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Sensors are a worthwhile topic to write about: They bring electronics projects in contact with the real world and facilitate all kinds of practical applications. Dogan Ibrahim describes more than 40 projects in this comprehensive book.

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.

Do you intend to work on a Raspberry Pi project with a camera? Then this book will get you going for sure. In this book about camera projects, Dogan Ibrahim shows you how you can do this step-by-step . From a simple photo with a selfie stick, or the construction of a wildlife camera, right up to the complex process of licence plate recognition.

The word LiDAR, the ‘Li’ meaning ‘light’ indicates a device for optoelectronic echolocation. Instead of radio frequencies, the Lidar transmits a pulsed laser beam, the echo of which allows the determination of the distance of a reflecting obstacle. There is much talk these days of self-driving cars. Cheap Lidars with interesting characteristics are now available to anyone; they permit rapid development beyond the experimental stage.

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.

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.

The Arduino and Raspberry Pi have revolutionized the field of embedded systems design. One area of widespread applicability for both devices has been motor control. But if you would like to learn more about Arduino- and Raspberry Pi-based motor control applications, a quick search on the Internet will only complicate things. You’ll find thousands of motor control projects based on these popular platforms. The problem, of course, is locating high-quality, well-tested motor control projects from reliable sources, which is hard to do because do-it-yourselfers and students are uploading new Arduino and Raspberry Pi-based projects to the Internet each day. Fortunately, Dogan Ibrahim had the foresight to write a comprehensive book on DC motor control designs featuring the Arduino platform and Raspberry Pi Zero W single-board computer (SBC).

A Wide Area Network connects far remoted devices to the Internet through gateways. LoRa is such a subscription-free communication standard, supported by many companies. There is no overlap between LoRa and WiFi or Bluetooth. The latter have a very short range, LoRa a very narrow bandwidth. Since it is used mostly with sensors, the traffic can be slow and mainly unidirectional. LoRa also supports peer-to-peer communication.

Single-board computers such as the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino are now commonplace whether in industry or at home, and are gaining popularity. Espressif's ESP8266 has also established itself both within the scene and at Elektor with its comprehensive functionality at a low price. The ESP32 is the new big brother sporting a dual-core processor, Bluetooth, more RAM and I/O extensions.

For little cost it is possible to add the GT-521F52 fingerprint scanner with a serial interface to a microcontroller, an Arduino, a Raspberry Pi, a computer, or to anything else that can communicate over a standard asynchronous serial link. Adding such a module to a project would give it secure access and identifications capabilities and can help to prevent for instance pirates, children or cats from (mis)using your device. A review.