OSHW Audi style Bike Turn Signal LED Lights soldering kit is ready for Open Fest Workshop

Bike-TSL-Kit now is ready and we are looking forward to see you at Open Fest Workshop.

As always the workshop will be free to participate.

Do not forget to book kit by e-mail to info@olimex.com for Open Fest Workshop, as we will have just 100 kits for the workshop.

If you have soldering iron, twizzers and cutters take them with you as we will provide 6 sets, but previous workshops proven there will be long tail of people wanting to participate/solder and having soldering tools will spare you the waiting.

Here is small video clip how Bike-TSL-Kit works when assembled:

We are looking forward to see you there and have fun together!

Come to Open Source Hardware Day on October 19th in Plovdiv and learn about how Open Source Hardware is made.

The Open Source Hardware Association OSHWA.org choose October 2019 to be month of the OSHW. The idea is to have events all around the world which to popularize Open Source Hardware.

Here you can see the full list of registered OSHW events you may find interesting event in your country.

On October 19th in Plovdiv is the Open Source Day. It will be held at SiteGround and starts 11.00.

Come to learn about:

• What is Open Source Hardware;
• How to design electronic boards with KiCad;
• How to prepare your files for PCB production;
• Where to source your components from EU/USA/China;
• How to assembly your boards;
• How to certify your project as OSHW;
• How to organize crowdfunding for your OSHW project production;

As all other events organized by TuxCon, SiteGround and Olimex  this will be free to participate.

Open Source Hardware boards for NB-IoT technology presented at RuseConf 2019

RuseConf is part of IT-Tour. Every year IT-Tour organize conferences in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Ruse, Burgas, Veliko Tarnovo. They are all made by volunteers and completely free to participate. The idea is to encourage local IT community to share ideas and interesting talks.

This weekend on 28th of September was RuseConf and Olimex presented there our newest NB-IoT boards.

NB-IoT-DevKit boards will be on our web for sale next week with sale price per one unit EUR 18.00. They employ the NB-IoT technology which uses existing LTE 4G network to implement LPWAN.

The NB-IoT devices use low power and can operate on battery for 10 years if network traffic is less 200 bytes per day (this may seems small but SigFox for instance allow 2 to 140 uploads of 12 bytes messages per day. NB-IoT has no restrictions and limits, but if have to be careful as more traffic means more battery discharge. One GSM LTE base cell can connect up to 100 000 NB-IoT devices at same time ( but of course it no one talk on his GSM phone in this cell range) which beats LoRa gateway maximal theoretical 49 connections. Also the NB-IoT module we use has +20dB more sensitivity so if normally one Base cell can connect to NB-IoT nodes up to 10km this module has 10 time more sensitivity and can connect up to 100 km from the base cell. This of course is marketing claim theoretical claim as explained in the talk but still impressive.

The slides are in Bulgarian and English and uploaded at Slideshare.com

 

STM32MP1-OLinuXino development update, we managed to build Ubuntu 18.04.LTS with Linux Kernel 5.3. Now we need your feedback on GPIOs

One of the benefits to work with European SOC vendor and distributors – just few days after we show interest in the new STM32MP1 series of SOCs DHL come with one big carton where we got STM32MP151AAC and STM32MP157AAA3 samples plus the most comprehensive ST kit with all features of the high end STM32MP157AAA3. The credits go to EBV as we got these totally free of charge. The kit came with comprehensive documentation for both board, software support etc. In regard of customer friendliness Chinese SOC vendors has long way to go.

We needed one day to build our own Linux image as we didn’t like (no offense) the Yocto ST uses, so here is Ubuntu 18.04.LTS with Kernel 5.30 boot:

Overall we have very positive vibes that STM32MP1 is good candidate for new industrial grade OLinuXino-LIME2!

The specs of the STM32MP1-OLinuXino-LIME2 we work now are:

• STM32MP151AAC or STM32MP157AAA3 they are pin to pin compatible so one board will be used for both
• 1GB DDR3L industrial grade memory -45+90C
• Gigabit Ethernet with PoE plug-in option (*)
• AXP209 PMU with LiPo charger and step-up so everything works even with no external power supply
• two USB 2.0 high speed hosts
• USB-OTG 2.0
• HDMI+CEC
• LIME2 board shape and same connector positions
• replacing with CAN the SATA connector
• micro SD-card
• SPI/NAND/eMMC Flash on socket and different options(**)

(*) we love what Raspberry Pi did with their PoE hat, board which is working as normal, and have PoE functionality if PoE hat is attached. We intend to add such PoE feature to our other Allwinner boards too, but will take time to re-design them all.

(**) this is new experimental feature instead to keep many different LIME2 board versions which only differs the amount of flash on them. The Flash will be on plug in module, something which Odroid does for years and we do wonder why we didn’t do earlier, as now keeping so many versions of LIME, LIME2 and MICRO is killing our production manager and logistics :). If these Flash modules work as expected we will re-design our LIME, LIME2 and MICRO to use them also .

STM32MP1 series has some very unique features missing in Allwinner SOCs like:

• 6× I2C up to 1 Mbit/s
• 4× UART + 4× USART up to 12.5 Mbit/s, ISO7816, LIN, IrDA, SPI slave
• 6× SPI 50 Mbit/s, 3 FD I2S audio class accuracy
• 4× SAI stereo audio: I2S, PDM, SPDIF Tx
• SPDIF Rx with 4 inputs
• 8-14-bit camera interface up to 140 Mbyte/s
• 2× ADCs with 16-bit max. resolution 3.6-4.5Msps
• 2× 12-bit D/A converters 1 MHz

We will try to arrange GPIOs with similar functions so A20-LIME2 current customers to may exchange with STM32MP1-LIME2 if they want or to have second SOC choice, but we are open to listen to your tips and suggestions how to arrange the ADC/DAC signals and extra I2C, UARTS, SPIs on the GPIO1-GPIO4 connectors optimally.

STM32MP1 series has only one operating temperature range -45+125C.

Many people may think that on 650Mhz the Cortex-A7 cores are running slow, but this is because this SOC has to work reliable from -45 to +125C. All SOCs which run on extended temperature range run on lower speed clocks compared with same parts which run on commercial 0-70C. If you want to run your STM32MP1 board at home in non demanding apps, we are pretty sure you will be able to overclock it at much higher values and it will work, but when we talk industrial devices and reliable 24/7 operation the clocks are always announced with most conservative values.

The Open Source Hardware Linux board A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 is now supported by freedom respected Parabola GNU Linux-Libre distribution

Parabola GNU Linux-libre is derived from Arch (the GNU/Linux distribution) and provides packages from it that meet the Free System Distribution Guidelines (FSDG) and replacements for the packages that don’t meet this requirement.

The goal is to provide a fully freedom-respecting GNU+Linux distribution.

We are very happy to announce that now A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 is one of the supported boards.

Open Fest 2019 is approaching,the traditional Olimex Soldering Workshop this year will be: Pimp your bike with OSHW Audi type turn signal lights

Open Fest is the biggest and most anticipated Open Source Technology event in Bulgaria!

This year it will be held in Sofia Tech Park November 2nd and 3rd.

The site already has CFP link where you can submit your proposal for talk.

Olimex submitted proposal for the traditional Soldering Workshop.

This year we prepared very interesting Open Source Hardware kit: “Pimp your bike with Audi like turn signal lights”, here is teaser. We use x5 pcs 10mm round LEDs on bothe sides, total PCB length is around 20 cm.

and back side:

it comes with pair of switches which allow you to activate left and right side lights.

This design is made purely analog, no processors, no programming. The design files will be uploaded on our GitHub account so anyone who has no chance to come can do his own version. Also we will have the kits on our web for sale after OpenFest.

On the workshop we will explain how it works, so you will learn what resistor divider is, what analog comparator is and how we achieve the Audi effect with the LEDs.

As we are preparing only 100 kits and there may be lot of people who want to participate, we solicit you to pre-register at info@olimex.com to have kit reserved.

As always our number of soldering irons are limited, so if you have your own, bring it to the workshop with you to speed up the process 🙂

Looking forward to see you at Open Fest!

 

This is how Allwinner keep their promise for long term supply with Olimex

Today 39.6 K pcs A13 arrived to our warehouse. This is partial shipment of our 90 K pcs order placed in April, the balance is testing now and will be shipped this month. Allwinner produced these A13 SOC exclusively for us. As you can see from the label these left factory 27th of August 2019:

A13-OLinuXino was our first board with Allwinner SOC.

We released it 7 years ago back in 2012.

Although A13 is officially discontinued from Allwinner web site, A13-SOM and A13-OLinuXino are still very popular boards among our customers and we supply them in large quantity.

This is example how working Long Term supply can be achieved with company from China. Note that Allwinner do not say that they will stop manufacturing A13 after 10 years, they will keep producing as long as their masks are OK and there is demand.