It is now time to take a look at some of the latest developments in the electronics field
and I have got 9 things I’d like to share with you. You’ve probably already heard
about this but the Raspberry Pi Foundation have launched a new HQ Camera which stands
for High Quality camera that features a 12 megapixel camera, improved sensitivity along
with interchangeable lenses. This would be great for specific applications like security
cameras and so on. The module is expected to work with all Raspberry PI boards that
run the latest operating system. The camera module will cost 50 dollars and you will then
have to add a lens to it, two official lenses will be made available for you at a price
of 25 and 50 dollars each. You can also add any other compatible lens if you have one
around.
Flexible and stretchable lithium-ion battery could reach our hands soon enough as engineers
have been able to create a micro-honeycomb structure which allows the material to be
bent and stretched without affecting its energy storage capability. What’s even more interesting
is that the energy capacity for this new type of battery equals that of non-stretchable
equivalents which means that the future is looking very bright indeed.
The next development is just as futuristic as this one. BiTipText creates a QWERTY keyboard
on your fingertips and allows you to type on both your index fingers. The prototype
uses flexible PCB cones that are placed on the user’s index fingers. An MPR121 touch
sensing IC is used to detect the touch input and everything is powered with an Arduino
UNO. The end result is an input speed of about 23 words per minute which is pretty impressive
given that the average user types around 40 words per minute on a traditional keyboard.
There’s obviously a lot of room for improvement here but this could serve as inspiration for
a future project.
The next project is kind of strange and interesting at the same time. It is an interactive toy
that consists of a robot and some tape which has RFID chips embedded into it. As the robot
is moved over the tape, it reads the tags and creates different sounds based on the
information. This is then used to simulate the sound of roads, train tracks and so on.
It’s definitely an interesting proof of concept, so it’s only about time before
there’s a better implementation of this type of technology.
And now, we are onto some interesting products starting with the pisugar2 that aims to be
a UPS for your raspberry pi. The L variant uses a 1200mAh battery to give you a run time
of about 5-6 hours with an output current of 2.4 amps. IT also features an on-board
real tiem clock which means that you can create a timer or schedule to automatically switch
ON the raspberry PI and run your scripts. It uses pogo-pins which means that there’s
no soldering required to get started and it is currently available on Tindie for 40 dollars.
We have played around with a few environmental sensors before and the ESPEnvi adds a bunch
of these in a nice form factor seen here. For 30 dollars you get a board that consists
of an ESP8266 module, an MQ-2 gas sensor which can detect several gases and also an HDC1080
temperature and humidity sensor. It is powered over USB and you also have the serial port
header pins which can be used to reprogram the ESP8266 module which means that you could
also use it with ESPHome for instance.
The ODROID-GO advance is a slim, hand held equivalent of the popular single board computer.
It consists of a 1.3GHZ quad core ARM chip as the main processor with 1GB of DDR3 memory
along with a 3.5” display and the usual bits and pieces. An ESP32 module is used for
WiFi connectivity and the entire thing weighs about one hundred and seventy grams. The clear
case does have a nice look and feel to it and the expected price is around 60 dollars.
If you are looking to use a raspberry PI 4 as a media center then you probably need a
nice case to hide all the wires to give you a nice setup. The Argon One case brings all
the connectors to one side which allows you to have a much cleaner setup. It consists
of an Aluminum top cover and definitely looks to be well designed. The case is available
for just 20 dollars which I think is pretty good value for money. Assembly looks to be
very straightforward as well.
And finally, this board allows you to control multiple relays using a raspberry pi. It has
a stackable design which means that you can control a lot of different devices using it.
I am not sure where you would want to control these many devices but if you need to, then
you have an off the shelf board available to do it. 20 dollars gets you one of these
board and you also have the python drivers and everything else you need to get started.
That is it for this edition of WattHour, come back next Tuesday for some more electronics
news. Thank you for watching and I will see you in the next one!