COVID-19 update – UPS and DHL stop serving some Red Zones in some countries

The COVID-19 pandemic is spreading all around the world. This affects some places more and were labeled as “Red” Zones with high risk, where courier deliveries are banned.

UPS and DHL both announced Zip codes for such “Red” zones where they will not perform deliveries.

We put a link to their pages at our CHECKOUT page as these lists are updated frequently and we can’t follow up and code exceptions in our online shop:

So please, at the time of ordering, check if your ZIP code is listed there. If your area is on the list, your parcel will just hang up in courier’s warehouse.

EMS service is terminated in Bulgaria, DPD and Airmail (posts) for the moment didn’t make any restrictions.

In Bulgaria we have a relatively low count of infected people and we at Olimex work as usual. Our government placed strong restrictions on public services and the travel of people between cities, but inside cities movement is not restricted.

Is it hot or not? Contactless preciese Infra Red temperature measurement with Open Source Hardware MOD-IR-TEMP

MOD-IR-TEMP is UEXT module which could be easily connected to all our boards with UEXT connector. It has MLX90614 contactless Infra red thermometer which allow you to measure objects temperature from distance.

MLX90614 has internal temperature sensor which can sense temperature in range -40+125C and Infra red camera which can sense external objects temperature in range -70+380C with resolution 0.02C and is calibrated with precision 0.5C in range 0-50C.

There are two ways to connectMOD-IR-TEMP to other boards – first is to use UEXT connector:

MLX90614 works on +3.3V so it’s important if you use Arduino board to make sure it operates at 3.3V or you will damage the sensor.

OLIMEXINO-32U4 has jumper which selects on what voltage it operates 5 or 3.3V you must put the jumper in 3.3V.

The sensor is read via I2C, Adafruit has library included in Arduino library manager.

UEXT onOLIMEXINO-32U4 has power enable and to operate D8 pin should be placed in LOW state.

Here is code:

#include <Wire.h>
#include "Adafruit_MLX90614.h"

Adafruit_MLX90614 modIrTemp = Adafruit_MLX90614();

void setup() {
 pinMode(8,OUTPUT);   //the following two lines enable power supply 3.3V on UEXT connector
 digitalWrite(8,LOW); //you do not need them if you use wire jumpers
 modIrTemp.begin(); 
 Serial.begin(115200);
}

void loop() {

Serial.print("Ambient = "); Serial.print(modIrTemp.readAmbientTempC()); 
 Serial.print("*C\tObject = "); Serial.println(modIrTemp.readObjectTempC());

 delay(1000); // can adjust this for faster/slower updates
}

If you use breadboard you should connect MOD-IR-TEMP GND, 3.3V and SDA to D2, SCL to D3. In this case you do not need to set D8 LOW to operate.

MOD-IR-TEMP allow precise temperature measurement from distance, we are doing some experiments to measure PCB reflow temperature from distance and to measure body temperature.

Our experiments show that how good the temperature is measured depend on object surface. Dark objects temperature is measured better than shiny objects.

If you place your hand in the front of the sensor the temperature is measured correctly from distance 0 to about 5 cm, then the measurement start to register lower temperature. Our guess is that the build in optics has limitation, if you want to measure temperature from greater distance you should add proper optics.