Adafruit Industries

NEW PRODUCTS – Ultra Flexible White LED Strips – 480 per meter – 5m long – Warm White + ...

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 23:00:16 GMT

NEW PRODUCTS – Ultra Flexible White LED Strips – 480 per meter – 5m long – Cool White + Warm White

Here at Adafruit we love discovering new and exotic glowing things. Like moths to the flame, we were intrigued by these ‘chip on board’ ultra-flexible white LED Strips with 480 SMT LEDs per meter, soldered side-by-side, and diffused with a silicone epoxy! They look a lot like neon or incandescent tubing or maybe really-nice EL wire, but without the need for expensive transformers, glass tubing, or inert gasses.

Unlike pixel-dot strips, these lights have a continuous, pure light source, and unlike our ‘Neon’ tubing, they’re much thinner and more flexible. (but don’t have a chunky diffused look)

They are extremely flexible and bendy, this particular strip features a Cool White non-addressable LED strip with a solid chunk of translucent silicone rubber as a diffuser on top of the LEDs and then encased in a sealed silicone tube that can be cut away. They look incredible, and super easy to use, and are a great way to make your projects light up!

The silicone makes for a strong, durable weather-proof casing. They’re not guaranteed for dunking underwater or long-term outdoor exposure but they’re durable enough for projects that have to survive the outdoors, like costumes, bike lighting, or festival decorations. Plus, with the adhesive backing, you can stick it where you please.

You’ll get a 5-meter long strip with 2 wires: black and red. Provide 9V (bright) to 12V (very bright!) and the strip starts to glow. The whole strip draws about 1.8 Amps maximum. We also have these in 1 meter long strips if you don’t need as much light. You can cut this strip down if you need to.

Note these are not ‘NeoPixel’ LED strips; you cannot turn on or off individual LEDs. This guide on analog RGB LED strip control will show you how it works – you’ll want a microcontroller with a PWM output, and N-MOSFETs or a ULN2803 to control the power to the entire LED element.

Now for the Warm White!

Unlike pixel-dot strips, these lights have a continuous, pure light source, and unlike our ‘Neon’ tubing, they’re much thinner and more flexible (but don’t have a chunky diffused look).

They are extremely flexible and bendy, this particular strip features a Warm White non-addressable LED strip with a solid chunk of translucent silicone rubber as a diffuser on top of the LEDs and then encased in a sealed silicone tube that can be cut away. They look incredible, and super easy to use, and are a great way to make your projects light up!

In stock and shipping now!

COVID-19 Vaccination Displays using CircuitPython #CircuitPython #COVID19 #Adafruit @jfurcean

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 20:58:25 GMT

John Furcean builds two COVID-19 vaccination displays, coded using CircuitPython:

I built a scrolling COVID-19 Vaccination display for both the Adafruit MatrixPortal M4 and the Adafruit MagTag using CircuitPython, and data from Our World in Data.

Our World in Data has aggregated massive data sets related to COVID-19. The vaccination data subset is available in a GitHub repository in csv format. They post:

Our complete COVID-19 dataset is a collection of the COVID-19 data maintained by Our World in Data. It is updated daily and includes data on confirmed cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and testing, as well as other variables of potential interest.

See details and program listings in the post here. Excellent!

Turning a Civil Defense Geiger Counter into a "Disco Containment Unit” @Hackaday @Hackadayio

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 20:06:32 GMT

Old Civil Defense survey meters like the V-715 are interesting conversation starters, but of very little practical use today. These devices were intended to be a sort of litmus test that survivors of a nuclear blast could use to determine when it was safe to venture out of their radiation shelter: if the needle on the meter moves, even when it’s on the most sensitive setting, you should probably go back inside. Since [Hamilton Karl] would (hopefully) never need such an indicator, he decided to have a little fun with this Cold War holdover and turn it into a Disco Containment Unit.

Since gathering and live events are dangerous, I tried to imagine a dystopian device that would safely contain a ‘radioactive’ mirror disco ball. I strived to maintain the charm of a civil defense era Victoreen geiger counter, with a few key modifications. The controls are kept to a minimum: Power, motor control, light toggle, and light mode. A geared motor drives a 3mm shaft through the center. The ball is surrounded by four Adafruit NeoPixels that I tediously soldered angled on tall header pins to direct the light precisely. A fifth RGB Led is placed in the rear of the device, underneath a clear indicator lens.

The brains of the operation are an Arduino nano clone, powered by eight AA batteries (wired 4 x 2 in series to output 6 volts). To top it all off, I painstakingly transposed the intro to “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees to play via piezo buzzer at boot.

The containment vessel uses 3D printed parts.

New Products 1/13/2021 Featuring Adafruit Plant Care Kit for micro:bit or CLUE! (Video)

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 19:30:49 GMT

New Products 1/13/2021 Featuring Adafruit Plant Care Kit for micro:bit or CLUE! (Video)

@tannewt’s focus for #circuitpython2021

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 19:17:02 GMT

2020 was a good year for CircuitPython and it’s community despite the immense challenges brought on by the pandemic. Like many prior years, we spent a lot of time bringing up a new platform and didn’t always do everything we had hoped. 2020’s platform focus for us was the ESP32-S2. It’s an amazing combination of value and functionality. In 2021, we’ll likely spend time on the ESP32-S3 and maybe even the ESP32-C3 and ESP32 (see below before getting too excited). We may also be surprised by new platforms that silicon vendors release during the year. Unfortunately, I can’t predict the future.

Despite the surprises, my two focuses largely remain unchanged from last year. A focus on community will always be a priority for me because that is how development of CircuitPython grows with minimal growing pains. My other focus continues to be CircuitPython code editing over BLE (though last year I was a bit vague on the goal). It’s totally ok by me that themes are unchanged. These common threads year-to-year demonstrate our consistent vision for CircuitPython. When we looked back at past annual thoughts on last week’s Deep Dive I was pleased to see the origins of the principals that have guided CircuitPython over the years. This focus has gotten us where we are and continues to guide us.

Community
Community has been a key part of CircuitPython since the beginning. Over the last four years, we’ve grown to over 26,000 accounts on Discord and 62 core contributors in 2020. We’re on the fore-front of support for the ESP32-S2 and have had many new folks join our community as a result. These new folks have been awesome, not only are they users of CircuitPython, but they have also become contributors. Hopefully some folks will become reviewers this year too! We must grow all groups of folks in order to continue growing.

Every year I like to reiterate the importance of community. Too often it’s ignored as a fundamental part of an open source project. I said it really well last year:

A focus on community is critical for a healthy open source project. All of us in the CircuitPython community have done a really good job at this so far. Despite that, we need to continue making community a priority because it is hard. It’s easy to think of an open source project as defined by its code and its features. The reality is that projects are defined by the people who work on the code, features, docs, tutorials, inspiration and community. Projects are made up of people that participate and what they contribute.

So, we must continue to focus on each other above all else. Take the time to help someone else. Teach them how to do something you know how to do and then ask them to do it. Not only do they learn something new, you also get another person to help you. It is very stressful to be the only person who knows how to do something. It makes it impossible to step away and relax. So remember, the second person to learn how to do something is the most important.

Mobile
I often hear folks wanting more advanced features in CircuitPython such as interrupts and concurrency. While I’m open to reviewing and merging these things, they aren’t a focus of mine. Making things as easy as possible for beginners is my focus. There will always be more work to do for this because there is no such thing as too easy. There are always bumps and hurdles when learning. One of the first hurdles today is having access to a computer.

Mobile phones are the most pervasive personal computer now. Tablets are also folks’ first computers. In February of last year I gave a talk about mobile vs desktop at PyCascades titled Python’s Next Decade and Us. CircuitPython needs to have a BLE-only workflow to bring folks without laptops or desktops into our community. This will also enable our existing community members to edit and tweak their code on-the-go, when away from their computer.

In 2019, I spent a bit of time prototyping a BLE workflow and a companion app called Glider. While this work got the idea on our bucket list of TODO items, it didn’t leave us with anything usable. This year my focus will be on the BLE foundation of that workflow. This work involves creating a device discovery and pairing process along with a protocol for reading and writing files to and from CircuitPython. Once we have this foundation we can experiment with ways to hook phone and tablet apps up to it for editing.

2021 is shaping up to be the perfect time to do this. The ESP32-C3 and micro:bit v2 are two strong reasons to have a USB-less CircuitPython. A BLE workflow would also enhance the usability of existing nRF52 boards and open up the possibility of CircuitPython on the ESP32.

Thank you all for being a part of CircuitPython’s growing community. Working with you all to continually improve CircuitPython is a pleasure. I’m so lucky to be able to do it every day. See below for other folks’ #circuitpython2021 thoughts.

#circuitpython2021 is our annual reflection on the state of CircuitPython. We’d love to hear from you too! See the kick-off post for all of the details. Here are all of the previous posts:

An Orrery/Planetarium driven by Raspberry Pis #PiDay #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 19:15:36 GMT

User DeMoor_Orrery on the Adafruit Forums has posted details on a beautiful wooden Orrery:

This planetarium (a mechanical model of the planets in our solar system) consists of 6 planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) who are in orbit around the sun. Each planet has its own Raspberry Pi Zero W, a stepper driver (Adafruit Motor Bonnet) and a stepper motor (NEMA 17).

On a website any date can be entered after which the website sends out a string with the positions for each of the planets. The Raspberry Pi picks the position up via WiFi, calculates the position and takes the steps necessary with the stepper motor.

A NeoPixel Heart FeatherWing #NeoPixels #AdafruitForums @Adafruit

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 19:01:17 GMT

Adafruit Forums user fbutkovich has designed a beautiful FeatherWing for the Feather M0.

This NeoPixel heart will be a valentines gift for my wife. My ultimate plan is to also plug onto the Feather M0, the Real-Time Clock FeatherWing and also the OLED WeatherWing, then have the whole thing display the number of days, minutes, seconds, etc. since me and my wife have been married, or it could display any other significant dates.

Black Mentorship in Tech #tech

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 18:56:00 GMT

My introduction to mentorship was unexpected.

Over 10 years ago, my friends and I wanted to start a video game studio. I was pretty decent at artist, but had no experience in programming – and so did my friends. At that time I didn’t know where to begin. One of my good friend said that his uncle might be able to help us get started. On a summer afternoon, he introduced me to Ted Pittman. At that time, I’ve never met someone that looked like me that was so knowledgeable about tech.

Ted has worked at high-tech companies all across the U.S. and Europe. In his spare time, he has developed rockets, tracking systems, gyroscopic engines and artificial intelligence software. He’d take us to a diner in Crown Heights and guided us on how we should start create our first game, then taught me programming basics. Although, I’ve put my indie game developer dreams on hold, I became an iOS developer for Adafruit, so things worked out for me. To have Ted as a mentor, meant that he can guide me through that experience — the experience of being the only black person in the room. His mentorship is and was gratfully appreciated.

If you are in need of mentorship, check these organizations out:

Gentlemen’s Factory

The Gentlemen’s Factory is the epicenter for today’s forward thinking multi-cultural man. It is a home for entrepreneurs, thought leaders, activists, creatives and corporate professionals alike.

Christopher Lafayette’s Black Technology Mentorship Program

A mentor mentee program that inspires, educates, and brings underserved Black communities into technology. That also works with companies to enable impact through cultural training and development.

Black Girls Code

Black Girls Code is a nonprofit that seeks to introduce a new generation of young Black girls to technology in general and programming specifically.

#YesWeCode

#YesWeCode is a nationwide Dream Corps initiative aimed at helping 100,000 young men and women from underrepresented backgrounds find success in the tech industry.

Buck-Boost FeatherWing for 2-15V Battery Power @hackadayio

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 18:30:45 GMT

David Wilson has designed am add-on board to the Feather format sized board (“FeatherWing) to allow an Adafruit Feather project to be powered from a variety of standard batteries.

Adafruit’s Feather development boards and Wings are an exciting alternative to the Arduino ecosystem. The Feather can be powered from either a USB cable or from rechargeable Lithium Ion Polymer (LiPo) batteries. Want to power one from regular alkaline batteries like AA or 9V? This new board will make it easy. It is a standard FeatherWing form factor, with a barrel connector power input that will accept any voltage from 2V to 15V. A TPS63070 buck-boost switching regulator converts this to 3.3V to power the Feather stack.

See more on Hackaday.

Adafruit’s Top Ten New Products of 2020 #AdafruitTopTen

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 17:00:47 GMT

Adafruit’s Top Ten New Products of 2020 #AdafruitTopTen

To retire this very long year in the books, here are our top 10 New Products from 2020!

10. Adafruit PMSA003I Air Quality Breakout – STEMMA QT / Qwiic

Breathe easy, knowing that you can track and sense the quality of the air around you with this Adafruit PMSA003I Air Quality Breakout. This sensor is great for monitoring air quality, in a compact plug-in format.

Best of all, unlike almost all other sensors we’ve seen that are UART interface, this one is an I2C interface, which makes it a great match for single-board Linux computers like Raspberry Pi, or even plain Arduino UNO’s that normally would use software serial.

If you’re an I2C fan (who isn’t?), we’ve included two of our handy dandy SparkFun Qwiic compatible STEMMA QT connectors for the I2C bus so you don’t even need to solder! Plug and play with other ‘QT boards and sensors to add quick air quality sensing.

9. Adafruit Bonsai Buckaroo – micro:bit & CLUE Plant Care Helper

We can’t wait for spring to arrive, and we’re looking forward to caring for some plants! We designed this little add-on for micro:bit or CLUE boards – bolt it on with 5 screws to get a buzzer/beeper, motor driver, and breakouts for connecting a soil sensor (two alligator clips + nails work just fine). Simple, but effective!

8mm Buzzer/Speaker on pin P0 – have your plant kit beep when it wants watering, or have it sing a song when it’s nice and happy.
3V Motor control (on/off) on pin P2 – connect to a water pump to automatically water dry plants
Alligator clip pads for pin P1, 3V, and GND – connect to two alligator clips and nails to measure soil resistance

Works with micro:bit in Arduino, MicroPython, or MakeCode. For CLUE, you can use CircuitPython or Arduino.

8. Adafruit CLUE – nRF52840 Express with Bluetooth LE

Do you feel like you just don’t have a CLUE? Well, we can help with that – get a CLUE here at Adafruit by picking up this sensor-packed development board. We wanted to build some projects that have a small screen and a lot of sensors. To make it compatible with existing projects, we made it the same shape and size as the BBC micro:bit and with the same edge-connector on the bottom with 5 big pads so it will fit into your existing robot kit or ‘bit add-on.

7. Adafruit Matrix Portal – CircuitPython Powered Internet Display

Folks love our wide selection of RGB matrices and accessories for making custom colorful LED displays… and our RGB Matrix Shields and FeatherWings can be quickly soldered together to make the wiring much easier. But what if we made it even easier than that? Like, no solder, no wiring, just instant plug-and-play? Dream no more – with the Adafruit Matrix Portal add-on for RGB Matrices, there’s never been an easier way to create powerful Internet-connected LED displays.

6. Adafruit Voice Bonnet for Raspberry Pi -Two Speakers + Two Mics

Your Raspberry Pi computer is like an electronic brain – and with the Adafruit Voice Bonnet, you can give it a mouth and ears as well! Featuring two microphones and two 1 Watt speaker outputs using a high-quality I2S codec, this Pi add-on will work with any Raspberry Pi with a 2×20 connector – from the Pi Zero up to the Pi 4 and beyond (basically all but the very first ones made).

The on-board WM8960 codec uses I2S digital audio for great quality recording and playback – so it sounds a lot better than the headphone jack on the Pi (or the no-headphone jack on a Pi Zero). We put ferrite beads and filter capacitors on every input and output to get the best possible performance, and all at a great price.

We specifically designed this bonnet for use with making machine learning projects such as DIY voice assistants – for example, see this guide on creating a DIY Google Assistant. But you could do various voice-activated or voice recognition projects. With two microphones, basic voice position can be detected as well.

5. Adafruit Feather nRF52840 Sense

The Adafruit Feather Bluefruit Sense takes our popular Feather nRF52840 Express and adds a smorgasbord of sensors to make a great wireless sensor platform. This Feather microcontroller comes with Bluetooth Low Energy and native USB support featuring the nRF52840! This Feather is an ‘all-in-one’ Arduino-compatible + Bluetooth Low Energy with built-in USB plus battery charging. With native USB it works great with CircuitPython, too.

Like the Feather nRF52840, this chip comes with Arduino IDE support – you can program the nRF52840 chip directly to take full advantage of the Cortex-M4 processor, and then calling into the Nordic SoftDevice radio stack when you need to communicate over BLE. Since the underlying API and peripherals are the same for the ‘832 and ‘840, you can supercharge your older nRF52832 projects with the same exact code, with a single recompile!

This Feather is also a BLE-friendly CircuitPython board! CircuitPython works best with disk drive access, and this is the only BLE-plus-USB-native chip that has the memory to handle running a little Python interpreter. The massive RAM and speedy Cortex M4F chip make this a good match. Make centrals or peripherals with the ease of CircuitPython.

4. Raspberry Pi 400 – Full Computer Kit

Raspberry Pi 400 is a complete Raspberry Pi 4-based personal computer, integrated into a keyboard. The Pi 4 is the first computer from the Pi Foundation that really feels ‘desktop computer’ speed – you can use it as an everyday computer at a great price!

Normally you’d need to pick up a keyboard and other accessories to turn the Pi 4 into a functioning desktop – but since most keyboards have empty space in them, you can just cram the Pi 4 inside to make an all-in-one kit. Think of it like a modern Apple IIe, but super light and powerful.

3. Adafruit BrainCraft HAT – Machine Learning for Raspberry Pi 4

The idea behind the BrainCraft HAT is that you’d be able to “craft brains” for Machine Learning on the EDGE, with Microcontrollers & Microcomputers. On ASK AN ENGINEER, our founder & engineer chatted with Pete Warden, the technical lead of the mobile, embedded TensorFlow Group on Google’s Brain team about what would be ideal for a board like this.

And here’s what we designed! The BrainCraft HAT has a 240×240 TFT IPS display for inference output, slots for camera connector cable for imaging projects, a 5-way joystick, button for UI input, left and right microphones, stereo headphone out, stereo 1 W speaker out, three RGB DotStar LEDs, two 3 pin STEMMA connectors on PWM pins so they can drive NeoPixels or servos, and Grove/STEMMA/Qwiic I2C port. This will let people build a wide range of audio/video AI projects while also allowing easy plug-in of sensors and robotics!

A controllable mini fan attaches to the bottom and can be used to keep your Pi cool while doing intense AI inference calculations. Most importantly, there’s an On/Off switch that will completely disable the audio codec, so that when it’s off there’s no way it’s listening to you.

2. Adafruit MagTag – 2.9″ Grayscale E-Ink WiFi Display

The Adafruit MagTag combines the new ESP32-S2 wireless module and a 2.9″ grayscale E-Ink display to make a low-power IoT display that can show data on its screen even when power is removed! The ESP32-S2 is great because it builds on the years of code and support for the ESP32 and also adds native USB support so you can use this board with Arduino or CircuitPython!

We designed this board to be low-power friendly – with a spot for a 350 or 420 mAh battery and built-in battery charging over USB C. During deep sleep, with the NeoPixels and speaker amplifier disabled, we measured 250uA power draw so you can run for a few weeks between charges.

And of course, the Mag in MagTag stands for magnetic. We have four M3 standoffs that will work perfectly with these mini magnet feet. (Originally they’re designed for RGB Matrices but they’ll do an excellent job here as well). Screw on the feet and you can attach this display to a metallic shelf, fridge, or bench.

1. Adafruit QT Py – SAMD21 Dev Board with STEMMA QT

What a cutie pie! Or is it… a QT Py? This diminutive dev board comes with our favorite lil chip, the SAMD21 (as made famous in our GEMMA M0 and Trinket M0 boards).

This time it comes with our favorite connector – the STEMMA QT, a chainable I2C port that can be used with any of our STEMMA QT sensors and accessories.

OLEDs! Inertial Measurement Units! Sensors a-plenty. All plug-and-play thanks to the innovative chainable design: SparkFun Qwiic-compatible STEMMA QT connectors for the I2C bus so you don’t even need to solder! Just plug in a compatible cable and attach it to your MCU of choice, and you’re ready to load up some software and measure some light.

Honorable Mention:

Adafruit Prop-Maker Starter Kit – Make your own Lightsaber!

Szoom woom woom!

Use the force and Adafruit Feather to build a battle-grade lightsaber! If you can’t make the hyperspeed jump to Ilum for your Jedi rite of passage, the Adafruit Prop-Maker Starter Kit is perfect for making your very own 3D-printed NeoPixel Lightsaber. It contains practically everything but the khyber crystal, and you get 25% off the price of purchasing all the parts separately!

Use your maker skills and become the Jedi (or Sith!) you were meant to be! Construct your own lightsaber using 3D printed parts and electronics from Adafruit. This advanced prop uses an accelerometer to detect swings and hits to trigger super-bright NeoPixels with full-sound FX!

PiStation 2: Raspberry Pi 4 Inside Playstation 2 #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 17:00:15 GMT

Who needs a PS5 anyway?

via Farizno on instructables

For quite some time I’ve wanted to put a Raspberry Pi inside of a Playstation 2 housing with the goal of being able to use it as a retro gaming system as well as the option to use it as a Linux computer via the Raspberry Pi desktop. One of the main goals of the project is to make it look as close to a “stock” PS2 as possible while still being able to easily connect peripherals via the USB 2.0, USB 3.0, HDMI, and ethernet ports on the Raspberry Pi. I’ve seen where people have used the expansion bay as a panel for mounting the Raspberry Pi while still having access to most of the ports, but I wanted to also be able to connect internally to other devices via the USB, and I also wanted to be able to position the Pi near the PS2 fan to be able to use it as additional cooling. Internally, I wanted to use a USB 3.0 port to connect a SATA hard drive for extra storage capacity for media, ROMs, and other programs.

Keeping Your Garage Secure Using a Raspberry Pi #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 16:00:00 GMT

A smart garage door means added security. To circumvent his forgetful nature Andrew Swoboda over on Trip Wire posted about his project to monitor the garage door:

When the garage door was in an open state, the Raspberry PI would notify me. This notification repeats every hour until the garage door is in a closed state. To enable notifications, I configured the Raspberry PI to send emails using Google’s Gmail API. Google’s API allowed the Raspberry Pi to send me notifications to alert me of a state change or if the door has been left open. A state change notification is nice if you have a means to shut the garage door. Using the API, the PI can also check for new email and determine if there was a response to a notification. If the garage door is in an open state and there was reply from the correct email address with the correct password, the Raspberry PI would close the garage door.

Read more and check out the code on Github.

The Secret Apple M1 AMX: Apple Matrix Coprocessor #ReverseEngineering #M1 #Apple @Apple @erikengheim

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 15:40:10 GMT

Erik Engheim posts on Medium about Developer Dougall Johnson thoroughly reverse engineering the Apple M1 processor, uncovering a secret powerful coprocessor dubbed AMX: Apple Matrix coprocessor.

A matrix is basically just a table of numbers. If you have worked with spreadsheets such as Microsoft Excel, you have basically worked with something very similar to matrices. The key difference is that in math such tables of numbers have a laundry list of operations they support and specific behavior.

The reason matrices are important is because they are heavily used in:

Image processing

Machine learning

Speech and handwriting recognition

Face recognition

Compression

Multimedia: audio and video

In particular machine learning which has been hot these last years. Just adding more cores to the CPU will not make this run fast enough as it is really demanding. You really need specialized hardware. Regular tasks such browsing the internet, writing email, word processing and spreadsheets has been running fast enough for years. It is for specialized tasks which we really need to boost the processing power.

Why Is the AMX a Secret?

Yet Apple has indeed extended their ARM CPU cores with AMX instructions. How do we know? Apple has kept this a secret. There is no manual, publicly available, describing these instructions. However developer Dougall Johnson has done an amazing reverse engineering effort on the M1 to discover this coprocessor. His efforts are described here. For matrix related math operations Apple has special libraries or frameworks such as Accelerate, which is made up of:

vImage — higher level image processing, such as converting between formats, image manipulation.
BLAS — a sort of industry standard for linear algebra (what we call the math dealing with matrices and vectors).
BNNS — is used for running neural networks and training.
vDSP — digital signal processing. Fourier transformations, convolution. These are mathematical operations important in image processing or any signal really including audio.
LAPACK — higher level linear algebra functions, e.g. for solving linear equations.

Johnson wrote special programs to analyze and observe what these programs did to discover the special undocumented AMX machine code instructions.

Read Engheim’s analysis here.

Modern retro computer terminal designs #PiDay #Design #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 15:20:16 GMT

Oriol Ferrer Mesià has been working on case designs for modern computer terminals with retro stylings.

The goal for this project is to design, 3D-print and assemble the enclosures for several small desktop computers. This series was created during the covid19 pandemic, to get familiar with modern parametric 3D design tools, the limits of 3D printing and fabrication.

A screen size is chosen first, together with the desired components, and then an enclosure is designed around all the constrains (including FDM 3D printing limitations).

All of these have been designed in Autodesk Fusion360 and printed at home on an inexpensive Creality Ender 3.

See all the designs and parts in the post here.

Amazon Echo Dot 3rd Gen Smart Speaker with Clock Teardown #Alexa #IoT #InternetOfThings ...

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 14:55:34 GMT

Brian Dorey provides a teardown of the Amazon Alexa Echo Dot 3rd generation with a clock.

Most of this Echo Dot is the same as the normal 3^rd gen model with the main differences on the processor board and the clock board.

This version of the Echo Dot uses the same MediaTek MT8516BAAA processor but the combined DDR ram and NAND memory chip on the original Echo has been replaced with two chips. A MT41K128M16JT-107 DDR3 2Gb RAM chip provides the memory while a MT29F4G08ABAFAH4-IT 4Gb Serial NAND Flash chip provides the storage.

The underside of the top PCB contains most of the components found inside the Echo Dot. An array of 12 RGB LEDs is located around the edge of the board. The LEDs are driven using an ISSI IS31FL3236 36 channel LED driver.

Four microphones are placed next to the buttons and these feed into two TLV320ADC3101 chips from Texas Instruments. The TLV320ADC3101 is a Stereo ADC with an embedded mini digital signal processor. The Echo dot uses the four microphones to locate the direction the voice is coming from and filter out background noise.

In the centre of the PCB is a metal shield. Under the shield you will find a MediaTek MT7658CSN dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth controller with an ARM Cortex-R4 CPU. The MT7658CSN manages communication to WiFi and Bluetooth devices and connects to two PCB antennas located on the outer edges of the board.

There is also a Fairchild 74LCX74 dual D-Type flip-flop which appears to switch the microphones on and off.

See the video below and more on the blog post here.

Yarh.io comes out with two Raspberry Pi handheld computers #PiDay #RaspberryPi @Raspberry_Pi

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 14:54:54 GMT

Yarh.io (Yet Another Raspberry Pi Handheld) has come out with two computers based on the Raspberry Pi.

The YARH.IO Micro 2 is a Raspberry Pi 3B+ based Hacker’s Linux Handheld

The YARH.IO Micro 2 has been made with hackers in mind, for computer experts who uses their technical knowledge to achieve new goals and overcome computer system limitations by non-standard or ‘hackable’ means.

YARH.IO Micro 2 project continues to take on the challenge of building a full featured, micro sized handheld, based on Raspberry Pi 3B+, 4″ touch screen and Bluetooth keyboard without touchpad.

YARH.IO Micro 2 can run Raspberry Pi OS or Kali Linux. It uses a Pimoroni Hyper Pixel 4″ IPS 800×480 display and has a single, removable, high capacity Fenix ARB-L18-3500U 3500mAh Li-ion USB Rechargeable Battery.

An Arduino proMicro module controls the battery voltage. The module reads battery and power supply voltage, making the results available over I2C bus to the Raspberry Pi and to various custom build applications. The module also controls power LED as a way to indicate battery charge status.

With the Arduino IDE installed, it is possible to program the proMicro directly on the device, to customize battery charge LED indicator, and to add other creative functionality.

A DS3231 High Precision RTC Clock Module is used to store current time and date for the Raspberry Pi.

And the larger YARH.IO MKI Raspberry Pi 3B+ Hackable Linux Handheld

For this model, the width of the main module is based on the keyboard dimensions for improved handling. The 5″ Resistive Touch Screen 800×480 HDMI TFT LCD Display is a good option for YARH.IO as it will allow you to perform all of the usual tasks with ease. A Fosmon Portable Lightweight Mini Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard Controller has been selected as the best option for YARH.IO’s multifunctional design.

It uses a high capacity Fenix ARB-L21-5000 5000mAh Li-ion and includes a DS3231 High Precision RTC Clock Module.

Raspberry Pi GPIO connector is also available on the bottom of the main module, allowing for different add-on modules, including Lora radios, RFID readers/writers, and IR transceivers, to be mounted inside the extension module. This configuration works extremely well with Pi-DAC+, creating a great handheld audio player.

See more on their website here.

Pi Wars 2021 – Online tickets now on sale! – Event is on 23rd & 24th January #PiDay ...

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 14:15:17 GMT

The Pi Wars team is delighted to announce that tickets for our 2021 Online Conference are now available. They are free but everyone viewing the Conference must have one. That’s one per device watching. You will need to register for the Hopin.to platform to get your ticket and get access to the Conference content.

There are two types of tickets, so please make sure you get the one that is appropriate for you and your viewing group:

Under 18s – please ensure you have permission from a parent or guardian to attend.
Adults – there is another type of ticket for you.

You can get your tickets here.

A provisional running order for the two-day Conference is available here. Please note, this is subject to change, addition and refinement as we get closer to the event.

VMware on a Raspberry Pi via an ESXi Install! #VMware #PiDay #RaspberryPi @RaspberryPi @networkchuck

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 14:05:52 GMT

Network Chuck shows us how to install VMware ESXi on Raspberry Pi via a step-by-step process.

VMware is cool because it’s Virtual Machine software big companies use on huge servers, but you can deploy it on a Raspberry Pi and learn how to use it in the comfort of your own home, following Chuck’s instructions.

See the video below and the post here.

Using zram with the Raspberry Pi #piday #raspberrypi @Raspberry_Pi

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 14:00:52 GMT

via PiMyLifeUp

zram is a Linux kernel module that is designed to create a compressed block within your RAM that can be used as swap memory or as a temporary disk.

Data inserted into this portion of the memory will automatically be compressed. This compression allows you to fit more data into your memory.

Swap memory makes up a part of Linux’s virtual memory system and is used as a spill over to prevent out of memory errors.

$1.9 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Proposal – Battery market, artificial intelligence, wireless ...

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 13:55:00 GMT

From the $1.9 Trillion COVID-19 Relief Proposal: video –

WE’LL FOCUS ON SMALL BUSINESSES ON MAIN STREET. WE’LL FOCUS ON MINORITY SMALL BUSINESSES, WOMEN-OWNED SMALL BUSINESSES AND GETTING THEM THE RESOURCES THEY NEED TO REBUILD.

AMERICAN MANUFACTURING WAS THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY IN WORLD WAR II. IT WILL BE SO AGAIN.

…

IMAGINE A FUTURE MADE IN AMERICA. ALL MADE IN AMERICA AND ALL BY AMERICANS.

WE’LL USE TAX PAYERS DOLLARS TO REBUILD AMERICA. WE’LL BUY AMERICAN PRODUCTS, SUPPORTING MILLIONS OF AMERICAN JOBS.

IMAGINE HISTORIC INVESTMENTS THIS RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, TO SHARPEN AMERICA’S INNOVATIVE EDGE IN MARKETS WHERE GLOBAL INITIATIVE IS UP FOR GRABS. THE BATTERY MARKET, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY, CLEAN ENERGY.

IMAGINE AMERICAN JOBS AND INGENUITY LEADING THE WORLD.