Open Hardware: Squirrel Box, AgriTech, MiuraKit, Raspberry Pi, and More
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The Squirrel Box aims to bring trust to smart agriculture
The Squirrel Box is a small, remote device that measures key soil metrics, like pH levels, moisture content, ambient conditions, and NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium) levels. That data is important in determining the health of the soil in a field. It is useful for protecting potential yields and also for maintaining the soil to achieve maximum productivity. The Squirrel Box can transmit its readings over long distances via LoRaWAN® to a WisGate Edge Lite 2, which is an eight-channel gateway that many boxes can connect to in order to provide a comprehensive picture of soil health across an entire farm. An Arduino MKR WAN 1310 board monitors the sensors and contains an onboard LoRa® transceiver.
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AGRITRUST: A Testbed to Enable Trustworthy Smart AgriTech
This paper presents the Squirrel Box, a robust device for outdoor soil and environmental monitoring, providing data on soil metrics, pH, NPK levels, and ambient conditions. Its data, transmitted over a LoRaWAN, aids data-driven farming and environmental decisions. Beyond its technical capabilities, we address the critical issue of trust in smart agritech, ensuring data security and considering stakeholder perception and technology security. We discuss two projects: one exploring system resilience and reliability, particularly during LoRa gateway outages, and another scrutinizing data accuracy and integrity, essential for trust in system output. By developing a resilient, secure sensor box and examining these trust-focused projects, we aim to inspire confidence in smart agritech for environmental and farming decisions, discussing trust in the Squirrel Box and IoT in agricultural applications.
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This remote-controlled, highly mobile robot features a 4DOF arm and an onboard camera
Beyond controlling the geared DC and servo motors, an onboard Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect receives commands over Wi-Fi® from a host PC running the control software. In here, the user can view a live camera feed coming from an ESP32 camera module as well as virtually view the robotic arm’s position in 3D space. Similar to a video game, pressing keyboard keys such as ‘WASD’ and sliding the mouse provide general movements for the chassis and arm, respectively. Meanwhile, other keys allow for manipulating the end-effector, moving the arm to default positions, and adjusting the speed.
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MiuraKit simplifies pneumatic robot design
MiuraKit isn’t any one robot, but rather a set of tools and designs that can be combined to build robots and shape-changing interfaces. Anything made with MiuraKit will have a few things in common: pneumatic actuation, flexibility, and origami-like structures. Those structures expand or deform in a variety of different ways to suit the application. For example, one type is a simple one-dimensional expander similar to a linear actuator. Another type twists for rotary actuation. By linking different types together, roboticists can achieve complex motion.
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Neo6502 firmware update! Neo6502 prototypes are on the web for developers!
Neo6502 Firmware development update. Paul Robson does amazing work, and on top of his super Basic he added Apple ][ compatible mode. How cool is this? if you type “][” in the prompt you go to Apple ][ firmware and you can run all the Apple ][ old code: [...]
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Sneak peek inside the first ever Open Sauce event in San Francisco
Our favourite thing about the weekend was noticing just how many exhibits were powered by Raspberry Pi. From university racing car team vehicles to violent chess games and our friends at ISS Mimic. Take a scroll through a carefully curated selection of the bajillion videos we took during the inaugural Open Sauce.