ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo RISC-V development board with build in USB JTAG, WiFi, Bluetooth5, Lipo charger and 15 GPIOs

ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo is EUR 6.00 Open Source Hardware compact development board with:

• RISC-V running on 160Mhz
• 400KB RAM, 8K data RAM
• 4MB Flash
• Two headers (soldered) with power supply and GPIO signals
• ESP-PROG-C compatible rescue connector (if you mess with bootloader)
• USB-C for programming and JTAG debugging
• LiPo battery charger allowing handheld applications with single LiPo battery
• 4 mount holes

This is all you need to get started with RISC-V programming in C and Assembly.

Shteryana Shopova recently did RISC-V workshop with this board and explained how to setup your tools for programming and debugging. Here you can find her work.

S3-OLinuXino Open Source Hardware Linux dual camera board status uppdate April 2021

S3-OLinuXino is small open source hardware Linux computer with Ethernet, dual camera interface, running mainline uboot and Linux Kernel 5.12.

Our hardware went through few iterations, but last Revision.C now is in production and we will have it for sale on our web at the end of the April.

This board has small PoE plug-on top module which adds PoE functionality, so the whole setup board + cameras can be powered via Ethernet.

The camera connectors are made compatible with OV2640 2Mpix camera and Raspberry Pi Camera.

S3-OLinuXino has LCD connector where LCD-OLinuXino displays can be connected.

WiFi/BT module adds wireless functionality.

New OSHW board with STM32F303 now can have CAN and USB working at same time, operates from -40+85C and with power supply from 4.2-40VDC

OLIMEXINO-STM32F3 is re-design of our popular OLIMEXINO-STM32 board.

What is new?

• STM32F303RCT6TR is used which allow CAN and USB to work at the same time. The F1 Series of STM32 shared same buffer for both USB and CAN which leads to not be able to work with both CAN and USB at the same time. This is solved in F3 series
• Increased amount of memory: 256KB Flash, 40KB RAM
• Power supply is now from 4.2VDC up to 40VDC which allow OLIMEXINO-STM32F3 to work in Automotive applications without special power converters
• Industrial temperature grade -40+85C
• Real Time Clock backup battery holder for CR2032 Li battery
• Lower cost

The price of OLIMEXINO-STM32F3 is EUR 14.95 for single unit and drops to EUR 11.96 for 50+ pcs order.

Limited Quantity of the new ESP32-S2 multimedia and breadboard development boards from Espressif are in stock!

ESP32-S2 is new SOC from Espressif which is supposed to solve some issues with current ESP32 and ESP8266 SOC chips.

First issue S2 solves is the small number of GPIOs ESP32 has, specially if you want to use the Ethernet interface. ESP32-S2 comes with 37 GPIOs in nice 5x5mm QFN28 package. The SOC is single core 240Mhz processor with build in USB interface. The Bluetooth and Ethernet interfaces are removed.

Pricewise ESP32-S2 is cheaper than ESP32 but a bit more expensive than ESP8266.

ESP32-S2-WROOVER module comes with 2MB of RAM and 4MB of Flash and will be able to replace ESP8266 everywhere while having enough resources to run secure SSL connection.

Two development boards are available for ESP32-S2.

ESP32-S2-Saiola-1R is the low cost entry breadboard experimental board which includes ESP32-S2-WROVER module, USB programmer, RGB LED and couple of buttons.

It has all GPIOs exposed for experiments:

The second board is ESP32-S2-Kaluga-1 which is multimedia board with camera, microphone, audio codec, 3.2″ LCD with touch screen, speaker:

The kit comes with Camera module:

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and touch sensor plate:

Kaluga multimedia board is so new that still not have page at Espressif site, so all info is in their GitHub repository.

First Steps with Snap4Arduino and eduArdu tutorial in Bulgarian and video is GitHub

Our Bulgarian customers often blame us that we post and make documents in English, but we really think that if one decided to work in IT industry and deal with programming and electronics should learn English and supporting documentation in two languages just double the burden for us.

eduArdu is educational board targeting kids so it’s a different story. This is why we made small tutorial how to use eduArdu with Snap4Arduino in Bulgarian language and uploaded it to GutHub in PDF and ODT format.

On Youtube we uploaded video for the same with English text.

So we hope now both English and Bulgarian customers will be pleased 🙂

We just uploaded on Youtube video for eduArdu features and how to install and use the Arduino examples from GitHub

eduArdu update

I blogged about eduArdu the EUR 15 educational Arduino based board at the beginning of October, the plan was to have prototypes in 2 weeks which unfortunately didn’t happen, anyway now we have first prototypes built and work on the software support.

We are preparing Arduino libraries for all features:

• scrolling text and writing images on the LED8x8 matrix
• playing single tone and multi tone sounds on the buzzer
• measuring the temperature with the on-board sensor
• measuring the light with LDR
• detecting movements with the PIR sensor
• reading distance to objects with Ultrasound sensor
• reading the Joystick status
• driving servo motors connected to the two  connectors
• reading audio signals via microphone
• driving RGB and the red LEDs on board
• reading resistance on the 6 GPIOs to implement Makey-makey
• receive IR remote commands and transmit IR codes to control air conditions, TVs etc.

TuxCon is preparing free Arduino day in “Prof. Asen Zlatarov” school in Parvomay on December 15th, where volunteers will teach students how to program in Arduino and make the first steps in programming and electronics.

TuxCon is non for profit organization and does all events free of charge aiming to spark interest in kids for IT technologies. If you want such event to be provided in your school please write in TuxCon facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/tuxcon.mobi/

Scratch gets lot of attention for enabling even very small kids to program with visual blocks. We though it would be good eduArdu to support it and add blocks to Scratch which to allow embedded board programming with Scratch.

I’ve tested Scratch 1 many years ago, it was relatively easy to add hardware board support at that time via Python web server running jango and communicating with Arduino fermata. It’s obsoletenow and in maintenance mode i.e. no bug fixes and developments.

Scratch 2.0 was re-writen in Action script and uses Adobe Flash technology for animation, really bad choice as we did try to use it several times with Linux and never succeed. This version is also in maintenance mode now.

So we moved to test Scratch 3.0 which is re-written in HTML5 and looks great, but unfortunately they closed the extensions for boards and now support officially just Microbit and Lego. Probably this is their way to get some money for their efforts. There are issues open from people who use other boards and wanted to migrate their old projects to 3.0 posted almost year ago without any action, so we really are puzzled after all this popularity they got, this is the best way to shoot themselves in the leg.

Fortunately there are many alternatives to Scratch, like Snap

It’s totally open for adding blocks and has tens of GitHub projects adding blocks for different robot platforms, Arduino, Raspberry pi etc embedded stuff.

So we will add support for eduArdu in Snap too.

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

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.

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!