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How to isolate RS485 – smaller size and high reliability

Posted on 10 May, 2019 by mixos

Galvanic isolation for the RS-485port.

RS-485 has been the industry’s most used wired communications interface for more than decades. Balanced differential signaling of RS-485 allows for rejection of common mode noise and facilitates communications over long distances in noisy industrial environments. RS-485 is a common communications port in most industrial applications such as factory automation, protection relay, energy meter, motor drives and building automation.

TIA/EIA-485-A standard defines that the compliant transceivers must work with ±7 V ground potential difference (GPD). As shown in Figure 1, common mode voltage on receiver bus pins (Vcm) is a sum of GPD, driver output common mode voltage (Voc) and any common mode coupled noise (Vn) to the bus pins. As the communication distance between the nodes increases leading to higher GPD or as the industrial environment becomes noisier thereby coupling more common mode noise on the bus, the common mode voltage on receiver bus pins moves out of its recommended operating condition. This can lead to data corruption or damage to the transceiver.

How to isolate RS-485 – smaller size and high reliability – [PDF]

5″ 800×480 HDMI TFT Display with Backlight Control for Raspberry Pi

Posted on 10 May, 2019 by mixos

Elecrow has just launched a new 5″ HDMI display with resistive touch screen designed for the Raspberry Pi boards, and whose main feature is to support backlight control over GPIO 11 in order to lower power consumption.

This is a 5 inch mini HDMI touch screen for Raspberry Pi, with high resolution that will provide a large viewing screen for Raspberry Pi. Compared with another type of 5-inch display sfor Raspberry Pi, the backlight of this 5-inch display can be controlled by Raspberry Pi GPIO pin 11. Generally, the backlight is on, then input a high level, it will turn off. The Pin 11 control a MOS tube switch on or off, the MOS tube switch will enable and disable the EN end of the backlight power IC. This design makes it convenient to control the backlight when we put the display into a product, and safe power at the same time.

Although this 800×480 HDMI display is designed for Raspberry Pi, you can also use it with any computer that has HDMI output.

Specifications for RPD19048A display:

Screen – 5″ TFT resistive touch screen display with 800×480 resolution @ 60 Hz;
LCD Driver IC – Display Future ILI9486L (Likely wrong as this only supports 480×320 resolution)
Touch controller – XPT2046 4-wire resistive touch controller
Video Input – HDMI
Power Supply – 5V/1A via micro USB port or Raspberry Pi header
Dimensions – 121.11 x 77.93mm
Weight – 175g

The resistive touch and backlight control functions will only work with a Raspberry Pi model B, 2B, 3B, or 3B+, and potentially Raspberry Pi compatible boards such as Tinker Board or Rock64, but you’d need to carefully check the pins used on the RPI header and potentially modify the software. This 5″ HDMI touch screen display can be purchased directly on Elecrow store for $39.90 plus shipping.

Seeed Studio unveils Three W600-Based Wireless Boards

Posted on 10 May, 201910 May, 2019 by Tope Oluyemi

Seeed Studio launched its Air 602 module in October last year and it was the first ESP competitor that retailed cheaper than the Espressif ESP8266 and ESP32 modules. Due to the lack of FCC certification for the Air 602 modules, integrating the module into a product seemed problematic. However, Seeed Studio announced early this year a new module, and two new development boards, designed based on the same chip as the Air 602 modules. The new boards are modeled around the same WinnerMicro W600 which features an Arm Cortex-M3 with 1MB of Flash on-chip with 2.4GHz support.

The new W600 wireless module is an FCC and CE pre-certified Wi-Fi module. The module has an on-module antenna and is mostly just an RF shield on a PCB. One of the two new boards is the Grove W600, which is powered by the W600 module, and it allows you to add Wi-Fi support to devices via serial UART using Seeed’s Grove System. It features a number of additional pins than those available in the Air 602 development board. The second board is a more conventional W600 Development Board, which breaks out all of the pins available by the W600.

The board has four Grove System connectors, as well as a LiPo battery connector. It isn’t expected to ship until sometime during the second quarter of the year. Significantly, the board will ship with support for both the Arduino development environment and MicroPython. The documentation on the W600 is sparse, and the documentation that is available is mostly in Chinese. At the moment, the board functions as a serial to W-Fi bridge and its functionality doesn’t go beyond that, but the incorporation of Arduino and MicroPython support will address that.

The W600 chip at the center of these modules features an Arm processor. This makes it interesting for those experimenting with machine learning on the edge, and for those building the Internet of Things. The W600 wireless module and the W600 Grove Module are available from Seeed Studio. You can pre-order the castellated wireless module, priced at $3.79 per unit, including shipping, as well the W600 Grove Module for $7.49 per unit plus shipping. The estimated availability date of both modules is May 22nd-23rd.

There’s no information around price points, or the exact ship dates, for the W600 Development Board. However, Seeed Studio has provided a Wiki and opened a forum section, to get updates. You can sign up for email updates on the W600-based boards on the Seeed Studio site.

Newport GW6100 Networking Single Board Computer

Posted on 10 May, 201910 May, 2019 by mixos

A Miniature 35x100mm Single Board Computer for Networking with Mini-PCIe Socket, Gigabit Ethernet Port, and USB Type-C TM 2.0 Port.

The GW6100 is the smallest member of the Gateworks 6th generation Newport family of single board computers targeted for a wide range of indoor and outdoor networking applications. The GW6100 features the Cavium OcetonTX™ Dual Core ARMv8 SoC processor operating at 800MHz, 1GByte of DDR4 DRAM, and 8GBytes of eMMC System Flash. A Mini-PCIe expansion socket supports 802.11abgn/ac wireless radios, LTE/4G/3G CDMA/GSM cellular modems, mSATA drives and other PCI Express peripherals. Additional peripherals include a Gigabit Ethernet port and a USB Type-C™ port. The Gateworks System Controller provides embedded features such as real time clock, voltage and temperature monitor, fan control and monitor, serial EEPROM, and advanced power management with programmable board shut-down and wake-up for remote sensor applications. A wide-range DC input power supply provides up to 8W to the Mini-PCIe socket for supporting the latest high-power radios and up to 7.5W to the USB Type-C™ port for powering external devices. Input Power is applied through dedicated connector or the Ethernet port in a Passive Power over Ethernet configuration. Both OpenWrt and Ubuntu Linux Board Support Packages are supported.

Features

Cavium OcteonTX™ Dual Core ARMv8 800MHz SoC Processor
1GByte DDR4 SDRAM Memory and 8GBytes eMMC Flash Memory Standard
High-Power Mini-PCIe Socket Supports PCIe or mSATA with USB 2.0 and Nano-SIM Socket
Gigabit Ethernet Port Compliant with 802.3 10BaseT/100BaseTX/1000BASE-T
USB Type-C™ DFP Featuring USB 2.0 up to 480Mbps and 1.5A Power Delivery
Application Connector Includes Serial IO, Digital IO, I2C, and SPI
Real Time Clock with Battery Backup
Voltage and Temperature Monitor
Serial Configuration EEPROM
Programmable Watchdog Timer
Programmable Fan Speed Controller and Tachometer Monitor
Programmable Shut-Down and Wake-Up
Input Voltage Range 8 to 60VDC with Reverse Protection
4W@25C Typical Operating Power
-40C to +85C Operating Temperature
Optional Ublox ZOE-MQ8 GNSS GPS Receiver with PPS Support
Form Factor Compatible with GW5100 Ventana Media SBC
OpenWrt and Ubuntu Board Support Packages
1 Year Warranty

Block Diagram

more information and support material can be found on Gateworks Newport Family Support page.

TextToSpeech – Multi languages/voices packs in SD card.

Posted on 10 May, 2019 by mixos

Add speech to your projects. Raspberry & Arduino compatible. Use ‘serial port’ to send speech text in any language. .WAV Player.

Make it simple to add speech to any of your projects. It only takes 3 wires to connect it with an Arduino or a Raspberry. By coping a .WAV file on the SD, you can play music, a prerecorded sentence or combine it with word synthesis.

The TextToSpeech board synthesizes audio output from text via a Microchip SAMD21G18 MCU paired with an Arduino Zero bootloader. You can also play back .WAV files with music and pre-recorded speech and output them via the board’s 3W speaker amp.

Hardware

Build in 3W speaker amplifier with a trimmer for the speaker volume, an audio line output jack and headphone amplifier. lt also includes a separate trimmer for the headphone volume.

A low-pass RC filter is used to cut any high frequency noise.

The word synthesis is done with an SAMD21G18 micro controller, running with an Arduino Zero bootloader.

You must always power the board with 5v. Text is sent to the board thru USB Serial communication or by UART connection. There is a level shifter so a 5v (Arduino UNO, etc) or a 3.3v (Arduino Zero, Raspberry Pi, etc.) micro controller can be used. Both can work simultaneously.

The default serial speed is 9600, but the speed can be changed by editing the file ‘setup.txt’ found in the SD card. In this file you can also change the bit rate (default 22050), the bit resolution (default 8 bits), and the speed of the text (default 100).

An error LED is turned on when a word is not found in the SD card. Also there is a test button, so you can hear that the board is working

Software

The Text-To-Speech board has an SD card where all the words pronunciation are stored.

When a text is sent to the Text-To-Speech board, the word synthesis begins, it quickly finds the words pronunciation in the SD card from your picked language/voice folder and word synthesis for the sentence begins.

No need to install any library. Power it up with 5v, connect it by using only one pin (Tx pin) to an Arduino compatible (3.3v or 5v) or a Raspberry Pi and just send your text thru your serial port.

So far they created 4 packages:

7,000 English words package language using a real human voice from Wikipedia project
20,000 English words by using the software from http://espeak.sourceforge.net
10,000 German words by using the software from http://espeak.sourceforge.net
10,000 French words by using the software from http://espeak.sourceforge.net.

The TextToSpeech board is available on Kickstarter through June 27 starting at $24 or $36 (with SD card), with shipments due in September. More information may be found on InvIoT’s TextToSpeech Kickstarter page.

Pine64 launches new set of hardware boards.

Posted on 9 May, 2019 by Ayo Ayibiowu

The FOSDOM, is a free event for software & hardware developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate with each other that has also turned to an avenue where organizations, startups, and even lone wolfs use to launch or announce their latest line of technological solutions. The FOSDOM 2019 also continues the same trend with Pine64 launching a new series of hardware-based products, a pattern they continue after doing so before.

Pine64 came to limelight with the launch of their supposed Raspberry Pi killer called the Pine A64 in 2015, that was launched on Kickstarter and even grossed over $1 million but never live up to its mission of killing off the Raspberry Pi despite its mouthwatering $15 unit cost. The same fate that came upon the Pine A64 has fallen on tens of other similar boards, and the Raspberry Pi is still standing strong and not going down anything soon.

Some of the exciting products debuted by Pine64 during the event are shown below:

The Pine H64 Model B
The Rock64 Revision 3

The Pine H64 Model B

The Pine H64 Model B is a replacement of its predecessor the Pine64 H64 which was also announced at last year’s FOSDEM event. The Pine H64 shares similar attributes with the older H64, but a significant change is the board footprint which replicates the smaller Rock64 footprint as compared to the bigger H64 size. The board is built around the Allwinner H6, a quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 SoC with a Mali-T720 MP2 dual-core GPU capable of 4K60 playback and HDR

Like its predecessor, the board comes in three variants and costs $25 for the 1GB version, $35 for the 2GB version, and $45 for the 3GB version.

The device specification

SoC: Allwinner H6 (Quad-core, Arm Cortex A53-based processor)
GPU: Dual-core Mali-T720 MP2
Storage:
- eMMC flash module
- Micro SD card
Video: HDMI 2.0a output
Audio: 3.5mm stereo earphone
Connectivity:
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Wi-Fi
- Bluetooth
USB:
- 2 x USB 2.0 host & 1 x USB 3.0 host
Expansion:
- 2 x 20 Raspberry Pi 2-compatible GPIO header
- Mini-PCIe connector
- Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module header
- SDIO 3.0
- UART
IR receiver

The Rock64 Revision 3

Pine64 has launched a new revision for their well know Rock64 board. The Rock64 is the most popular and successful board ever created by the Pine64 team, and the board is one of those developers somehow found peace with. The ROCK64 is a credit card size 4K60P HDR10 Single Board Computer powered by Rockchip RK3328 Quad-Core ARM Cortex A53 64-Bit Processor and supports up to 4GB 1600MHz LPDDR3 memory. It provides eMMC module socket, MicroSD Card slot, Pi-2 Bus, Pi-P5+ Bus, USB 3.0 and many other peripheral devices interface for makers to integrate with sensors and devices.

The new version 3 of the board adds the below:

Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) support
A Real Time Clock (RTC)
Improved Raspberry Pi I/O compatibility
Minor improvements
- support for high-speed micro SD Cards.

Just like the older models, the pricing will remain the same with the 1GB model priced at $24.95, the 2GB model at $34.95, and the 4GB model at $44.95.

More information about the new products is available on their product page for The Pine H64 Model B and The Rock64 Revision 3. Other products announced can be found here as well.

LIS2DTW12 – Temperature sensor combined with a 3-axis MEMS accelerometer

Posted on 9 May, 2019 by mixos

The LIS2DTW12 is an ultra-low-power high-performance three-axis linear accelerometer and temperature sensor belonging to the “femto” family which leverages on the robust and mature manufacturing processes already used for the production of micromachined accelerometers.

The device has user-selectable full scales of ±2g/±4g/±8g/±16g and is capable of measuring accelerations with output data rates from 1.6 Hz to 1600 Hz.
The LIS2DTW12 has an embedded 0.8 °C (typ. accuracy) temperature sensor with ODRs ranging from 50 to 1.6 Hz and resolution from 8 to 12 bits.
The LIS2DTW12 has an integrated 32-level first-in, first-out (FIFO) buffer allowing the user to store data in order to limit intervention by the host processor.
The embedded self-test capability allows the user to check the functioning of the sensor in the final application.
The device has a dedicated internal engine to process motion and acceleration detection including free-fall, wakeup, highly configurable single/double-tap recognition, activity/inactivity, stationary/motion detection, portrait/landscape detection and 6D/4D orientation.
The LIS2DTW12 is available in a small thin plastic land grid array package (LGA) and it is guaranteed to operate over an extended temperature range from -40 °C to +85 °C.

Key Features

Ultra-low power consumption: 50 nA in power-down mode, below 1 µA in active low-power mode
Very low noise: down to 1.3 mg RMS in low-power mode
0.8 °C (typ. accuracy) embedded temperature sensor
Multiple operating modes with multiple bandwidths
Android stationary detection, motion detection
Supply voltage, 1.62 V to 3.6 V
Independent IO supply
±2g/±4g/±8g/±16g full scale
High-speed I²C/SPI digital output interface
Single data conversion on demand
16-bit accelerometer data output
12-bit temperature data output
Self-test
32-level FIFO
10000 g high shock survivability
ECOPACK, RoHS and “Green” compliant

more information and samples ordering on www.st.com

X-FAB Offers Unique Substrate Coupling Analysis Solution to Address Unwanted Parasitic Effects

Posted on 9 May, 2019 by mixos

Powerful new tool facilitates first-time-right analog & high voltage design implementation in even the most challenging of scenarios.

Continuing to drive innovation in analog/mixed-signal IC fabrication, X-FAB Silicon Foundries SE (http://www.xfab.com/) has announced the introduction of SubstrateXtractor.

Unwanted substrate couplings can impact modern IC developments, causing parasitic effects that are damaging to overall performance. Engineers have to deal with this by taking a slow and laborious ‘trial and error’ approach, which calls for the allocation of many hours of experienced engineers’ time while numerous different design iterations are made and then experimented with.

The objective of SubstrateXtractor is to change all that. Created in partnership with Swiss EDA software vendor PN Solutions, and based on its innovative PNAware product, this is the semiconductor industry’s first commercially available tool dedicated to addressing the simulation of large signal substrate parasitic effects. Working in conjunction with X-FAB’s established simulation libraries, it allows engineers to investigate where potential substrate coupling issues could occur and make the changes necessary to eliminate them (via better floorplanning, guard rings, etc.) before the initial tape-out has even begun.

Through it, engineers will gain full visibility of all the active and passive elements within the substrate and be able to experiment with different simulations in order to find a design concept that delivers maximum substrate coupling immunity within the project’s particular parametric constraints. Furthermore, they are able to determine the minimum number of substrate contacts and guard rings needed for a project, no matter how complex and sophisticated it is – thereby resulting in more effective utilization of the available area.

“By employing the SubstrateXtractor tool, layout engineers will be able to uncover any adverse substrate effects early on in the development cycle and subsequently mitigate them,” explains Joerg Doblaski, Director of Design Support at X-FAB. “This will make IC implementation procedures far more streamlined and quicker to complete, avoiding the need to rework designs to increase levels of optimization, and resulting in significant cost savings.”

SubstrateXtractor is set to dramatically reduce the number of design iterations required – leading to much lower engineering overheads. This results in a faster time to market making a first-time-right analog design possible. From now onwards this functionality will be integrated into X-FAB’s process design kit (PDK) and available for use with the company’s popular XH018 (https://www.xfab.com/technology/cmos/018-um-xh018/) high voltage 0.18µm mixed-signal CMOS offering. A version for the power management process XP018 will soon follow. A detailed webinar on this valuable new tool will be hosted on May 22nd and 23rd. For details and to register, click here (https://register.gotowebinar.com/rt/7742535881476974860).

Zita V2 – 3 axis wireless gyroscope

Posted on 9 May, 2019 by mixos

Zita V2 is a tiny and lightweight 3 axis wireless gyroscope with PPM output option. The project is live on kickstarter and has 10 days to go.

Perfect for FPV head tracking, robotics, movement control and why not video games. The 3 axis motion sensor gyroscope allows you to track the movement of the head or arm and replicate it to servos. Like the wired version Iota V2, the Zita V2 can be configured as normal or reverse action mode but wirelessly! It can also outputs signals in PPM. For Do It Yourself (DIY) home project lover who dreams of doing a head tracking system FPV themselves. This system has been specially designed for DIY in electronics or robotics for all ages people who wants to explore electronics and want their own system, but are less comfortable with advanced programming of accelerometers. You can use one or more axes (X, Y, Z) independently. According to your needs.

Zita V2 – 3 axis wireless gyroscope – [Link]

Smart algorithm triples service life of power supplies

Posted on 8 May, 2019 by mixos

New modulation method increases operational lifetime of switching power units through digital, highly dynamic control and the use of film capacitors.

Switching power units are used for the power supply of many electrical devices, e.g. computers, LED lights or laser welding equipment. They convert alternating current from the mains into the direct current required by the device. A frequent cause of failure of technical devices is the failure of the integrated power supply units. These thus limit the service live of the devices or require more frequent service intervals.

The electrolytic capacitors used in the power unit are particularly susceptible to faults. They buffer electrical energy and smooth voltage fluctuations over a mains period. Electrolytic capacitors offer a high energy density and are mostly regulated analogously. Film capacitors, on the other hand, would be much more durable. However, due to their lower energy density, these require ten times the installation space for the same capacity.

Scientists at the Light Technology Institute (LTI) at KIT have developed a new modulation process for the digital and highly dynamic control of power supply units that enables the use of film capacitors with only little increased installation space. For the first time, the method allows the output current to be controlled taking into account the DC link voltage and output voltage, whereby frequency and duty factor are possible control variables. The inclusion of these variables makes the control more robust, safer and faster. Input and output voltages are also considered, which improves control inaccuracies.

As a result of the longer operational lifetime of the film capacitors used, the failure rate of the switching power units can be reduced and thus the durability of the terminal devices can be increased many times over. Reduced maintenance effort is particularly useful in places that are difficult to access or with high-quality devices, e.g. electric cars. Due to the accuracy and flexibility of the highly dynamic control, power supply units of this type are particularly advantageous for industrial applications with high dynamic requirements. In addition, Internet of Things integration for remote diagnosis or remote maintenance is also possible without any problems.

A functional prototype was set up at the institute and measurement results, including lifetime measurements, are available. KIT is looking for industrial partners to develop application-specific, high-quality power supplies in the premium segment.

Further information: https://www.kit-technology.de/en/technology-proposals/details/664/