ARM Cortex M0)
48 MHz
32 KB SRAM
256 KB Flash
4 MB QSPI Flash
Onboard 3.3V LDO Regulator
Power and Status LEDs
Breakouts for SPI and I2C
Breakouts for 4 Analog and 8 Digital Inputs/Outputs
CircuitBrains Deluxe
CircuitPython on an ARM Cortex M4 in almost 1 square inch! This “Just Add Solder” castellated module is perfect for incorporating into your own project. The CircuitBrains Deluxe board footprint is small enough to fit into narrow spaces and wearable projects.
Technical Specs
Dimensions: 29 x 29 x 3.5 millimeters / 1.15 x 1.15 x 0.15 inches
Atmel ATSAMD51J19A Microcontroller (32-bit ARM Cortex M4)
120 MHz
192 KB SRAM
512 KB Flash
8 MB QSPI Flash
Onboard 3.3V LDO Regulator
Power and Status LEDs
Breakouts for SPI and I2C
Breakouts for 14 Analog and 19 Digital Inputs/Outputs
Purchase
Coming soon. Follow the below links for manufacturing updates:
This is an easy to build but very capable and handy DIY solder paste dispenser built mostly from cheap Ebay components and modules by kevarek @ hackaday.io:
Already finished and nicely working solder paste dispenser. Powered with cheap ebay mini DC motor with gearbox (100RPM) and long M3 shaft secured by two axial bearings also from ebay. Body of both control box and dispenser is fully 3D printed. Accepts standard ebay 3ml luer lock syringes. Firmware supports dispensing speed configuration and also retraction to prevent leaks. Push button is available on the control box as well as on the handheld unit to be able to control the dispensing according to personal preferences.
Schematic is as simple as it gets. Power supply with basic protection, motor driver with voltage and current sensing and MCU to control the functionality.
MCU module with 3V3 regulator is bought from ebay, H-bridge and supply protection circuitry is hand soldered on piece of prototype PCB. Layout has not been created.
Mechanically the dispenser has two parts. Handheld dispenser and stationary control box. Handheld dispenser is 3D printed chassis with motor mounted inside and slot for 3cc syringe with luer lock.
Project files are available on the hackaday.io project’s page.
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