Pinoccio – A smaller and more powerful Arduino

Pinoccio - Arduino compatible board
If you love creating DIY Arduino circuits, make sure to check out the Pinoccio Arduino board which comes in a smaller package and has a lots of features.

With Arduino’s advantages such as simple programming and cheap materials, no wonder that new projects like Pinoccio are adding special features in order to improve the original design. Pinoccio is powered by a rechargeable battery and it features integrated temperature sensors, integrated MESH radio and WiFi connectivity through a WiFi shield. It can also be used to connect remotely with other Pinoccios, building an internet of things.

Although Pinoccio is just a few inches long and an inch wide, it is still as powerful as the Arduino Mega. This undertaking is campaigning to raise $60000 for this project at Indiegogo.

You can checkout their Indiegogo campaign here: http://www.indiegogo.com/pinoccio

Arduino Movement Tracker

arduino movement trackerThe main idea of this simple DIY Arduino project is to be able to determine the amount of time you spend inside and outside of your own premises. The device can be attached on your waist all day without obstructing your regular daily activity. This device will record your location history all day long, with a detailed report of the time spent indoors or outdoors. Continue reading

The STM32 Microcontroller Family

 

I have been very amazed by the STM32 microcontrollers from ST Microelectronics, which feature a 32 bit ARM core and all kinds of peripherals (12 bit A/D converters capable of a few MSPS, 12 bit D/A converters, 32 bit timers, I2C, SPI, CAN, UART, USB, Ethernet MAC, etc.). Continue reading

Interesting microcontroller family with many analog peripherals

I have seen a very interesting 8-bit family of microcontrollers, recently launched by Microchip: the PIC16F178X 8-bit advanced analog flash microcontrollers. What’s cool about those microcontrollers, it’s the fact that they have all kind of analog peripherals:

  • 100 ksps 12 bit analog to digital converter
  • 8-bit digital to analog converter
  • three analog comparators
  • two operational amplifiers
  • a high performance PWM controller with two modules