Open Hardware: Raspberry Pi and Others
Raspberry Pi
-
3D-printed SD card holder helps Raspberry Pi engineers keep track of their stuff
I arrived at Pi Towers the other day to a sea of stumpy red and black cylinders dotted across all of our engineers’ desks. Now, we’re not allowed to take things off engineers’ desks in case they’re secret blueprints for Raspberry Pi 8 or something, but I checked the fine print and there’s nothing about playing with things on their desks, so I went to have a look.
-
Raspberry Pi ☛ 3D-printed SD card holder helps Raspberry Pi engineers keep track of their stuff
I arrived at Pi Towers the other day to a sea of stumpy red and black cylinders dotted across all of our engineers’ desks. Now, we’re not allowed to take things off engineers’ desks in case they’re secret blueprints for Raspberry Pi 8 or something, but I checked the fine print and there’s nothing about playing with things on their desks, so I went to have a look.
-
Russell Coker ☛ Russell Coker: LicheePi 4A (RISC-V) First Look
I Just bought a LicheePi 4A RISC-V embedded computer (like a RaspberryPi but with a RISC-V CPU) for $322.68 from Aliexpress (the official site for buying LicheePi devices). Here is the Sipheed web page about it and their other recent offerings [1]. I got the version with 16G of RAM and 128G of storage, I probably don’t need that much storage (I can use NFS or USB) but 16G of RAM is good for VMs. Here is the Wiki about this board [2].
When you get one of these devices you should make setting up ssh server your first priority. I found the HDMI output to be very unreliable. The first monitor I tried was a Samsung 4K monitor dating from when 4K was a new thing, the LicheePi initially refused to operate at a resolution higher than 1024*768 but later on switched to 4K resolution when resuming from screen-blank for no apparent reason (and the window manager didn’t support this properly). On the Dell 4K monitor I use on my main workstation it sometimes refused to talk to it and occasionally worked. I got it running at 1920*1080 without problems and then switched it to 4K and it lost video sync and never talked to that monitor again. On my Desklab portabable 4K monitor I got it to display in 4K resolution but only the top left 1/4 of the screen displayed.
-
Arduino ☛ November’s Project Hub selections are here!
Biking is an eco-friendly and healthy way of moving around the city! But traffic can be chaotic and safety should always be the priority: that’s why we love Luis Castillo’s idea to add direction indicators to the back of a bicycle. Activated via buttons installed directly on the handlebars, two LED arrows not only communicate clearly when you are ready to turn left or right, but also increase visibility and, of course, are a great excuse to try 3D printing, laser cutting, wiring, programming, and more!
-
Olimex ☛ ESP32-H2-DevKit-Lipo Open Source Hardware board with Thread/Matter/Zigbee and BLE5 is ready for pre-order
ESP32-H2 combines IEEE 802.15.4 connectivity with Bluetooth 5 (LE). The SoC is powered by a single-core, 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller that can be clocked up to 96 MHz. The ESP32-H2 has been designed to ensure low power consumption and security for connected devices. ESP32-H2 has 320 KB of SRAM with 16 KB of Cache, 128 KB of ROM, 4 KB LP of memory, and a built-in 2 MB or 4 MB SiP flash. It has 19 programmable GPIOs with support for ADC, SPI, UART, I2C, I2S, RMT, GDMA and LED PWM.
-
CNX Software ☛ 8 Euros ESP32-H2-DevKit-LiPo is an open-source hardware Bluetooth 5 LE and 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread/Matter) board
Olimex ESP32-H2-DevKit-LiPo is an open-source hardware board based on ESP32-H2-MINI-1-N4 wireless module with Bluetooth 5 Low Energy (LE) and an 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee, Thread, and Matter connectivity, and that can be powered by a LiPo battery. The ESP32-H2 RISC-V microcontroller is coupled with 4MB flash in the wireless module, and the board comes with two rows of 15 pins for up to 19 GPIOs with alternate functions such as ADC, SPI, UART, I2C, etc… plus pUEXT and Qwiic/Stemma connectors for expansion modules.