First Steps with eduArdu workshop on 15th of December!

On December 15th together with our friends from TuxCon we will make workshop with our new educational board eduArdu in Olimex training building.

If you want to be part of this even come and join us, the event is free to participate.

We will show you how to use all eduArdu features with Arduino and Snap.

Be prepared to play games with fruits and people-touch, to make animations with LED matrix, to generate music, detect intruders with the PIR sensors, to switch on and off air conditioners and even create music instruments!

Educators may apply for free board which to receive at this event.

 

eduArdu is new Open Source Hardware educational board targeting kid’s digital education

Few weeks ago we got contacted by Digital Kidz an non for profit foundation which goals are to support digital literacy and innovative education in the schools. They needed hardware board, which to be easy to use and to allow entry level programming with Scratch and Arduino for beginners. They were ready to pay for the development, but we liked the idea and decided to design one such board for free and release it as Open Source Hardware.

The result is here:

The design is based on ATmega32U4 which is easily programmable with Arduino IDE. We named it “eduArdu” as this is educational board programmable with Arduino.

eduArdu has these features:

• USB connector for programming and power supply
• red LED matrix 8×8 which allow text and small image animations
• X-Y Joystick with push button for navigation
• Microphone for Audio sensing and interactions
• Speaker for Audio output
• Light sensor with LDR
• Digital temperature sensor
• RGB LED
• Status LED
• IR remote control LED and receiver to talk to other boards, TVs, Air conditioners, etc.
• PIR motion detector up to 6 meter range
• UltraSound distance measurement sensor
• Two SERVO motor connectors (to build easily two wheel robot car)
• LiPo charger so the whole board may work on LiPO power
• 6 Makey-Makey style buttons
• UEXT connector for additional modules

The board is shaped like Game console. The first prototypes will be ready in 2 weeks.

Target sale price is EUR 15.00

ESP32-GATEWAY-EA revision with external antenna is in stock

Our popular ESP32-GATEWAY board now have revision with external antenna ESP32-GATEWAY-EA. Metal enclosure is on the way too.

New ESP32 Development board in stock ESP32-DevKit-Lipo target handheld applications with build in LiPo charger

ESP32-DevKit-Lipo is pin to pin compatible with Espressif ESP32-CoreBoard (ESP32-DevKitC) board, but adds additional LiPo charger and battery connector, allowing board to work from LiPo battery when external power supply is missing.

Tomorrow 16.10 at SofUnitConf in Paradise Center in Sofia we will have Workshop with this board to show how easily it could be programmed with JavaScript and Espruino.

PlovdivConf 2018 is this Saturday!

PlovdivConf is part of IT Tour great initiative, to make regional IT conferences in 5 big cities in Bulgaria: Varna, Burgas, Ruse, Veliko Tarnovo and Plovdiv. They make it every year and it’s made by the same team which organize the biggest Open Source event in Bulgaria – OpenFest in Sofia.

As Open Fest is huge and there are usually more talks applications than time (OpenFest is just two days)  IT Tour decided to make these regional conferences where local people has more chances to talk on IT subjects.

This year I will have lecture at PlovdivConf and will talk about “How Open Source technologies can help to make our city better place to live”.

Plovdiv municipality recently show interest in Open Source and we will try to help with our expertise and experience. The initial subject they are looking for solutions are: Parking management, City Lighting management, Waste management, Transport management, Bicycle management, and so on. We are already working on FOSS/OSHW solution for all these problems. They are open though to any other subjects which could help them to do their job better, so if you have idea come and share.

In my talk I will try to show the advantages of the Open Source solutions. Everyone is welcome to join the conference. It’s free to attend and we will looking forward to hear you and have after lecture discussions and ideas exchange how we can make our cities better place to live.

 

EDIT-25.09.2018: I’ve just uploaded the translated to English slides on Slideshare. Please pardon errors it was done in no time 😉

ESP32-POE Open Source Hardware IoT development board with WiFi/BLE/100Mb Ethernet with 802.3 POE is in stock!

ESP32-POE board is now in stock. The prices start from EUR 14.36 for 50 pcs order.

This board offers Open Source Hardware / FOSS solution and building block for distributed sensor network with power over existing LAN infrastructure.

Possible use cases are Home automation, Industrial machine logging, remote environmental monitoring, access control, remote displays etc.

The board contains ESP32-WROOM-32 module with WiFi/BLE and Ethernet connectivity , RESET and USER buttons, micro SD card, LiPo battery charger and LiPo connector which allow board to work even with power supply drops.

The UEXT connector on the board can be used to connect many different sensors like:

• MOD-IRDA to send and receive IR commands
• MOD-RS485-ISO to connect to machines with RS485 interface
• MOD-MAG to measure magnetic field
• MOD-BME280 to precisely measure pressure, temperature, humidity
• MOD-LTR-501ALS  to measure light and color
• MOD-LCD2.8RTP LCD with touch panel for remote User Display and Interface
• MOD-IO four relay module for switching on and off devices
• MOD-RFID1356MIFARE RFID card reader

Si3402-B chipset takes care for the power over ethernet, it’s IEEE 802.3 compliant, including pre-standard (legacy).

Important notice, to keep board compact and as it’s main purpose is to connect to cloud different remote sensors there is no galvanic isolation between board and the power delivered by the LAN switch or router.

ESP32-POE has internal programming interface and you can program it with Espressif SDK or Arduino via USB cable. As the board is not galvanic isolated from the Ethernet power supply, before you connect the USB cable to your computer you should remove the Ethernet cable or you should use USB-ISO between your computer the ESP32-POE!

 

New ESP32 board teaser – Power Over Ethernet ESP32-POE is perfect for sensors using existing Ethernet wiring

You asked for it and we made it – this is one of our first prototypes of ESP32-POE board

• ESP32-WROOM-32 module
• UEXT connector
• CH340 for programming
• Si3402 PoE power managment
• 100Mb Ethernet
• Size 73 x 28 mm
• two GPIOs stripes spaced at 1″ on 0.1″ step
• Lipo battery charger
• USB programming/power supply connector
• micro SD card connector

These will be available for sale end of August.