It may be named after the most famous volleyball in history, but “Wilson” isn’t just a great conversationalist. [Hayden Brophy] built the free-drifting satellite buoy to see if useful science can be done with off-the-shelf hardware and on a shoestring budget. And from the look of the data so far, Wilson is doing pretty well. Wilson belongs to a class of autonomous vessels known as drifters, designed to floa ...

Beacons which became popular back in 2013 when Apple introduced the iBeacon, are Bluetooth powered devices. They promised so many applications and created hype around the business world, that was believed to be the next big technology seeing applications in several industries from retail, movies, security and to the advertising industry. I even wrote a piece about how beacons can be used for ...

VIA Technologies known for its array of embedded boards and solutions has announced the release of a Linux Board Support Package (BSP) based on the Yocto 2.0.3 for the VIA SOM-9×20 module. The VIA SOM 9×20 module was custom designed and meant for the Android platform and so migrating to a Linux framework was something that was inevitable and less tedious to achieve as compared to migrating to a different fr ...

What could you do with a dual-core 240 MHz ESP32 that supports Arduino-style programming, with 16 MB of flash, 8 MB of PSRAM, and 520 k of RAM? Oh, let’s throw in a touchscreen, an accelerometer, Wifi, and Bluetooth. Besides that, it fits on your wrist and can show the time? That’s the proposition behind Lilygo T Watch 2020. If it sounds like a smartwatch, it is. At around $25 –and you can snag the hardware ...

So this Lazy Old Geek (L.O.G.) hasn’t been able to do an Instructable for a few years. At 70 years old, the brain doesn’t work as well as it used to and it’s hard to focus on big projects let alone try to write about them. (I am entering Arduino Contest.) But with the help of my loving dog, Sadie and my CPAP machine, I’m going to give it a try. Sadie is my anti-depressant, keeps my spirits up and we walk ev ...

Have you ever been to a concert with no way to find the friends you were supposed to meet, seems like things could not get worse but there is no signal and Google map is not working (even when it does, it won’t pinpoint where they are)? Yes, I know a lot of people can relate to this situation. It might not have been at a concert, could have been in a conference, during hiking, cycling events or a beach part ...

In the last few years, we have seen a lot of love poured towards the hardware ecosystem especially hardware related to the Internet of Things applications (hardly would you find any board that doesn’t have one or two IoT offerings). Some boards give basic IoT functionality like providing you with a basic IoT connectivity interface with no extra add-ons while some boards goes the extra mile by prov ...

Adafruit has today announced the Adafruit Feather Bluefruit Sense development board will be soon arriving in their online store, building on the popular Feather nRF52840 Express, by adding a range of sensors that can be accessed wirelessly. The Feather microcontroller is equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity together with native USB support featuring the nRF52840. Offering an ‘all-in-one’ Arduino ...

A Slovenia based startup Sudo Systems will soon launch a module called SudoProc. This module is highly compact (65 x 40 x 4.3mm) and solderable. It contains Rockchip’s 1.8GHz, quad-core, Cortex-A17 SoC RK3288 SoC with 600MHz Mali-T764 GPU. The highlighted feature set includes 4GB of dual-channel 1066MHz LPDDR3 RAM. SudoProc also includes an embedded security engine, a Gigabit Ethernet controller, and suppor ...

What do you do when someone is chasing you or you are lost? Cross your fingers? Don't. When you are in trouble, just cross your feet [in a special way] and your location is sent to your family members. Wait there's more! Even the family can get your location just by calling the shoe. When you call the SIM in the shoe, the shoe automatically hangs up the call and reverts back its cur ...

In this project I will show you how to combine a SIM5320 3G module with an Arduino and a piezoelectric transducer as a shock sensor in order to create a security tracking system that will send you the location of your precious vehicle via SMS when it is moved around without you knowing it. Let's get started! Step 1: Watch the Video! https://youtu.be/CeStrH-5Llo The video gives you a decent overview on ...

For Fridtjof Nansen, 13 April 1895 started well. Six days earlier, the Norwegian explorer had set a new record for the closest approach to the North Pole, and now he was moving quickly over unbroken sea ice toward Cape Fligely and home. But then came a sickening realization: In his eagerness to break camp, he had forgotten to wind the chronometers. He had lost track of precise time, and thus the ability to ...