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Dragino is a manufacturer of IoT hardware, specialised in Linux IoT/VOIP, Arduino Yùn add-on boards and LoRa modules and gateways. One of their latest products is the LSN50 long-range LoRa sensor node, designed for outdoor use.

Even though the Internet of Things or IoT has been buzzing for a while now, it still remains somewhat inaccessible to many people. The Sunfounder IoT Shield Kit reviewed in this article tries to change this by providing easy-to-use add-on boards for the popular Arduino platform. With the kit anyone with a bit of electronics and programming experience (and some perseverance) can create an internet-connected object.

Pixy2 is an artificial vision sensor for rapid recognition of moving shapes and colours. It follows objects at a rate of 60 images per second and has algorithms for recognition of shapes and colours. To better follow moving objects, it may be mounted (as an option) on a pan-tilt support, and control the vertical and horizontal movements itself.

If it happens to me, it probably happens to other people as well: once you think about it, it is too late. Xmas decoration is such a thing; you just can't start early enough with planning your Xmas decoration, especially when it involves complex lighting schemes requiring hours of programming time. Not this year however with a project that's sure to give you a head start.

For the 3-Way Display Alarm Clock published in Elektor 5/2018, [ref. 1], the desire was expressed for the ability to set more than one alarm. Who, after all, wants to be awakened early on your day off, when you could sleep in? So we 'just' had to add a few extra alarms to the software. Anyone who has developed software knows that such assumptions — especially with existing code — do not necessarily turn into simple reality. “Someone has already made a start on that. It looks like it is nearly done and shouldn't be much more work”. Sure...

This new Elektor book describes how an Android mobile device can communicate with a variety of hardware platforms — including Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and the ESP32 processor — over a Wi-Fi link or by using SMS text messages. All the Android projects in this book were developed using the B4A programming language.

Starting this week, the new Arduino MKR VIDOR 4000 board is available in the Elektor Store. With an Intel 10CL016 FPGA. That’s 16 000 logic elements plus some specialised signal processing embedded multipliers (read: audio and video). The board, at 83 x 25 mm (3.3 x 1 inches) is as full as an egg. In addition to standard GPIOs, there are HDMI, USB, JST and MIPI (Camera) connectors. And let’s not forget the ARM ATSAMD21 32-bit microcontroller!

A good tool makes work easier by removing tasks more or less unrelated to what you are trying to achieve; it should let you focus on your target, not on getting things to work. The Rohm SensorShield was developed with this thought in mind. Designed as an add-on board for the popular Arduino platform it offers a plug-and-play solution for comfortable sensor evaluation.

MobiLimb is an component that can change shape and can be attached to portable devices. It is a small serial robotic manipulator (with five degrees of freedom), which is easily added to (and just as easily removed from) existing devices (smartphone, tablet).

First launched in 2005, the Arduino platform is responsible for making embedded microcontroller development accessible to all. With its simple to use yet comprehensive approach, Arduino has eased the often difficult task of interfacing an embedded application to the real world of hardware devices.