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Smallest Arduino Pro board brings sensing to the edge

Mon, Sep 27, 2021

Claimed to be the smallest Arduino board to date, Nicla Sense ME has been created by Arduino Pro and Bosch Sensortec. It makes sensing and intelligence at the edge accessible to all, says Bosch Sensortec.

The Sense ME is the first product in the Nicla family. It combines low-power sensor nodes with the ability to handle AI and machine learning (ML) on the edge. Dimensions are just 22.86 x 22.86mm.

The Nicla Sense ME has a nine degrees of freedom (DoF) smart motion sensor and a 4DoF environmental sensor with AI capabilities. It uses Bosch Sensortec’s BHI260AP artificial intelligence (AI) sensor system with integrated motion sensor, BMM150 magnetometer, BMP390 pressure sensor, and the BME688 four-in-one gas sensor with AI and integrated high linearity and high accuracy pressure, humidity and temperature sensors.

The board can sense and process different types of data on the edge and reduces latency and power consumption for more privacy without minimal bandwidth, says Bosch. Arduino Pro’s Adriano Chinello describes it as “a tiny board with a really great mix of sensors combined with high computational power, opening up a whole new range of applications leveraging on sensor fusion. Smart building automation, mobile and wearable devices, industrial and professional equipment are key targets”.

Power-saving operation and clear programming structure make the small board suitable for research projects, rapid prototyping and development. It is included in the starter kit provided to all teams participating in the Bosch Sensortec’s 2021 IoT Innovation Challenge, an online competition for students.

“Bosch Sensortec’s self-learning AI smart motion sensor, the environmental sensor with AI capabilities and all the other sensors allow a broad range of applications to address the different segments of the IoT market. This way developing intelligent, low-power and scalable edge sensing applications is easier than ever before” says Dr. Stefan Finkbeiner, CEO of Bosch Sensortec.

The Nicla Sense ME can be powered by a battery and used as a complete standalone board, or attached to an Arduino board to expand its capabilities. It is equipped with Arduino’s fast deployment and easy configuration and is also future-proof, says Bosch, as it allows for additional sensors. It is compatible with upcoming Nicla products, as well as the Arduino Pro MKR and Portenta families.

https://www.bosch-sensortec.com

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Round TFT display modules opens windows for design

Fri, Sep 24, 2021

Round TFT displays in the POS-I-PRO series open up design possibilities for industry, digital signage, interior design and smart homes, says Distec. The HMI series includes four expansion variants with a screen diagonal of 3.4 inches at a resolution of 800 x 800 pixels and a brightness of 350cd/m².

As is the case with the rectangular devices in the POS-PRO series, the displays integrate a PCAP touchscreen which can be operated with up to 10 fingers. A chemically hardened cover glass protects against scratches and damage.

The displays can be used for both indoor and outdoor applications, from industrial, point of sale (POS), digital signage, advertising technology and interior design, for example integrated in furniture and other smart home equipment.

The basic version POS-I-034-00-PRO-V1 is built into a powder-coated aluminium housing and can be integrated via threaded bolts on the rear of the housing. An O-ring ensures that the front is sealed against dust and water jets in accordance with IP65. There is also a mini HDMI connection for the image signal and a USB-C connection for touch and power supply.

The POS-I-034-00-PRO-V2 model has additional cables (1m each) which are secured via a strain relief. “We have added a Raspberry Pi 4B to variant 3,” says Ludwig Deimel. “The Raspberry Pi is mounted in its own robust housing with passive cooling and can be installed remotely from the display unit.” The Raspberry Pi OS (operating system) opens up possibilities for the displays’ use in the display and advertising sectors.

Round displays also offer new perspectives in furniture design and in smart homes. The POS-I-034-00-PRO-V4 is an integrated HMI. Both the display unit and the Raspberry Pi are mounted in the housing on a mounting frame and equipped with holes, cut-outs and threads to allow easy and quick integration, says Distec.

Distec explains how it has solved another challenge for the POS-I-PRO relating to the OS. Conventional OS can only display a rectangular desktop, which cuts off the content in the corners on a round display. Based on the Embedded Wizard software, Distec delivers a basic framework for real round displays with basic commands for integrating the touchscreen, such as swipe gestures and click modes, already part of the package. Smaller and larger models of the POS-I-PRO can also be implemented on request.

The POS-I-PRO series meets the requirements of the new EU Ecodesign Directive, guaranteeing long-term availability of spare parts and ease of repair. Distec manufactures the devices in Germany.

https://www.distec.de/en

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Skyworks releases switches for automotive and comms

Thu, Sep 23, 2021

Automotive switches and low-noise amplifier front-end modules from Skyworks are designed for automotive, cellular compensator and cellular telematics applications.

The company has released four devices, the SKYA21038, SKYA21039, SKYA210140 and SKYA21041.

The SKYA21038 is a single pole, double throw (SPDT) switch intended for mode switching in WLAN applications. Switching technologies enable the SKYA21038 to maintain a low insertion loss and high isolation for all switching paths, says Skyworks. The high-linearity performance and low insertion loss mean that the switch is suitable for low power transmit / receive applications.

The switch is manufactured in a compact, 1.0 x 1.0 x 0.5mm, six-pin exposed pad plastic micro leadframe package dual (MLPD) package.

The SKYA21039 is a single pole, triple throw (SP3T) antenna switch that operates in the 2.4 to 2.5GHz frequency range. Switching between the antenna (RFC signal) and the RF1, RF2, and RF3 ports is accomplished with two control voltages (V1 and V2). Characteristics of low loss, high isolation, high linearity, small size, and low cost make the switch suitable for all WLAN and Bluetooth systems operating in the 2.4 to 2.5GHz band. The SKYA21039 is manufactured in a compact, 1.1 x 1.1 x 0.5mm, eight-pin Micro Leadframe (MLP) package.

The SKYA21040 integrates a single pole, triple throw (SP3T) switch and low noise amplifier (LNA) with a bypass mode in a compact package. The device is capable of switching between WLAN receive, WLAN transmit, and Bluetooth and is provided in a small dual flat no-lead (DFN) eight-pin, 1.5 x 1.5mm package.

The fourth switch is the SKYA21041 which integrates a single pole, double throw (SPDT) switch and low noise amplifier (LNA) with a bypass mode in a six-pin, 1.2 x 1.4mm DFN package. It is capable of switching between WLAN receive and WLAN transmit.

[Picture credit: Metamorworks]

http://www.skyworksinc.com

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Robotics gain ground on perception performance

Thu, Sep 23, 2021

Initiatives to deliver a suite of perception technologies to the robotics operating system (ROS) developer community have been announced following an agreement between Nvidia and Open Robotics.

The agreement is to accelerate ROS 2 performance on Nvidia’s Jetson edge AI platform and GPU-based systems. These initiatives will reduce development time and improve performance for developers seeking to incorporate computer vision and AI / machine learning functionality into ROS-based applications.

“As more ROS developers leverage hardware platforms that contain additional compute capabilities designed to offload the host CPU, ROS is evolving to make it easier to efficiently take advantage of these advanced hardware resources,” explains Brian Gerkey, CEO of Open Robotics. “Working with an accelerated computing leader like Nvidia and its vast experience in AI and robotics innovation will bring significant benefits to the entire ROS community.”

Open Robotics will enhance ROS 2 to enable efficient management of data flow and shared memory across GPU and other processors present on the Nvidia Jetson edge AI platform. This will improve the performance of applications that have to process high bandwidth data from sensors such as cameras and lidars in real time, reports Open Robotics.

The two parties are also working to enable seamless simulation interoperability between Open Robotics’s Ignition Gazebo and Nvidi Isaac Sim on Omniverse. Isaac Sim already supports ROS 1 and ROS 2 and features an ecosystem of 3D content with popular applications, such as Blender and Unreal Engine 4.

With the two simulators connected, ROS developers can easily move robots and environments between Ignition Gazebo and Isaac Sim to run large-scale simulation and take advantage of high-fidelity dynamics, accurate sensor models and photo-realistic rendering to generate synthetic data for training and testing of AI models.

In addition to being a robotic simulator, Isaac Sim can generate synthetic data to train and test perception models. These capabilities will be more important as roboticists incorporate more perception features which will reduce the need for human intervention in the tasks they perform.

Isaac Sim generates synthetic datasets which are fed directly into NVIDIA’s TAO, an AI model adaptation platform, to adapt perception models for a robot’s specific working environment. Ensuring that a robot’s perception stack is going to perform in a given working environment can begin before any real-data is collected from the target surroundings.

Software is expected to be released in the spring of 2022.

http://www.nvidia.com

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Smallest Arduino Pro board brings sensing to the edge

Round TFT display modules opens windows for design

Skyworks releases switches for automotive and comms

Robotics gain ground on perception performance

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