Raybeacon 1.4 is out

The rayBeacon by Mike M. Volokhov is a Nordic nRF52 on-the-go development kit:

raybeacon-afterdark

Shared Project: Raybeacon 1.4

The Raybeacon is full-featured nRF52 based wearable, ultra-low power, multiprotocol development board designed for variety of embedded applications. Due to modular design, the device can be used to build your own production-ready appliance with minimal hardware modifications.

Key features include:

  • Coin sized – the board is only 25 mm in diameter
  • Works from a single CR2032 / CR2025 3V button cell
  • Nordic nRF52 high-end multiprotocol SoC supporting Bluetooth 5.x, Bluetooth mesh, Thread and Zigbee; of your choice:
    • nRF52833: Cortex-M4F 64MHz, 512KB flash, 128KB RAM, Bluetooth® 5.1 Direction Finding, 105°C temperature qualification
    • nRF52840: Cortex-M4F 64MHz, 1MB flash, 256KB RAM, Bluetooth® 5.0, ARM TrustZone® CryptoCell cryptographic unit
  • Automotive grade BOM components – ready for harsh environment
  • 2 x tactile buttons IP67
  • 1 x RGB LED
  • 1 x infrared LED (850 nm) 0402 size
  • Socket for NFC flex antenna, compatible with Nordic FPC antenna and Liard 0600-00061. Can be configured as extra 2xGPIO.
  • Programmable through SWD port (removable Tag-Connect socket, on-board solder pads)
  • 1.27mm pitch 2×4 receptacle to connect custom extension boards:
    • 6 x GPIO ports
    • 1 x 12-bit ADC input
    • pass-through VDD and GND pins
  • 2.54mm pitch 1×8 pin header for fast breadboard prototyping; can be reused as 1.27 to 2.54 adapter
  • USB interface (on-board solder pads)
  • Minimal fabrication cost due to simple, two-layers only design

For detailed description, including information on custom boards and source files, please refer to the project repository on Bitbucket. Also, feel free to share your thoughts, or submit a request for a new slice or report an issue!

 

Raybeacon 1.4 is out

DC26: overview of the DC503 party badge

From Nisha Kumar:
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An overview of the DC503 party badge as seen at DefCon 2018

Hi! My name is Nisha, and I made a party bangle for my friend, Miki, to take with her to DefCon25. It was my first fully-formed electronics project and it posed some interesting challenges due to its unusual form factor. You can read about my experiences with that project here.

Soon after DefCon25, I was approached by r00tkillah to make over a 100 of something similar for the DC503 party at DefCon26. The plan was to combine the power of the BMD-300 SoC by Rigado used in the Wagon Badge from the previous year with my Neopixel bangle form factor. We would call it “The Banglet” and it was going to be awesome.

banglet_shell_500

In passive mode, the banglet’s LEDs light up when detecting nearby Bluetooth devices. The number of LEDs that are lit correspond to the number of BT devices detected and their colors are based on each device’s mac address.

DC26: overview of the DC503 party badge

Reflowduino: Put That Toaster Oven To Good Use

From  on the Hackaday blog:

Reflowduino: Put That Toaster Oven To Good Use

There are few scenes in life more moving than the moment the solder paste melts as the component slides smoothly into place. We’re willing to bet the only reason you don’t have a reflow oven is the cost. Why wouldn’t you want one? Fortunately, the vastly cheaper DIY route has become a whole lot easier since the birth of the Reflowduino – an open source controller for reflow ovens.

This Hackaday Prize entry by [Timothy Woo] provides a super quick way to create your own reflow setup, using any cheap means of heating you have lying around. [Tim] uses a toaster oven he paid $21 for, but anything with a suitable thermal mass will do. The hardware of the Reflowduino is all open source and has been very well documented – both on the main hackaday.io page and over on the project’s GitHub.

sidekick-e1525981389910

The board itself is built around the ATMega32u4 and sports an integrated MAX31855 thermocouple interface (for the all-important PID control), LiPo battery charging, a buzzer for alerting you when input is needed, and Bluetooth. Why Bluetooth? An Android app has been developed for easy control of the Reflowduino, and will even graph the temperature profile.

When it comes to controlling the toaster oven/miscellaneous heat source, a “sidekick” board is available, with a solid state relay hooked up to a mains plug. This makes it a breeze to setup any mains appliance for Arduino control.

 

Reflowduino: Put That Toaster Oven To Good Use

STM32L4 Sensor Tile

From Kris Winer on Hackaday.io:

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STM32L4 Sensor Tile

Small, connected device for smelling and hearing in any environment.

This is a 20 mm x 20 mm four-layer pcb tile full of interesting sensors (ICS43434 I2S Digital Microphone, MPU6500 acclerometer/gyro, BME280 pressure/temperature/humidity, and CCS811 air quality) with a Rigado BMD-350 UART BLE bridge for sending data to a smart phone all managed by a STM32L432 host MCU.

The STM32L432 is programmed using the Arduino IDE via the USB connector and serial data can be displayed on the serial monitor to verify performance and proper function, etc. But it is intended to be powered by a small 150 mAH LiPo battery for wireless sensing applications. The STM32L4 is a very low power MCU and with proper sensor and radio management it is possible to get the average power usage down to the ~100uA level, meaning a 150 mAH LiPo battery can run the device for two months on a charge.

A library for it is available on GitHub:

kriswiner/SensorTile

A collection of sketches to run the STM32L432-based (20 mm x 20 mm) sensor tile with an MPU6500 accel/gyro, ICS43434 I2S digital microphone, BME280 temperature/pressure/humidity sensor, and CCS811 air quality sensor. The sensor tile has an on-board MAX1555 LiPo battery charger, an on/off switch, and a Rigado BMD-350 nRF52 BLE module.

 

 

 

STM32L4 Sensor Tile

SoundBeacon

Patrick Van Oosterwijck created an audio BLE beacon that can be activated by the vision impaired to find exact locations of doorways, bus stops, crosswalks, and more:

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SoundBeacon

The idea is that a blind person uses a navigation app, and can query to see “what is around”. In the list of beacons that are around, they can tap the one they want to know the location of and it will start to produce an audible signal for a short time.

The BLE module is configured as an iBeacon and allows connections. It has a battery service and an “Immediate Alert” (AKA “Find me”) service.

Patrick used the following to build the prototype:

  • A 550 mAh 3.2 V LiFePO4 cell
  • A #LiFePO4wered/Solar1 prototype to charge the battery
  • A 5.5V, 0.6W monocrystalline solar cell
  • A Silicon Labs (formerly BlueGiga) BLE113 module
  • A beeper that works very badly (better solution needed)
  • And a IP65 enclosure

xorbit has shared the booster for loud piezo beeper on OSH Park:

PiezoBoost

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Order from OSH Park

SoundBeacon

Comprehensive Respiratory Health Monitor

279361444154700437.jpgDean Gouramanis is building a wearable Bluetooth-enabled Arduino Pulse Oximeter:

Comprehensive Respiratory Health Monitor

bluetooth-enabled wearable device can measure Pulse Oximetry, and ambient CO2 24/7

The board is shared on GitHub:

images11 dgouramanis/CRHM

Comprehensive Respiratory Health Monitor

Smart Racer: control RC cars from your smartphone

Sarunas designed this RC receiver replacement which uses a smart phone as remote controller via WiFi or Bluetooth:

2016-07-28t21-11-27-047z-img_1499-png-855x570_q85_pad_rcropSmart Racer

Why not control your RC car with smart phone?

Features include:

  • Control RC car from Android phone or iPhone
  • Control RC servo and ESC
  • Control 5 Leds
  • Drive RC car up to 70m away
  • Drives Brushed and Brushless motors
  • Works with 1:10 and 1:18 models
  • Powered directly from ESC power
  • Control using REST API
  • Connection lost cut off

The design files and source code are available on GitHub:

images1 drme/ble-rc

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Here’s the Smart Racer in action:

Smart Racer: control RC cars from your smartphone

Blue IR: Build your own universal remote

Sarunas built this device to replace a bunch of different remote controls with a smart phone:

2016-07-14T21-50-15.951Z-IMG_1538.png.2560x2560_q85.jpg

Blue IR

Build your own universal remote

Features include:

  • Control TV, HiFi and more from Android, iPhone or Windows Phone.
  • Control devices using NEC, RC5 and SIRC protocols
  • Provides Bluetooth Low Energy service for controlling it from other devices.

A solar version was also designed to avoid having to change the battery:

Blue IR solar version

Despite that Bluetooth Low Energy device uses so little of it, the battery will eventually run out. To overcome that, the old device was improved by adding a solar charger.

The design files and source code are available on GitHub:

images11 drme/ble-remote

 

Blue IR: Build your own universal remote