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BOXER-6641: Delivering More Power for Industrial Computing

Posted on by mixos

AAEON, an award-winning leader in industrial computing, announces the BOXER-6641, their latest fanless box PC, featuring 8th Generation Intel® Core™ and Xeon® processors. The BOXER-6641 is the most powerful fanless solution currently available on the market.

The BOXER-6641 is designed to provide users with unmatched flexibility and performance. Available with two chipsets, the H310 (BOXER-6641-A1) and C246 (BOXER-6641-A2), the system offers a range of processors from the 8th Generation Intel® Core™ and Xeon® processor family (formerly Coffee Lake), from Celeron® G4900T and Pentium® G5400T up to Xeon® E-2124G (up to 71W). Combined with up to 32GB of ECC or non-ECC DDR4 2666MHz RAM and support for two hard drives, the BOXER-6641 is currently the most powerful fanless industrial system available on the market.

The BOXER-6641 is built to easily integrate into any industrial application. I/O features include six COM ports and up to eight USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (A2 model). The BOXER-6641 also comes with four Intel® Gigabit Ethernet ports, including one Intel® i219 chipset, with built-in support for Intel® vPRO and Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT) available on BOXER-6641-A2. The BOXER-6641 is expandable with two mPCIe slots, capable of supporting AI applications with solutions such as AAEON’s AI Core X with Intel® Movidius® Myriad™ X VPU.

The BOXER-6641 is designed with several key features to ensure reliable service in harsh industrial environments. In addition to fanless construction, the BOXER-6641 offers wide voltage input of 10V to 35V, wide operating temperature range from -20°C to 55°C (-20°C to 45°C with 71W processor), and an all-metal chassis. The BOXER-6641 is easy to maintain, with only six screws needed to remove the top heatsink to access the CPU, and removing the bottom panel provides easy access to the memory and storage devices.

AAEON supports customers through its Manufacturer Services and OEM/ODM programs, including custom I/O configurations and end-to-end total solutions for industrial applications. This brings a greater level of flexibility to the BOXER-6641 and helps reduce time-to-market for systems integrators and independent software developers.

“With the 8th Generation Intel® processors, including Xeon® technology and the C246 chipset, BOXER-6641 offers a greater level of power than any other fanless embedded box PC on the market,” said Raven Hsu, Product Manager with AAEON’s System Platform Division. “BOXER-6641 can power a range of industrial applications, including factory automation, machine vision, and more.”

more information: www.aaeon.com

Pine64 SOEdge AI Module Delivers 3.0 TOPS using Rockchip RK1808 SoC

Posted on by mixos

The SOEdge is a 3TOPS compute module that can be paired with the SOPine base board or USB 3.0 and PCIe adapters for development. It can connect to a SBC, such as the ROCKPro64 or a regular PC. We initially planned the release of the SOEdge module last year, but Pinebook Pro and PinePhone delays pushed it back to this year.

Features:

  • Rockchip RK1808 dual-core Cortex-A35 processor with a 3.0 TOPS  Neural Processing Unit
  • 2GB DDR4 PC-2133 RAM
  • 16GB eMMC flash
  • PMIC – Rockchip RK809-2
  • 204-pin SO-DIMM connector (same as the SOPine modules)

Tentative price: ~ $30

Tentative release date: ~ April/May 2020

The HardROCK64 is a RK3399 based SBC

Posted on by mixos

Pine64 has launched a smaller and cheaper “HardRock64” variant of its RK3399-based RockPro64 SBC that removes the PCIe and USB Type-C.

The board features:

  • The RK3399 hexa-core SOC found in the Pinebook Pro and on the ROCKPro64
  • 2xUSB 3.0
  • 2xUSB 2.0
  • WiFi AC and BT 5.0
  • Gigabit Ethernet
  • Full GPIO pins
  • SPI flash
  • eMMC socket
  • mSD card slot
  • Fan & RTC headers
  • Heatsink mount
  • CSI connector
  • DSI connector
  • IR receiver
  • 5V barrel jack for power
  • Digital video out

The board will run all ROCKPro64 OS images with little or no tweaks (we checked) and probably most Pinebook Pro OS with a ‘simple’ device tree tweak. In other words, if you don’t need all of the ROCKPro64’s functionality – e.g. PCIe or USB-C – then this may just be the board for you.

The board does run hot so a heatsink is pretty much mandatory. A couple of different options will be sold by us to match your needs and expected the SOC load.

The board will ship in 3 LPDDR4 RAM configurations (tentative $ pricing):

  • 1GB ~ $35
  • 2GB ~ $45
  • 4GB ~ $55

Tentative release date: April 2020

MP720105 – Digital Oscilloscope, 2+1 Channel, 200 MHz, 1 GSPS, 40 Mpts for £388.00

Posted on by mixos

The MP720105 from Multicomp Pro is a newly launched 200MHz, 2-channel digital storage oscilloscope, featuring 1GS/s sampling rates, 8-bits vertical resolution, an 8″ colour LCD screen, and decoding kit (RS232, SPI, I2C, CAN trigger/decode).

  • Ultra-thin design, less space accommodation
  • Multi-interface integration – USB host, USB device, USB port for PictBridge, LAN, AUX
  • 8″ 800×600 high resolution colour LCD screen
  • 40M record length
  • 8-bits vertical resolution ADC
  • Max 75,000 wfms/s waveform refresh rate
  • Low background noise, vertical sensitivity 1mV/div – 10V/div
  • Multi-trigger and bus decoding function
  • SCPI and LabVIEW supported
  • 1ns/div – 1000 horizontal scale (s/div), step by 1-2-5
  • DC, AC and GND input coupling
  • Edge, Video, Pulse, Slope, Runt, Windows, Timeout, Nth Edge, Logic, I2C, SPI, RS232 and CAN trigger types
  • Auto, normal and single trigger modes
  • Dimensions (W x H x D) – 340 x 177 x 90mm
  • Device Weight – 2.6kg

The oscilloscope is on sale at Farnell for £388.00

IoTouch an ESP32 wireless development board with 24-Bit RGB TFTs

Posted on by Emmanuel Odunlade

IoTouch is an ESP-32 based board with touchscreen capabilities. Its got an external embedded GPU interfaced with a 24 RGB TFT glass capacitive display.  It is specially built for IoT applications due to its Bluetooth and WiFi features. If you need a wireless device that has a good and intuitive HMI, IoTouch was made for you.

It’s pages and event-based framework allows you to make pages and transition between them smoothly. It uses a grid-layout and margins to assist in placing your objects on the screen without complex position or pixel calculations. Text buttons, sliders, progress bars, dial gauges, clocks, and other complex objects can be created with just one or two lines of code all with autonomous and graphical touch behavior.

Your application’s appearance or style (foreground, background, fonts e.t.c) can be declared using a clearly defined programming interface and applied globally without any change to your codebase.

IoTouch’s display consists of a capacitive touch screen with an oversized glass frame for an easy installation. It’s mountable with 3M 200MP adhesive and available in 3 different sizes and resolutions.

Some specification and features of the display include:

  • ESP32-WROOM with dual-core Xtensa® 32-bit LX6 MCU, 16MB flash
  • WIFi 802.11 b/g/n (802.11n up to 150 Mbps) 2.4 GHz ~ 2.5 GHz
  • Bluetooth v4.2 BR/EDR and BLE specification
  • FT813 EVE2 video engine co-processor with 1MB dedicate Graphic-RAM, 24bit RGB interface, capacitive touch engine, audio engine, and PWM backlight output.
  • A USB connector with UART transceiver for autonomous boot and very useful for monitor purposes.
  • Smart power management with an internal switch to power from 5V (USB /external on FFC) or a Battery with an enable pin.
  • Integrated dimmable LED driver to control the display backlight.
  • FFC connector to expose all ESP32 usable pin (except ones used by internal flash), USB, enable pin and FT813 audio output.
  • All in 47 x 57mm dimension enables you to use it from 3.5″ to 5.0″ displays.

According to Rocco Taurasi (the project creator), the project can be said to be 85% complete as the prototyping and testing of the hardware and firmware has been done with only some marginal bug-fix and Arduino/PlatformIO integration left on the firmware. Rocco also mentioned most parts of the project will be open-sourced after the development process.

A Kickstarter campaign has been launched for the project with diverse offerings and a total goal of 80,000€. Order fulfillments are planned for July 2020.

More information on the project and the Kickstarter campaign can be found on the Product’s page.

Otter-Iron: Power Your Soldering Iron over USB-C PD

Posted on by Emmanuel Odunlade

Okay, you’ve probably seen 20 different TS-100 hacks, for example, this, this and this but this improvement by Jan Henrik is on another level. For a soldering iron, the TS-100 seems to work quite well and its popularity, having only debuted 3 years ago, speaks volumes of this. It is relatively inexpensive, comes with temperature control, light-weight and portable, but a somewhat noticeable shortcoming is its inability to deliver as much power as most regular irons in the market, and while another version with higher power delivery, the TS-80 exists, it comes at a way higher price.

To improve this, Jan Henrik, developed an entirely new drop-in replacement PCB that converts the TS-100 into a USB-C PD powered soldering iron, making it absolutely awesome for soldering on the go, since you could power the iron from a normal USB-C PD power bank and also attain higher power since the USB-C PD is capped at 100W, which is 5 times the regular product!

Jan calls this upgrade the “Otter Iron” as he notes in a tweet, where he shared details of the project along with the cost slash features which puts his PCB + the TS-100 case + the TS-100 tip + some other parts combined, at a price cheaper than the original TS-100.

According to Jan, a bulk of the tasks around the project has been done, with the firmware all sorted, along with the GUI and temperature regulator. His demonstrations of the Iron handling a desoldering task with ease shows the functionalities are good, and its replicability has been confirmed by a few individuals who reported successfully building their own version of the Otter-Iron.

Demo

The project as most of Jan’s projects is properly documented on his Github page with some of the few remaining tasks highlighted. Some of the tasks include:

  • Current measurement
  • Better Fonts/UI for Display
  • PD-Profile cycling
  • Adding a barrel jack
  • Adding a grounding solution

The Project is already receiving contribution from several hobbyists like Timon who has already recreated the fuse holder for the TS-100, which was the only part missing from Jan’s PCB.

One caution so far is an earthing problem with USB-C’s when used with an ungrounded laptop adaptor. So it’s much safer to use a three-pronged charger or separate hooking to ground.

Regardless, this is great work from Jan Henrik. You can follow his progress and get the project files on the project’s Github page.

W600-PICO – A New $2 WiFi IoT Board that runs MicroPython

Posted on by Emmanuel Odunlade

The beauty of capable computing is that aside from being cheap enough, it should also be good enough. 

While we have seen some great WiFi IoT boards like Wemos D1 mini and Lolin32, there has not been anything like the newly launched W600-PICO board from Wemos. The new W600-PICO board, based on Winner MicroW600 Arm Cortex-M3 WiSoC, is the cheapest board ever from Wemos to come preloaded with a MicroPython firmware for just $2.10 + shipping.

Unlike the previous W600-based boards which have stayed as designed and probably been used as a WiFi-to-serial board only, the new W600-PICO seems to be a rather more interesting one, perhaps first viable competitor, for the nearly ubiquitous ESP8266-based boards due to its feature set and lower cost. The board which runs MicroPython out of the box and is built around an Arm Core might be preferred to the already existing Espressif-based boards, asides features, it also has a price point to match them with.

W600 Pinout

The W600-PICO board breaks out with two 10 pin headers: 9 x PWM, 15 x GPIO, 1 x UART,  1 x12C, 1 x SPI , Wake Up, Reset, + 5V , +3.3v and GND pins. Its other features include:

  • Wireless connectivity – 2.4GHz 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 4 up to 150 Mbps
  • SoC – Winner Micro W600 Arm Cortex-M3 MCU running @ 80MHz with 1 MB flash
  • Misc – Reset Button
  • USB – 1 x Micro USB port for power and programming which is connected using a CH340 USB to TTL chip
  • 3.3V I/O voltage
  • Real Time Clock and hardware cryptography support
  • Power supply – 5V through the micro USB port.
  • Dimensions –  33 x 20.3 mm and
  • Weight – 3 grams

Coming preloaded with MicroPython, the toolchain problem people experience with previous W600-based boards will no longer exist. Users who purchased the board already seem to be satisfied with it as they affirm it is all good and that the Micropython works immediately.

To provide a means of learning about the board, Wemos has set up a Wiki page where more details about the mini WiFi board can be found, alongside instructions on how to re-flash the board and update the firmware. There are also codes that show how to get started with networking, RTC, I / Os and timers.

The boards can be picked up on platforms like AliExpress for just $2.10 with shipping in single-unit quantities.

Proximity Distance Sensor using DRV5053 Hall effect Sensor

Posted on by mixos

This is a hall sensor proximity sensor that can detect magnetic targets approaching the sensor, without physical contact with the target. This sensor also can be used to detect the distance range 0-4cm (0-40mm). The target distance can be adjusted using the onboard trimmer potentiometer. The project is built around DRV5053 magnetic field sensor and LM393 comparator.  Relay provides normally open and normally closed operations and relay can drive AC and DC load, AC 230V/5Amps and DC 30V/5Amps. LED D1 indicates sensor operation, LED D2 is a power LED.

Proximity Distance Sensor using DRV5053 Hall effect Sensor – [Link]

Introduction to LoRa – Send data between two Arduino using LoRa

Posted on by mixos

Selecting the right communication protocol is an important part of any IoT project as not being able to communicate with the server/device cloud quickly takes away the “I” in IoT and could lead to the ultimate failure of the project. Several communication protocols exist, from WiFi and Zigbee to 2G, LTE, and even satellite communications, but each of them is usually plagued by one limitation or the other which makes them unsuitable for certain IoT use cases, with the major culprits usually being a tradeoff between range, power, and bandwidth. Semtech, however,  demonstrating an understanding the future of IoT, saw a potential game-changer when they acquired France based Cycleo in 2012. Cycleo had developed a patented wireless communication technology called LoRa, which combined ultra-low power consumption with an effective long-range. Semtech leveraged on the power of the community via a consortium and transformed the technology into one of the key drivers of the current wave of digital transformation being instituted by IoT.

Introduction to LoRa – Send data between two Arduino using LoRa – [Link]

Proximity Distance Sensor using DRV5053 Hall effect Sensor

This is a hall sensor proximity sensor that can detect magnetic targets approaching the sensor, without physical contact with the target. This sensor also can be used to detect the distance range 0-4cm (0-40mm). The target distance can be adjusted using the onboard trimmer potentiometer. The project is built around DRV5053 magnetic field sensor and LM393 comparator.  Relay provides normally open and normally closed operations and relay can drive AC and DC load, AC 230V/5Amps and DC 30V/5Amps. LED D1 indicates sensor operation, LED D2 is a power LED.

Features

  • Supply 12V DC
  • Current 60mA (when Relay is on)
  • Sensing Distance adjustable 0-40mm
  • On-Board Power LED
  • On board Sensor LED
  • PCB Dimensions 50.19mm X 27.08mm

Schematic

Parts List

Photos

Video

DRV5053 Datasheet

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