Editorial

Esta é a Newsletter Nº 308 que se apresenta com o mesmo formato que as anteriores. Se gostar da Newsletter partilhe-a!

Todas as Newsletters encontram-se indexadas no link.

Esta Newsletter tem os seguintes tópicos:

• Novidades da Semana
• Ciência e Tecnologia
• Documentação
• Projetos Maker
• Secção Videos

Faz hoje anos que nascia, em 1786, o físico e astrónomo italiano Giovanni Battista Amici. Ele ficou conhecido pela sua invenção das lentes acromáticas. Ele também apresentou a lente Amici-Bertrand, uma lente para a inspecção do plano focal posterior de uma objectiva. O sistema de lentes que ele projectou para um novo tipo de microscópio em 1837 melhorou a ampliação, capaz de até 6.000 vezes. Em 1840, ele introduziu um sistema de imersão para microscópios; a lente inferior foi imersa numa gota de óleo para reduzir e melhorar a clareza. Ele melhorou o desenho de espelhos usados em telescópios reflectores.

Faz também hoje anos que nascia, em 1833, o engenheiro britânico Fleeming Jenkin. Ele ficou conhecido pelo seu trabalho no estabelecimento de unidades de medida eléctrica. Depois de ganhar um M.A. (1851), ele trabalhou no 10 anos seguintes em firmas de engenharia especializadas no projecto e fabricação de cabos telegráficos submarinos e equipamentos para instalá-los. Em 1861, o seu amigo William Thomson (mais tarde Lord Kelvin) conseguiu a nomeação de Jenkin como repórter do Comité de Padrões Eléctricos da Associação Britânica para o Avanço da Ciência. Ele ajudou a compilar e publicar relatórios que estabeleceram o Ohm como a unidade absoluta de resistência eléctrica e descreveu métodos para medições precisas de resistência.

Faz igualmente hoje anos que nascia, em 1865, o físico francês Pierre Weiss. Ele investigou o magnetismo e determinou a unidade magnética de Weiss do momento magnético. O principal trabalho de Weiss foi sobre ferromagnetismo. Hipotetizando um campo magnético molecular agindo em momentos magnéticos atómicos individuais, ele foi capaz de construir descrições matemáticas do comportamento ferromagnético, incluindo uma explicação de fenómenos magnetocalóricos como o ponto de Curie. A sua teoria também conseguiu prever uma descontinuidade no calor específico de uma substância ferromagnética no ponto Curie e sugeriu que a magnetização espontânea poderia ocorrer em tais materiais; o último fenómeno foi descoberto mais tarde para ocorrer em regiões muito pequenas conhecidas como domínios de Weiss.

Por fim, faz hoje anos que nascia, em 1923, o astrónomo norte-americano Kenneth Franklin. Ele foi co-autor da descoberta de que o planeta gigante Júpiter emite ondas de rádio. O Dr. Bernard F. Burke e Franklin, astrónomos do Carnegie Institution em Washington, estavam a examinar o céu a procura de ondas de rádio de galáxias. Por acaso, eles encontraram um sinal de rádio que lembrava rajadas curtas de estática, semelhante à interferência de um raio em rádios domésticos. Depois de semanas de estudo, a descoberta dos sinais era periódica, quatro minutos antes a cada dia, eles apontavam Júpiter como a fonte. Nunca antes foram detectados sons de rádio de um planeta em nosso sistema solar. Estudos posteriores mostraram que as ondas de rádio eram polarizadas circularmente, portanto, um campo magnético estava envolvido. A descoberta foi anunciada em 6 de Abril de 1955.

E nesta semana que passou um navio de transporte de contentores fechou literalmente o Canal do Suez. Com cerca de 400 metros de comprimento e 59 metros de altura o gigante MV EverGiven de cerca de 220 mil toneladas ficou atravessado no Canal devido a uma tempestade de areia e ventos muito fortes. Este já é considerado o maior desastre mundial de sempre com navios porta-contentores sem a perda do próprio navio. Este incidente já teve efeitos no preço do barril de petróleo e já está a ameaçar algum tipo de stocks que podem vir a esgotar se a situação não se resolver.

Também nesta semana que passou a SpaceX fez mais um lançamento de 60 satélites da Starlink. Aproximadamente nove minutos depois, o primeiro estágio do foguete reutilizável voltou à Terra para seu sexto pouso bem-sucedido. O drone da SpaceX, "Claro que ainda te amo", estava estacionado no Oceano Atlântico, aguardando a captura. O voo de hoje é a quarta missão Starlink deste mês. O lançamento ocorreu no 15º aniversário do primeiro lançamento da SpaceX.

Na Newsletter desta semana apresentamos diversas noticias, artigos científicos, projetos de maker assim como alguns videos interessantes. São apresentadas as revistas MagPI Magazine nº 104 de Abril e newelectronics de 23 Março.

João Alves ([email protected])

O conteúdo da Newsletter encontra-se sob a licença Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Suez Canal: Owner of cargo ship blocking waterway apologises

"The Japanese owner of the giant cargo ship that has been blocking Egypt's Suez Canal since Tuesday has apologised for the disruption to global trade. Shoei Kisen Kaisha said it was trying to resolve the situation as soon as possible, but that dislodging the Ever Given was proving extremely difficult. Marine and salvage engineers failed in their latest attempt on Thursday. The 400m-long (1,300ft), 200,000-tonne vessel became wedged across the canal amid high winds and a dust storm. How do you refloat a giant cargo ship? Efforts to shift huge ship from canal Evergreen Marine, the Taiwanese firm that operates the ship, has said salvage experts are working with the captain and the Suez Canal Authority to design a more effective plan for refloating it." [...]

SpaceX launches 60 new Starlink internet satellites, nails latest rocket landing at sea

"A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched a new batch of 60 Starlink internet satellites into orbit early Wednesday (March 24) and nailed a landing at sea to top off the company's latest successful mission. The veteran Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Space Launch Complex 40 here at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 4:28 a.m. EDT (0828 GMT). Approximately nine minutes later, the reusable rocket's first stage returned to Earth for its sixth successful landing. SpaceX's drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" was stationed out in the Atlantic Ocean, standing by for the catch. Today's flight is the fourth Starlink mission this month for the Hawthorne, California-based rocket builder. SpaceX is inching closer to filling its initial internet constellation, which is planned to be 1,440 strong." [...]

Tachyum Unveils Prodigy Universal Processor FPGA Emulation Prototype

"Tachyum™ Inc. today announced the upcoming availability of its Prodigy Universal Processor prototype, built using field-programmable gate array (FPGA) emulation boards. The hardware prototype is currently completing in-house testing before being made available to early adopters. Tachyum’s Prodigy emulation system has been developed in house to offer the best possible accuracy and performance for our engineers to verify the final Prodigy design, and for our customers to begin benchmarking and porting their own application software to native Prodigy code. The hardware emulator consists of multiple FPGA and IO boards connected by cables in a rack. The processor cores FPGA board size is 14.5 inches by 16 inches (368.3mm x 406.4mm). The 24-layer board is 0.110 inches thick (2.8mm) and has 5,948 components on the printed circuit board (PCB) on both sides." [...]

Samsung Develops Industry’s First HKMG-Based DDR5 Memory; Ideal for Bandwidth-Intensive Advanced Computing Applications

"512GB capacity DDR5 module made possible by an 8-layer TSV structure HKMG material reduces power by 13 percent while doubling the speed of DDR4 Samsung Electronics, the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced that it has expanded its DDR5 DRAM memory portfolio with the industry’s first 512GB DDR5 module based on High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) process technology. Delivering more than twice the performance of DDR4 at up to 7,200 megabits per second (Mbps), the new DDR5 will be capable of orchestrating the most extreme compute-hungry, high-bandwidth workloads in supercomputing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), as well as data analytics applications. “Samsung is the only semiconductor company with logic and memory capabilities and the expertise to incorporate HKMG cutting-edge logic technology into memory product development,” said Young-Soo Sohn, Vice President of the DRAM Memory Planning/Enabling Group at Samsung Electronics. “By bringing this type of process innovation to DRAM manufacturing, we are able to offer our customers high-performance, yet energy-efficient memory solutions to power the computers needed for medical research, financial markets, autonomous driving, smart cities and beyond.” “As the amount of data to be moved, stored and processed increases exponentially, the transition to DDR5 comes at a critical inflection point for cloud datacenters, networks and edge deployments,” said Carolyn Duran, Vice President and GM of Memory and IO Technology at Intel. “Intel’s engineering teams closely partner with memory leaders like Samsung to deliver fast, power-efficient DDR5 memory that is performance-optimized and compatible with our upcoming Intel Xeon Scalable processors, code-named Sapphire Rapids.” Samsung’s DDR5 will utilize highly advanced HKMG technology that has been traditionally used in logic semiconductors. With continued scaling down of DRAM structures, the insulation layer has thinned, leading to a higher leakage current." [...]

Intel AI-Powered Backpack Helps Visually Impaired Navigate World

"Artificial intelligence (AI) developer Jagadish K. Mahendran and his team designed an AI-powered, voice-activated backpack that can help the visually impaired navigate and perceive the world around them. The backpack helps detect common challenges such as traffic signs, hanging obstacles, crosswalks, moving objects and changing elevations, all while running on a low-power, interactive device. “Last year when I met up with a visually impaired friend, I was struck by the irony that while I have been teaching robots to see, there are many people who cannot see and need help. This motivated me to build the visual assistance system with OpenCV’s Artificial Intelligence Kit with Depth (OAK-D), powered by Intel.” –Jagadish K. Mahendran, Institute for Artificial Intelligence, University of Georgia Why It Matters: The World Health Organization estimates that globally 285 million people are visually impaired. Meanwhile, visual assistance systems for navigation are fairly limited and range from Global Positioning System-based, voice-assisted smartphone apps to camera-enabled smart walking stick solutions. These systems lack the depth perception necessary to facilitate independent navigation." [...]

Sweden’s AI Catalyst: 300-Petaflops Supercomputer Fuels Nordic Research

"An NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD system at Linköping University, dedicated to AI research, bears the name of the Swede who helped pioneer chemistry. A Swedish physician who helped pioneer chemistry 200 years ago just got another opportunity to innovate. A supercomputer officially christened in honor of Jöns Jacob Berzelius aims to establish AI as a core technology of the next century. Berzelius (pronounced behr-zeh-LEE-us) invented chemistry’s shorthand (think H20) and discovered a handful of elements including silicon. A 300-petaflops system now stands on the Linköping University (LiU) campus, less than 70 kilometers from his birthplace in south-central Sweden, like a living silicon tribute to innovations yet to come. “Many cities in Sweden have a square or street that bears Berzelius’s name, but the average person probably doesn’t know much about him,” said Niclas Andersson, technical director at the National Supercomputer Centre (NSC) at Linköping University, which is home to the system based on the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD." [...]

Samsung and Marvell Unveil New System-on-a-Chip To Advance 5G Networks

"The two companies pack advanced mobile technology into new SoC to improve power efficiency and network capacity of next-generation radios Samsung Electronics and Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL) today announced that the companies jointly developed a new System-on-a-Chip (SoC) to enhance 5G network performance. The SoC—which will be used in Samsung’s Massive MIMO and other advanced radios—is targeted for market introduction to Tier One operators in Q2 2021. The SoC is designed to help implement new technologies, which improve cellular radios by increasing their capacity and coverage, while decreasing power consumption and size. The new SoC is equipped to support both 5G and 4G networks simultaneously, and it can also save up to 70 percent in chipset power consumption compared to previous solutions. “We are excited to extend our collaboration with Marvell to unveil a new SoC that will combine both companies’ strengths in innovation to advance 5G network solutions,” said Junehee Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics. “Samsung prioritizes the development of high-impact 5G solutions that offer a competitive edge to our operators." [...]

Intel Teams with IBM for Advanced Semiconductor Research & Development

"IBM and Intel announced an important research collaboration to advance next-generation logic and packaging technologies. This collaboration aims to accelerate semiconductor manufacturing innovation across the ecosystem, enhance the competitiveness of the U.S. semiconductor industry and support key U.S. government initiatives. IBM and Intel share a deep commitment to scientific research and world-class engineering, bringing innovations to the world that transform entire industries. Both companies have been incredible sources for innovations in industries that are focused on the next chapter of breakthrough technologies – hybrid cloud, AI, 5G, the intelligent edge, and quantum computing – which will unleash the power of data and advanced computation to transform how businesses work and people live. IBM brings to this partnership decades of 'hard tech' semiconductor innovations that have shaped the industry, from the invention of one-transistor DRAM, to chemically amplified resists, to copper interconnects, to silicon germanium chips, to debuting the world's first 7 nanometer and 5 nanometer node test chips, to IBM’s continued innovation in the industry’s first advanced “nanosheet” device structure and electronics packaging technologies. No single company, no matter how significant, can create and bring to bear the power of many of these technologies alone." [...]

Toshiba’s Carbon Recycling Technology Realizes World’s Highest CO2 Conversion Speed and Achieves Decarbonization in a Limited Space

"Toshiba Corporation has developed the world’s most efficient electrocatalyst technology*1 for converting carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, a raw material for fuel and chemicals. The electrocatalyst has an installation area about the size of a C5 envelope, operates at room temperature, and can process up to a ton of CO2 a year. This dramatic improvement in processing speed and conversion rate was achieved with a proprietary technology for stacking CO2 electrocatalyst electrodes. Previous attempts to stack electrolytic cells only slowed the processing speed. Toshiba’s proprietary stacking technology eliminates such lower speeds, and dramatically improves CO2 conversion rate. Since this new approach increases processing speed per unit of area, it can be applied to locations with space limitations." [...]

Maxim Integrated Synchronous DC-DC Inverting Converters Reduce Component Count by Half for Industrial Automation and Signal Conditioning Solutions

"Integrated level-shifters cut board space by 72 percent, energy loss by 35 percent and improve voltage transient protection via the industry’s widest input voltage range from 4.5V to 60V SAN JOSE, Calif.—March 22, 2021—The MAX17577 and MAX17578 from Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. (NASDAQ: MXIM) are the industry’s smallest, highest-efficiency synchronous inverting DC-DC step-down converters. As Maxim’s first 60V inverting DC-DC converters with integrated level shifters, these devices save up to 72 percent of board space by reducing component count by half while using 35 percent less energy than the closest competitive solutions. Both ICs reduce size, heat, and cost, while simplifying the design of negative output voltage rails needed for analog signals within intelligent IoT devices found in factory automation, building automation and communications systems. As network edge devices expand with Artificial Intelligence capabilities, designers must reduce the solution size and heat generation. They seek solutions that are more efficient, creating less heat and use less board space, saving time and cost. The MAX17577 and MAX17578 integrate level shifting circuitry to reduce component cost and count by as much as 50 percent while reducing component area to 60 mm2, a 72 percent advantage in board space over competitive solutions." [...]

High-Accuracy Op Amp from STMicroelectronics Targets Energy-Efficient Power Conversion

"The STMicroelectronics TSV7722 precision high-bandwidth operational amplifier, with gain-bandwidth of 22MHz and slew rate of 11V/μs, is well-suited for high-speed signal conditioning and accurate current measurement in power-conversion circuits and optical sensors. The maximum input-offset voltage of 200µV (typical 50µV at 25°C) and extremely low input-voltage noise density of 7nV/√Hz permit accurate low-side current measurements. In addition, the typical input bias current of 2pA enables accurate photodiode-current measurement in optical-sensing applications such as smoke detectors. Unity-gain stable, and fully specified on a load of 47pF, the TSV7722 can be used as an input buffer for analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). With an operating-voltage range of 1.8V-5.5V, the TSV7722 can be powered from the same supply as low-voltage CMOS components, such as a microcontroller, or from a deeply discharged battery. Moreover, the TSV7722’s precision parameters and stability over temperature further simplify circuit design by ensuring outstanding accuracy without precision resistors or trimming after assembly." [...]

Cirrus Logic Smart Boosted Amplifier Brings Immersive Mobile Audio Experience to New Generations of Smartphones, Tablets and Gaming Devices

"Cirrus Logic’s CS35L45 Boosted Amp Gives Consumers a New Level of Audio Enjoyment when using Speaker Mode for Music, Podcasts, Video Conference Calls, Movies and Gaming As consumers increasingly turn to their phone’s internal speakers to enjoy music, podcasts, movies and gaming, Cirrus Logic (Nasdaq: CRUS) has introduced its newest flagship CS35L45 boosted amplifier for a richer, more immersive audio experience from smartphones, tablets and mobile gaming devices. Cirrus Logic’s CS35L45 smart power amp delivers higher excursion for high-peak loudness, improved dynamic range for more punch and bass precision, less noise and audible artifacts, and more tonal balance at all volume levels – enabling mobile device manufacturers to push audio performance to new industry benchmarks. The Cirrus Logic CS35L45 is a 15 V smart boosted Class D audio amplifier with DSP that can be easily integrated into a stereo or multi-speaker playback solution for next-generation high-end mobile devices, as well as improve performance in mid-tier devices without spending on upgrading the device’s speakers. Among its features are speaker protection and adaptive battery management that drive higher output power in all battery conditions, resulting in up to 30 percent higher peak loudness compared to Cirrus Logic’s previous generation boosted amplifier. “To help fulfill consumer demand for a richer, more immersive audio experience, smartphone OEMs are increasingly incorporating additional and more powerful speakers into next-generation devices,” said Carl Alberty, vice president of Mixed-Signal Products, Cirrus Logic. “Cirrus Logic’s CS35L45 flagship boosted amplifier elevates audio quality coming from micro speakers in these mobile devices, providing greater loudness, dynamic range and higher bass and tonal balance, while protecting the speaker and preserving battery life.” According to a recent user survey conducted by SAR Insight & Consulting for Cirrus Logic, 40 percent of consumers have increased their use of speaker mode over the past 12 months." [...]

Renesas Expands Communication Timing Portfolio for 4G/5G Radio

"Strong Lineup Delivers Best-in-Class Phase Noise, Industry’s First Complete 5G Radio Synchronization Solution Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today expanded its communication timing portfolio with three new low phase noise, high-frequency RF timing solutions for 4G and 5G radio, and two new Winning Combinations to address the need for full signal chain solutions. The new 8V19N850 radio synchronizer and 8V19N880, 8V19N882 JESD204B/C clock jitter attenuators deliver ITU-T compliant network clock synchronization, best-in-class phase noise, and high clock frequency. “Network synchronization plays an increasingly crucial role in the transition to 5G,” said Bobby Matinpour, Vice President of Timing Products, Data Center Business Division at Renesas. “With these latest devices and our new Winning Combinations, we enable our communications customers to introduce next-generation solutions with superior performance and reliability.” The 8V19N850 radio synchronizer is the industry’s first integrated 5G radio synchronization solution and is equipped with a complete set of features for radio synchronization on a single chip; including full ITU-T G.8273.2 T-BC/T-TSC Class C, ITU-T G.8262.1 enhanced SyncE, and JESD204B/C compliance. The 8V19N850 also takes care of recovering the clock from CPRI/eCPRI, per IEEE 802.1cm fronthaul synchronization requirements, making it ideally suited for use in emerging 5G O-RAN networks for Radio Units (O-RU). The 8V19N880 and 8V19N882 JESD204B/C clock jitter attenuators deliver low phase noise and exceptional jitter performance as low as 74fs RMS and -90dB spurious attenuation for mission-critical industrial data converter applications in wireless radio, test & measurement, instrumentation, and high-performance imaging." [...]

NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Prepares for First Flight

"NASA is targeting no earlier than April 8 for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to make the first attempt at powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. Before the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft can attempt its first flight, however, both it and its team must meet a series of daunting milestones. Ingenuity remains attached to the belly of NASA’s Perseverance rover, which touched down on Mars Feb. 18. On March 21, the rover deployed the guitar case-shaped graphite composite debris shield that protected Ingenuity during landing. The rover currently is in transit to the “airfield” where Ingenuity will attempt to fly. Once deployed, Ingenuity will have 30 Martian days, or sols, (31 Earth days) to conduct its test flight campaign." [...]

NASA, SpaceX Sign Joint Spaceflight Safety Agreement

"NASA and SpaceX have signed a joint agreement to formalize both parties’ strong interest in the sharing of information to maintain and improve space safety. This agreement enables a deeper level of coordination, cooperation, and data sharing, and defines the arrangement, responsibilities, and procedures for flight safety coordination. The focus of the agreement is on conjunction avoidance and launch collision avoidance between NASA spacecraft and the large constellation of SpaceX Starlink satellites, as well as related rideshare missions. A conjunction is defined as a close approach between two objects in space, usually at very high speed. “Society depends on space-based capabilities for global communications, navigation, weather forecasting, and much more,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk. “With commercial companies launching more and more satellites, it’s critical we increase communications, exchange data, and establish best practices to ensure we all maintain a safe space environment.” The Starlink spacecraft are equipped with global navigation satellite service receivers to estimate orbital parameters, an ion propulsion system, and an autonomous maneuvering capability that provide data for prompt and proactive exchange of information." [...]

Renesas Adds Bluetooth 5.0 to Ultra-Low Power RE Family for Battery Maintenance-Free IoT Devices

"Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today introduced the RE01B microcontroller (MCU) with Bluetooth® 5.0 support, expanding its RE Family of 32-bit ultra-low power consumption MCUs. Developed using Renesas’ breakthrough SOTB™ (Silicon on Thin Buried Oxide) process technology, the new Bluetooth-capable RE01B MCU is ideal for energy harvesting systems and intelligent IoT devices that need to operate constantly at extremely low power levels without the need to replace or recharge batteries. The RE01B MCU makes it easier to implement regular data management and firmware updates over Bluetooth while maintaining ultra-low power consumption, and extending the battery life. Applications include compact healthcare devices such as pulse oximeters and biomedical sensor patches; remote controls with voice recognition capabilities and smart meter modules. In addition, the RE01B is well suited for IoT devices that require constant operation, period data collection and updates, such as devices for monitoring the elderly, children or assets in transit. “Managing battery maintenance and replacement is one crucial hurdle ahead of the widespread adoption of ultra-low-power IoT devices that are expected to run for long periods with limited or no maintenance,” said Shigeki Kato, Vice President of the Enterprise Infrastructure Business Division at Renesas." [...]

Millimeter wave photonics with terahertz semiconductor lasers

"The volume of wireless telecommunication traffic is expected to surge in the near future with a continual increase in data traffic and corresponding necessary increase in bandwidth. It has therefore become inevitable to increase the photon frequency into the upper reaches of the millimetre (mmWave) region, which corresponds to frequencies between 30 GHz to 300 GHz. Millimetre wave generation using photonic techniques has so far been limited to the use of near-infrared lasers that are down-converted to the mmWave region. However, such methodologies do not currently benefit from a monolithic architecture and suffer from the high difference in photon energies between the near-infrared and mmWave region, that we called the quantum defect, which can ultimately limit the conversion efficiency. Terahertz (THz) wave region, with photons of lower energies, is however highly adapted. Moreover, we know how to generate them thanks to a compact miniaturized device, the quantum cascade lasers (QCLs)." [...]

Researchers’ algorithm designs soft robots that sense

"Deep-learning technique optimizes the arrangement of sensors on a robot’s body to ensure efficient operation. There are some tasks that traditional robots — the rigid and metallic kind — simply aren’t cut out for. Soft-bodied robots, on the other hand, may be able to interact with people more safely or slip into tight spaces with ease. But for robots to reliably complete their programmed duties, they need to know the whereabouts of all their body parts. That’s a tall task for a soft robot that can deform in a virtually infinite number of ways. MIT researchers have developed an algorithm to help engineers design soft robots that collect more useful information about their surroundings." [...]

Laser-driven experiments provide insights into the formation of the universe

"Researchers at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics are the first to experimentally measure the mechanism responsible for generating astrophysical magnetic fields. An international research collaboration, co-led by researchers at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) and the University of Oxford, has captured for the first time in a laboratory setting the process thought to be responsible for generating and sustaining astrophysical magnetic fields. Publishing their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team reports the findings could help explain the origin of large-scale magnetic fields that have been observed but didn’t match theoretical calculations. The work is the latest to refine further scientists’ understanding of a once-elusive phenomenon known as a “turbulent dynamo,” an astrophysical process that amplifies magnetic fields. By creating experimental conditions that mimic most hot, diffuse plasmas in the universe—conditions in which the turbulent dynamo mechanism is thought to operate—the team was able to quantify the rate at which a turbulent dynamo amplifies magnetic fields. Up until now, the rate had only been predicted theoretically and via numerical simulations." [...]

Optical Fiber Could Boost Power of Superconducting Quantum Computers

"The secret to building superconducting quantum computers with massive processing power may be an ordinary telecommunications technology — optical fiber. Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have measured and controlled a superconducting quantum bit (qubit) using light-conducting fiber instead of metal electrical wires, paving the way to packing a million qubits into a quantum computer rather than just a few thousand. The demonstration is described in the March 25 issue of Nature. Superconducting circuits are a leading technology for making quantum computers because they are reliable and easily mass produced. But these circuits must operate at cryogenic temperatures, and schemes for wiring them to room-temperature electronics are complex and prone to overheating the qubits. A universal quantum computer, capable of solving any type of problem, is expected to need about 1 million qubits." [...]

New porous material promising for making renewable energy from water

"One prospective source of renewable energy is hydrogen gas produced from water with the aid of sunlight. Researchers at LiU have developed a material, nanoporous cubic silicon carbide, that exhibits promising properties to capture solar energy and split water for hydrogen gas production. “New sustainable energy systems are needed to meet global energy and environmental challenges, such as increasing carbon dioxide emissions and climate change”, says Jianwu Sun, senior lecturer in the Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology at Linköping University, who has led the new study that has been published in the journal ACS Nano. Hydrogen has an energy density three times that of petrol. It can be used to generate electricity using a fuel cell, and hydrogen-fuelled cars are already commercially available. When hydrogen gas is used to produce energy, the only product formed is pure water." [...]

Tethered drones have wireless data covered

"Flying drones connected by a cable tethered to a ground station could be a flexible solution for enhancing wireless connectivity in temporary hotspots. Keeping up with wireless demand is a never-ending endeavor for data providers, who often contend with temporary high-usage hotspots that might be underserviced by the fixed-base station network. Tethered drones could provide a flexible and low-cost solution for temporarily increasing wireless capacity when and where it’s needed. “Transient hotspots of heavy data traffic can occur at events such as sporting matches, concerts, conferences and exhibitions,” says Osama Bushnaq, a former Ph.D. student at KAUST. “However, the high cost of deploying fixed terrestrial base stations to serve such occasional or periodic events may not be warranted. In such circumstances, drones could hover over the hotspot to provide ground users with better connectivity." [...]

New result from LHCb experiment challenges leading theory in physics

"UK particle physicists have today announced ‘intriguing’ results that potentially cannot be explained by the current laws of nature. This new result offers tantalising hints of the presence of a new fundamental particle or force that interacts differently with these different types of particles. Paula Alvarez Cartelle Results from the LHCb Collaboration at CERN suggests particles are not behaving the way they should according to the guiding theory of particle physics – suggesting gaps in our understanding of the Universe. Physicists from the Universities of Cambridge, Bristol, and Imperial College London led the analysis of the data to produce this result, with funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The result - which has not yet been peer-reviewed - was announced today at the Moriond Electroweak Physics conference and published as a preprint. Beyond the Standard Model Scientists across the world will be paying close attention to this announcement as it hints at the existence of new particles not explained by the Standard Model." [...]

New class of versatile, high-performance quantum dots primed for medical imaging, quantum computing

"An atomically defined interlayer embedded into a quantum dot emits single photons at room temperature and allows tuning a wavelength in discrete quantized jumps A new class of quantum dots deliver a stable stream of single, spectrally tunable infrared photons under ambient conditions and at room temperature, unlike other single photon emitters. This breakthrough opens a range of practical applications, including quantum communication, quantum metrology, medical imaging and diagnostics, and clandestine labeling. “The demonstration of high single-photon purity in the infrared has immediate utility in areas such as quantum key distribution for secure communication,” said Victor Klimov, lead author of a paper published today in Nature Nanotechnology by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists. The Los Alamos team has developed an elegant approach to synthesizing the colloidal-nanoparticle structures derived from their prior work on visible light emitters based on a core of cadmium selenide encased in a cadmium sulfide shell. By inserting a mercury sulfide interlayer at the core/shell interface, the team turned the quantum dots into highly efficient emitters of infrared light that can be tuned to a specific wavelength. “This new synthesis allows for highly accurate, atomic-level control of the thickness of the emitting mercury sulfide interlayer." [...]

Study reveals plunge in lithium-ion battery costs

"Analysis quantifies a dramatic price drop that parallels similar improvements in solar and wind energy, and shows further steep declines could be possible The cost of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries used for phones, laptops, and cars has fallen dramatically over the last three decades, and has been a major driver of the rapid growth of those technologies. But attempting to quantify that cost decline has produced ambiguous and conflicting results that have hampered attempts to project the technology’s future or devise useful policies and research priorities. Now, MIT researchers have carried out an exhaustive analysis of the studies that have looked at the decline in the prices these batteries, which are the dominant rechargeable technology in today’s world. The new study looks back over three decades, including analyzing the original underlying datasets and documents whenever possible, to arrive at a clear picture of the technology’s trajectory. The researchers found that the cost of these batteries has dropped by 97 percent since they were first commercially introduced in 1991. This rate of improvement is much faster than many analysts had claimed and is comparable to that of solar photovoltaic panels, which some had considered to be an exceptional case." [...]

Skoltech scientist bridges the gap between quantum simulators and quantum computers

"A researcher from Skoltech has filled in the gaps connecting quantum simulators with more traditional quantum computers, discovering a new computationally universal model of quantum computation, the variational model. The paper was published as a Letter in the journal Physical Review A. The work made the Editors’ Suggestion list. A quantum simulator is built to share properties with a target quantum system we wish to understand. Early quantum simulators were “dedicated” – that means they could not be programmed, tuned or adjusted and so could mimic one or very few target systems. Modern quantum simulators enable some control over their settings, offering more possibilities." [...]

Semiconductor qubits scale in two dimensions

"The heart of any computer, its central processing unit, is built using semiconductor technology, which is capable of putting billions of transistors onto a single chip. Now, researchers from the group of Menno Veldhorst at QuTech, a collaboration between TU Delft and TNO, have shown that this technology can be used to build a two-dimensional array of qubits to function as a quantum processor. Their work, a crucial milestone for scalable quantum technology, was published today in Nature. Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that are impossible to address with classical computers. Whereas current quantum devices hold tens of qubits – the basic building block of quantum technology – a future universal quantum computer capable of running any quantum algorithm will likely consist of millions to billions of qubits. Quantum dot qubits hold the promise to be a scalable approach as they can be defined using standard semiconductor manufacturing techniques." [...]

New NMR spectroscopy research reveals the dynamics of catalysts in 3D space

"Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have mapped the dynamics of a catalyst’s active site in three dimensions. This achievement gives researchers new insights into how these catalysts work, and potential paths to improve their selectivity and efficiency. Catalysts are used to speed the rate of chemical reactions and have thousands of applications in petroleum refining, biofuels production, food processing, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing. Humans have used catalysts for thousands of years, far longer than the concept has been understood and studied by science, which is over 200 years. And despite all that history, mysteries remain about exactly how catalysts work, with angstrom-level details missing from the complete picture. A key part of the success of a catalyst is thought to be its ability to change its conformation to mold itself to the incoming reactants, in doing so facilitating their interaction and chemical transformation." [...]

An exotic metal-insulator transition in a surface-doped transition metal dichalcogenide

"Metal-insulator transition (MIT) driven by many-body interactions is an important phenomenon in condensed matter physics. Exotic phases always emerge around the metal-insulator transition points where quantum fluctuations arise from a competition among spin, charge, orbital, and lattice degrees of freedom. Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a large class of materials. Their simple structure, low dimensionality, and highly tunable carrier density make them an ideal platform for exploring exotic phases. However, the many-body interactions are normally weak in most 2D materials, hence, the correlation-related phenomena attract little attention in the studies of 2D materials for a long period. Recently, people found that the many-body interactions can be enhanced in 2D hetrostructures or artificially-creased 2D structures." [...]

Moiré effect: How to twist material properties

"2D materials have triggered a boom in materials research. Now it turns out that exciting effects occur when two such layered materials are stacked and slightly twisted. The discovery of the material graphene, which consists of only one layer of carbon atoms, was the starting signal for a global race: Today, so-called "2D materials" are produced, made of different types of atoms. Atomically thin layers that often have very special material properties not found in conventional, thicker materials. Now another chapter is being added to this field of research: If two such 2D layers are stacked at the right angle, even more new possibilities arise. The way in which the atoms of the two layers interact creates intricate geometric patterns, and these patterns have a decisive impact on the material properties, as a research team from TU Wien and the University of Texas (Austin) has now been able to show." [...]

Reading between the diamonds

"The high temperatures and pressures of the Earth’s mantle forge carbon-rich minerals known as carbonates into diamond. But less is known about the fate of carbonates that travel even deeper underground — depths from which no sample has ever been recovered. Now, Michigan State University’s Susannah Dorfman and her team are unearthing an answer with lab tools that mimic these extreme conditions. “What we were interested in is, when is carbon not diamond?” Dorfman said. In a paper recently published in Nature Communications, scientists in Dorfman’s Experimental Mineralogy Lab at MSU redefined the conditions under which carbonates can exist in the Earth’s lower mantle, expanding our understanding of the deep carbon cycle and the Earth’s evolution. “The circulation of carbon and minerals from the surface of the Earth through subduction to the base of the Earth’s mantle has been happening for billions of years,” said Dorfman, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, or EES, in the College of Natural Science and co-author of the paper." [...]

NIST Team Compares 3 Top Atomic Clocks With Record Accuracy Over Both Fiber and Air

"In a significant advance toward the future redefinition of the international unit of time, the second, a research team led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has compared three of the world’s leading atomic clocks with record accuracy over both air and optical fiber links. Described in the March 25 issue of Nature, the NIST-led work is the first to compare three clocks based on different atoms, and the first to link the most advanced atomic clocks in different locations over the air. These atomic clock comparisons place the scientific community one step closer to meeting the guidelines for redefinition of the second. “These comparisons are really defining the state of the art for both fiber-based and free-space measurements — they are all close to 10 times more accurate than any clock comparisons using different atoms performed so far,” NIST physicist David Hume said. The new measurements were challenging because the three types of atoms involved “tick” at vastly different frequencies, because all the many network components had to operate with extreme accuracy, and because the wireless link required cutting-edge laser technology and design. The study compared the aluminum-ion clock and ytterbium lattice clock, located in different laboratories at NIST Boulder, with the strontium lattice clock located 1.5 kilometers away at JILA, a joint institute of NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder." [...]

Reinventing computer science for quantum computing

"To revolutionise computing, as the very first quantum computers have raised hopes of doing, researchers must meet exciting challenges, such as writing new informatics, and limiting the many errors still made by these ultra-powerful machines. At the heart of this global race involving both public laboratories and private multinationals, the quantum computer, envisaged in the early 1980s by Richard Feynman, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, sparked a true revolution. However, amid promises and sensational announcements, it is difficult to know where this technology really stands, and what its actual applications will be. Unlike a classical computer and similar devices such as smartphones, a quantum system does not use binary bits, namely the two values of one and zero. It is based on qubits, which thanks to the unique properties of quantum objects, display an increasing number of different states with the addition of new units. Each extra qubit doubles computing power." [...]

Novel thermometer can accelerate quantum computer development

"Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, have developed a novel type of thermometer that can simply and quickly measure temperatures during quantum calculations with extremely high accuracy. The breakthrough provides a benchmarking tool for quantum computing of great value – and opens up for experiments in the exciting field of quantum thermodynamics.​​​ A key component in quantum computers are coaxial cables and waveguides – structures which guide waveforms, and act as the vital connection between the quantum processor, and the classical electronics which control it. Microwave pulses travel along the waveguides to the quantum processor, and are cooled down to extremely low temperatures along the way. The waveguide also attenuates and filters the pulses, enabling the extremely sensitive quantum computer to work with stable quantum states. In order to have maximum control over this mechanism, the researchers need to be sure that these waveguides are not carrying noise due to thermal motion of electrons on top of the pulses that they send. In other words, they have to measure the temperature of the electromagnetic fields at the cold end of the microwave waveguides, the point where the controlling pulses are delivered to the computer’s qubits." [...]

Chromatic light particle effect revealed for the development of photonic quantum networks

"Researchers demonstrate a novel photonic interference effect that could pave the way to large-scale controllable quantum systems Researchers demonstrate a novel photonic interference effect that could pave the way to large-scale controllable quantum systems It's another step on the road to developing quantum information processing applications. A key experiment succeeded in going beyond the previously defined limits for photon applications. Anahita Khodadad Kashi and Prof. Dr. Michael Kues from the Institute of Photonics and the Cluster of Excellence PhoenixD at Leibniz University Hannover (Germany) have demonstrated a novel interference effect. The scientists have thus shown that new colour-coded photonic networks can be tapped, and the number of photons involved, i.e. light particles, can be scaled. "This discovery could enable new benchmarks in quantum communication, computational operations of quantum computers as well as quantum measurement techniques and is feasible with existing optical telecommunication infrastructure," says Kues." [...]

UC chemists use supercomputers to understand solvents

"Research could contribute to green energy, better batteries To understand the fundamental properties of an industrial solvent, chemists with the University of Cincinnati turned to a supercomputer. UC chemistry professor and department head Thomas Beck and UC graduate student Andrew Eisenhart ran quantum simulations to understand glycerol carbonate, a compound used in biodiesel and as a common solvent. They found that the simulation provided detail about hydrogen bonding in determining the structural and dynamic properties of the liquid that was missing from classical models. The study was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B. The study demonstrates UC's commitment to research as described in its strategic direction, Next Lives Here. Glycerol carbonate could be a more environmentally friendly chemical solvent for things like batteries." [...]

Light It Up: uOttawa Researchers Demonstrate Practical Metal Nanostructures

"Researchers at the University of Ottawa have debunked the decade-old myth of metals being useless in photonics – the science and technology of light – with their findings, recently published in Nature Communications, expected to lead to many applications in the field of nanophotonics. “We broke the record for the resonance quality factor (Q-factor) of a periodic array of metal nanoparticles by one order of magnitude compared to previous reports,” said senior author Dr. Ksenia Dolgaleva, Canada Research Chair in Integrated Photonics (Tier 2) and Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the University of Ottawa. “It is a well-known fact that metals are very lossy when they interact with light, which means they cause the dissipation of electrical energy. The high losses compromise their use in optics and photonics. We demonstrated ultra-high-Q resonances in a metasurface (an artificially structured surface) comprised of an array of metal nanoparticles embedded inside a flat glass substrate. These resonances can be used for efficient light manipulating and enhanced light-matter interaction, showing metals are useful in photonics.” “In previous works, researchers attempted to mitigate the adverse effect of losses to access favorable properties of metal nanoparticle arrays,” observed the co-lead author of the study Md Saad Bin-Alam, a uOttawa doctoral student in EECS." [...]

"Smart clothes" that can measure your movements

"In recent years there have been exciting breakthroughs in wearable technologies, like smartwatches that can monitor your breathing and blood oxygen levels. But what about a wearable that can detect how you move as you do a physical activity or play a sport, and could potentially even offer feedback on how to improve your technique? And, as a major bonus, what if the wearable were something you’d actually already be wearing, like a shirt of a pair of socks? That’s the idea behind a new set of MIT-designed clothing that use special fibers to sense a person’s movement via touch. Among other things, the researchers showed that their clothes can actually determine things like if someone is sitting, walking, or doing particular poses. The group from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) says that their clothes could be used for athletic training and rehabilitation." [...]

Researcher finds a better way to tap into the brain

"Using a new class of nanoparticles that are two thousand times thinner than a human hair, Sakhrat Khizroev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University’s College of Engineering, hopes to unlock the secrets of the brain. The neurosurgeon who examined Sakhrat Khizroev after he lost his eyesight in a horrible accident told the young scientist that his vision would come back slowly. Then, after months of living in darkness, it finally started to return. At first, the images were blurry and fragmented, as if someone were looking through a narrow window and seeing only part of a picture. But with each passing day, everything Khizroev looked at appeared clearer, sharper. It wasn’t until his eyesight had fully been restored that Khizroev grew to appreciate just how intricate and complex the organ that controls it really is." [...]

New blade tip concept to yield considerably more energy

"The innovative SmartTip concept has potential to significantly reduce the cost of wind energy per year, implicitly displacing millions of tons of CO2 each year. It will support novel blade design business cases with potential increased export revenue in Denmark. The project was started in 2017 and was just finalized in 2020. It explored design and testing of innovative blade tips for wind turbines which can increase the existing rotor size, producing significantly more energy per year, while mitigating loads in a smart way. Innovationsfonden invested 10,8 mil. kr." [...]

The MagPi 104

"Inside The MagPi magazine #104 Build the home of the future. Our room-by-room guide to a smarter home. Pico-fy your projects. Classic Raspberry Pi projects that you could rebuild with Pico. Grow food with a computer. How makers are using Raspberry Pi to monitor an agriculture chamber." [...]

newelectronics 23 Março 2021

"New Electronics is a fortnightly magazine focusing on technological innovation, news and the latest developments in the electronics sector. Downloadable as a digital page turner or pdf file, or offered as a hard copy, the New Electronics magazine is available in a format to suit you. " [...]

Touch Deck: DIY Customizable TFT Control Pad

"Build your own Touch Deck and you'll have full-color, customizable USB controls at your fingertips. The Feather RP2040 + 3.5" TFT display running CircuitPython makes the ultimate, multi-layer DIY Stream Deck. " [...]

License Plate Recognition with Vitis-AI

"Vitis-AI provides a zoo of pre-built models. This project describes how to leverage these models to implement license plate recognition. Introduction The Xilinx Model Zoo contains many pre-built convolutional neural network models. This project makes use of several of these models, in order to implement a multi-inference application for license plate recognition. vehicle detection : ssd_traffic license plate detection : platedetect license number recognition : platenum" [...]

Not another digital alarm clock?

"Yes it is, but this one has Bluetooth and other great features! The Story This is my third project since this pandemic arrived and it was something my Dad made in 1993 which gave me the idea. Back then, he was a little depressed, so he made a full size grandfathers clock, which now stands proudly in our hallway. He made it as a representation of time passing during his low period and this got me thinking. I have some friends in the USA who I usually visit once or twice a year, but not since March 2020. So after making my first project (the Digital Cribbage Board), I wondered if I could use the same chassis and turn it into a modern version of my father’s grandfather clock (generally speaking)." [...]

AVR Microcontroller. Stopwatch - Timer With the Feature of Display on LCD

"Hi guys! Welcome to my channel. I'm explaining how to make a simple Electronic Stopwatch that is based on the AVR ATMega328P. Values of the stopwatch are shown on the LCD. The device has a button to start, pause and restart the stopwatch. I have also included a circuit diagram of this device for those of you who find it easier to understand the structure of the device through visual representations." [...]

Smart Home With Multiple NodeMCU ESP8266 Network With Blynk

"In this IoT project, I have shown how to make IoT-based Smart Home Automation using Multiple NodeMCU ESP8266 network to control all the home appliances from the pushbuttons & Blynk App. If the internet is not available, then you can control the home appliances from manual switches. During the article, I have shown all the steps to make this smart home system. This ESP8266 NodeMCU control smart relay has the following features: Connect multiple NodeMCUs with the same Blynk account. Control home appliances with WiFi (Blynk App) Control home appliances with manual switches. Monitor real-time feedback in the Blynk App." [...]

Smart parking system

"Smart prarking lot forpublic parkingd The parking systems are becoming more familiar in this country, so we are providing outstanding car parking system for you. This parking slot has new technology of smart way of parking. In this the LCD placed In front of the gate will show that which slot is free. If all the slots are filled with vehicles then the gate will not open. Any slots are free then the gate will open and allow the vehicle. The availability of place will be indicated in LCD display, driver can easily identify the free place for parking" [...]

DIY Tinfoil Ribbon Speaker

"Hello everyone, In this Instructable I'd like to share with you how to make a simple ribbon speaker with tinfoil as the ribbon diaphragm. I started this project to see if a ribbon driver design like this could be a viable candidate for some ribbon headphones that i'm planning on building. They can also be used for a high frequency driver instead of a regular tweeter. The results that I received greatly exceeded my expectations. Join me on my journey of creating these... What is a ribbon speaker? "These speakers are based on the same principle as cone speakers, i.e." [...]

Pwn the ESP32 Forever: Flash Encryption and Sec. Boot Keys Extraction

"I wanted to close my investigation by targeting the two major security features: Secure Boot Flash Encryption My final goal is to achieve a PERSISTENT exploit, bypassing the Secure Boot and the Flash Encryption. In this report, I disclose a full readout of protected E-Fuses storing two secret keys, one used for Flash Encryption (BLK1) and the other for the Secure Boot (BLK2). This attack cannot be patched by the vendor on existing devices. It’s a FOREVER pwn. Espressif and I decided to go to Responsible Disclosure for this vulnerability (CVE-2019-17391). The OTP eFuses One-Time Programmable (OTP) memory is a type of non-volatile memory (NVM) that permits data to be written to memory only once." [...]

Adjustable High DC Voltage Generator

"This project is about building an adjustable high voltage generator (DC) from a low DC voltage supply. The voltage supply can range from 5V to over 25V (I use a 9V supply). Higher voltages can require heat dissipators attached to the transistors. Output voltages of 800V and more are possible (400V with 9V source). The generator should be connected to a high impedance, or the output voltage will drop. ATTENTION: HIGH VOLTAGE IS DANGEROUS." [...]

Automatic Arduino Pet Feeder - 3D Printed (With Stepper Motor)

"I made an automatic 3D Printed Pet Feeder (or just dispenser, but I use it to feed my dog). I 3D modelled all that project. U can print it by yourself. All parts are down there. Basically how it works, is u type in two Feeding Times, for example 8:30 and 17:30, then when time is right stepper motor enables and feeds your little pet. Electric Components: - Stepper Motor NEMA17 - 42HB34F08AB - Stepper Motor Driver A4988 - Arduino UNO - Arduino Keypad 4x4 - RTC DS3231 Clock - LCD Display 16x2 - Step Down Module (I used LM2596S DC/DC) 12V to 5V - 12V Power Supply - a lot of wires" [...]

PID Desktop Marble Balancer With Glo Rev 2

"The PID controller is one of the first things taught to engineering students and designers. Its simplicity and versatility make it easy to understand and implement. This ball balancer uses the PID feedback loop to balance a marble perfectly on the center of a beam. Additionally, it contains interactive LEDs which gauge the relative position of the marble. It also utilizes one of the most well-known simple machines: the lever. The device is driven by a prototype of Glo Rev 2, a new RGB LED strip controller." [...]

DIY Smart Home PC Ambilight

"I've seen a bunch of projects online of people either building their own "Ambilight" for their PC's or buying them off the shelf. I recently started playing with addressable LED strips like the WS2812(b) and decided to build my own PC Ambilight. I make use of Apple HomeKit throughout my apartment to control various appliances such as switches, outlets, and lights, so a requirement for this project was to make the Ambilight HomeKit compatible. Supplies: Hardware: - WS2812b LED strip - 5V 3A power supply - Wemos D1 mini - Jumper wires - 2.1mm x 5.5mm DC jack (male) - 2.1mm x 5.5mm DC jack (female) - 270 Ohm resistor - Heat-shrink tubing (optional) - Header pins (male) - Header pins (female) - 4pin grove connectors - Soldering iron and supplies - 3D Printer for control board enclosure (optional) Software: Windows - Homebridge for Apple HomeKit support - WLED to control LED strip - Hyperion.ng * Note: If you have a very big screen and require a long piece of LED strip, consider getting a 5V 6A power supply instead. * Note: For this project, you require a working Homebridge server if you wish to also control your Ambilight using Apple HomeKit. * Note: For this project, I opted for the Wemos D1 mini WiFi board." [...]

Carnival Lights Game

"Welcome to an Arduino beginner project. It's a simplification of my previous instructable; it's designed to be easier to reproduce. This is a timing minigame where the active light moves back and forth across a row of lights in order. When the button is pressed the light stops. If the light stops on the center light the level and difficulty increases. If the button is pressed one away from the middle the level stays the same." [...]

ESP32-CAM Video Surveillance Smart Camera

"Description This project is a development of our ESP32-CAM Video Surveillance Robot project. Eventually we got a video surveillance pan & tilt camera that can be controlled with an iPhone through Internet Parts List: ESP32-CAM x1 FT232RL FTDI Mini USB x1 - for uploading a code to the ESP32-CAM 18650 Battery Holder x1 1 8650 Battery x2 (as an alternative four AA batteries and its holder can be used instead of 18650 batteries) Mini Pan/Tilt Platform w/ 2 SG-90 Servos x1 MB102 Breadboard Power Supply Module x1 iRobbie-A iOS App" [...]

School Bell Ring

"This project shows you how to automate and control from a mobile phone a school bell ring using a ESP8266 module with a relay and Blynk The main features could be the following: Access to a network wifi to control the device from a Blynk app Access to Blynk servers to ensure the time of the device was always on time Timers to sound the bell ring each change of class Schedule holidays and weekends to prevent the ring bell from ringing It doesn´t use batteries to maintain the configuration because it is stored in the Blynk servers I hope you like. " [...]

"Ouija" ESP8266 Programmer Planchette

"ESP, you say? Why not make an ESP8266 programmer that looks like a beautiful "talking board" planchette... and is also wearable? I'm building a suite of arcane tech tools that make everyday electronics tasks more beautiful. This one came out so nicely that the final version has a hole for an earring hook. (It's pretty large for an earring, but what a statement!) The original programming circuit came from this article by Alasdair Allan in Make." [...]

PIR Motion Sensor LED Ceiling Light – Arduino Compatible

"This motion sensor LED ceiling light board has been designed using 4 white LEDs each of 1-3W, PIR sensor module, Atmega328 microcontroller, low ohm IRLR7843 MOSFET, and few other components. The PIR sensor detects the infra-red rays emitted by human motion within the detection area and switches on the 4 white LEDs for 10 seconds. The project helps in energy-saving applications and new green building projects. Detecting distance: 1 to 20 feet. Detecting angle: 360 degrees. Installation height 2-15 feet." [...]

My Daughter's laptop

"It's a programable "laptop". Hardware that allows me to program different activities in a nice box This is a long project, I will divide it into small bits so people can take pieces and set up their own. I also recommend seeing my previous projects to understand how I got here, especially the "tutorial for ILI9341 (part 1, 2, 3, and 4), as it uses some modified libraries that I would not explain here. I dived the project into (power supply, MP3, LCD's, keyboard, and software) The software is an on-going project, I would be adding different programs my daughter gets different interests. Keyboard: I used 2 keypads 4x4 and one 3x4 to make a 40 key keypad this brand makes a keypad that allows me to have that many keys with only 3 pins" [...]

Remote On/Off Switch for Blynk Relay - using ThingsonEdge Cricket, Node Red, and MQTT

"Like most makers, my home is automated - not with off-the-shelf IoT devices, but with home-built switches and relays, Raspberry Pis and ESPs. My first remote switches - all controlled through ESP8266 01s- were mostly built with Blynk. I'd contentedly call up the app on my phone and tap things on and off. This was fine until the emergence of voice assistants like Alexa and Google Home. Now, I was no longer satisfied with the Blynk app. Instead, I wanted Google to do the job at my verbal command." [...]

How I gained real control of an Echo

"The beginning For more than 15 years I've built my own "Home Automation" components. Nothing fancy, though maybe back then it was. It started with some colored LED spots under my couch connected to my Ethernet via a micro controller. Later I added WiFi and 433MHz radio to control various remote switchable outlets. Some of them even were built into a light switch to control it. I even had Linux running in a light switch for some time." [...]

Alpaca ATtiny85 Dev Board

"A cute PCB alpaca with a rainbow tail and glowing cheeks. I've recently heard of the Micronucleus bootloader for the ATtiny85 and I wanted to try it out, so I designed this quick alpaca ATtiny85 dev board, which can be programmed directly through the USB, no other chip needed. Pretty cool! This project is inspired by the following links: Digispark USB Development Board Micronucleus bootloader Programming ATtiny85 IC directly through USB using Digispark Bootloader The LED on the alpaca tail is a colour changing RGB LED and for the blushing effect of the cheeks I've used regular pink LEDs which I've reverse-mounted on the back. The cheeks LEDs are connected to pin PB0 of the microcontroller, which is a PWM pin. All the other unused pins are exposed on the back." [...]

Raspberry Pi 4 NAS out of an old Power Amplifier

"A Raspberry Pi 4 as NAS server with two WD red 4TB out of an old 19" power amplifier case. (Hard- and software). I had played around with the NAS feature of my router in the past, but quickly reached its limits. Since then, I was looking for a NAS solution for my whole family. Best to build it myself. I already had a few Raspberry Pis at home and when the PI 4B came out, this was the perfect moment to get this project started." [...]

ATtiny1614 Frequency Meter

"A tiny frequency meter built using the ATtiny1614 microprocessor. Over the years, I have build a number of audio oscillator circuits using discreet components (no microprocessors). While these produce good quality sine waves, the frequency of the output is usually set by a simple marked-up dial. In audio work, precise frequency control isn't really required. Some more advanced oscillators showed the frequency on a meter but these are bulky solutions. All I really required was a small 5-Digit frequency meter preferably no bigger than the display itself so it took up as little room as possible." [...]

Open Dictionary

"Open Dictionary is a computer-vision based dictionary. It can be thought of as a dumb cousin of Google Translate. Problem English is not my first language and because of that, my English vocabulary is not that great. My weak vocabulary reflects especially when I am reading a book. English authors use extensive vocabulary in there books and some time that requires me to google meaning (using my smartphone) almost in every paragraph. Due to this, I find myself distracted and lose interest in reading very easily." [...]

FPrintCFSMQTT

"This is new version of an MQTT connected fingerprint sensor using capacitive sensor and OLED display, originally developed by Lewis Barcley, I have Home Assistant platform at home, which I am using, among several other things, to control home surveillance using cameras and sensors. First I tried to use presence detection to turn on and off the surveillance system. But this caused several problems related to presence detection. Then I saw the nice project implemented by Lewis Barcley, which I planned to use to turn off the surveillance system. The device worked nicely in general, but the sensor (FPM10A) caused several communication errors making it unreliable and slow, which were also reported by others. Furthermore, the sensor has very bright light." [...]

Calculating Reading Time with TinyML and Arduino Nano 33 BLE

"Do you want to know remaining reading time? This little TinyML Arduino device was trained to do exactly that. Being a writer born in the seventies, of course I do like paper books but after many years using also a Kindle I’ve got used to some features I don’t want to lose. What features? remaining reading time for instance. Can such feature be implemented for paper books?" [...]

Welcome to CurrentSense-TinyML

"CurrentSense-TinyML is all about detecting microcontroller behaviour with current sensing and TinyML. Basically we are trying to work out what is happening on a target PCB. This work is inspired by prior work I have done, as well as the work of Stacksmashing at leveldown security. This work is intended to be a working Proof of Concept (PoC) for what is the next logical step in these kinds of attacks - using Machine Learning (ML) in current monitoring side-channel analysis attacks. GOAL - To detect an LED flashing on a target using an TensorFlow Lite ML model running on a different microcontroller speaking to an INA219 power monitor that is reading the power going into the target. See TinyML-CurrentSense-Writeup.ipynb for the writeup of this project." [...]

SPI Display Array Board – Clock

"Fully Customizable SPI Display Array Clock The main idea of this project was to make a customizable clock, a clock that would have the option to change its appearance very easily, The first option was to make it with RGB LEDs and change the color at will, maybe to have the ability to change the color according to the time of the day or with the ambient temperature, but what is more customizable than a display by itself, nowadays we can find very nice IPS Displays that are very cheap. Maybe the hardest step of this project was the clock creation, making the graphics for each clock was really challenging as I wanted to look very similar to the real ones, like the Flip Clock, the seven-segment Display clock, the LED matrix clock. These are only a few clocks that I have created, but it will be awesome to see other designs and that is why I’m sharing the design files of this project, I think it would be awesome to see how a project can evolve in the maker community. I have also designed a 3D printed enclosure or in this case a frame. It consists of only 3 parts that glued together to make a single clock piece. " [...]

Easy Object Detection With Teachable Machine & Python

"Easy object detection framework that can be used to create a La Croix Flavor Detector or any other object detection project in Python! Teachable Machine is an easy, but powerful tool to create machine learning models. It allows for easy data capture to create training data sets and uses state of the art algorithms to train machine learning models right in your browser. It is done in a very intuitive web interface. You can generate image, sound, or pose detection models. In this project, I will provide you with a step-by-step guide for setting up an OpenCV/TensorFlow Python development environment and a Python script framework to easily incorporate Teachable Machine image models into your projects." [...]

A (not so) Electric Bike

"A system that gives my bike front and tail lights, a turn signal, and a speedometer, all in a clean and simple design. Hello! My name is Collin Wentzien, and I am a 15 year old maker and electronics enthusiast. For these past few weeks, I’ve focused my attention away from video games and towards a project which I call the smart bike. I’m going to give you all a quick overview on how it works, and then I’ll talk about why I made it, how I made it, and then show you some footage of using it in the real world. Let’s hop into it." [...]

I2C Master Mode Emulator

"This emulator allows communication with I2C devices by sending or receiving data to/from the I2C bus through a PC. The I2C master mode emulator allows communication with I2C devices by sending or receiving data to/from the I2C bus. To issue the I2C commands, the emulator should connect to a PC over the USB port. After initializing the emulator, the PC and directly control the I2C slave chip/module. I2C is a popular data bus to communicate with inter-board peripherals. Today I2C based chips and modules are widely available in many categories, including data storage, ADC/DAC, I/O Expanders, sensors, etc." [...]

How to add Ethernet to Raspberry Pi Pico

"Raspberry Pi Pico has a lot of interesting and unique features, but it doesn’t have networking. Of course this was only ever going to be a temporary inconvenience, and sure enough, over Pi Day weekend we saw both USB Ethernet and Ethernet PHY support released for Pico and RP2040. The PHY support was put together by Sandeep Mistry, well known as the author of the noble and bleno Node.js libraries, as well as the Arduino LoRa library, amongst others. Built around the lwIP stack, it leverages the PIO, DMA, and dual-core capabilities of RP2040 to create an Ethernet MAC stack in software. The project currently supports RMII-based Ethernet PHY modules like the Microchip LAN8720. Breakout boards for the LAN8720 can be found on AliExpress for around $1.50." [...]

Arduino-Powered Coin Box Is the New Way of Saving Money

""Save for a rainy day," as the saying goes. But that doesn't mean saving money has to be boring and analog. Bring your coin box into the 21st century with this awesome DIY Arduino-powered solution. Before you begin building this amazing device, you are going to need a few materials. - Arduino Nano - MG90S servo motors - Cardboard circles (1.4-inch/35 mm by 1.4-inch/35 mm) - Small cardboard box or cardboard - Hot glue gun - Battery holder - Electrical wires, resistors, and soldering gear. - Arduino Nano code The first step is to wire up the servo motor to the Arduino Nano." [...]

Machine Learning Smart Inventory Tracking with Raspberry Pi

"Use a custom object detection model to automatically track your inventory with Microsoft Azure IoT Central integration! In today's tutorial, I will show you how to create a smart inventory tracker using object detection, powered by deep learning, with just a Raspberry Pi 4 and a camera. We will apply transfer learning on the YOLOv4 tiny model to identify custom objects, then use a simple python script to parse the model's output to produce a count of each object. Finally, we will also integrate the application with Azure IoT Central so that we can monitor our inventory remotely and conveniently. Project Overview Have you ever passed by a grocery store but found yourself unsure of whether you needed to get that extra carton of milk? Well, what if there was some way to have eyes on the inside of our fridge to update us with that information?" [...]

Kitchen Timer

"A simple Arduino timer using a rotary encoder and LCD display. Story Thinking about what to do with a broken mouse and an LCD screen, I came up with the idea of ​​making a kitchen timer. In this project the rotary encoder allows selecting the time values, the push button allows changing the states of the timer and the buzzer emits an alarm when the countdown is complete. " [...]

Simple Signage

"Using a Raspberry Pi 4, the VLC video player and Node-Red to implement a simple signage type application. The goal of the project was to use a reasonably cheap monitor for picture slide shows and video display at home. The display should be wall mounted (no cables should be seen) and using a wooden frame to conceal all parts. The videos displayed should be able to be changed on demand or run at predefined times during the day. Slideshows should also be possible. Since the user interface should be via a mobile phone, a WiFi network integration is necessary." [...]

Control a LED Spotlight set-up with an Arduino via DMX

"The task was to control a lighting system with an Arduino via DMX. The task was to control a lighting system with an Arduino via DMX. In the trade there are already adapters from PC to DMX but so far rarely an Arduino control. Therefore I took my old Arduino out of the drawer and bought a DMX512 interface (industry standard EIA-485 interface). Additionally a DMX compatible device (e.g. LED RGB fixture) is required and a DMX cable to the fixture." [...]

How to Build Vice 3.5 (x64sc, etc.) on Raspberry Pi 400

"The Raspberry Pi 400 invokes a sense of nostalgia back to the all-in-one systems of the past, such as those commonly available in the 80's (about 40 years ago!) of having the keyboard and computer all in one, with connections at the back of the enclosure, and expansion at the back of the enclosure. My favorite system released January 1982 was the Commodore 64. So why not have both? With emulation, let the Raspberry Pi 400 become a Commodore 64 as well. One way to do this, is using Vice (the Versatile Commodore emulator)." [...]

DIY Balancing Dot on LED Strip

"How to make balancing LED dot using WS2812 LED strip and MPU6050 accelerometer and gyroscope module. This time I will show you how to make balancing Led dot using WS2812 led strip and MPU6050 accelerometer and gyroscope module. This module is physically attached to the LED-strip, so when the LED-strip is held at a certain angle, the chip measures the angle of the LED strip and the Arduino uses this information to update the position of a virtual object as if it was a ball that is balanced on a beam and rolls from one side to the other if the beam is held at an angle. The position of the virtual object is indicated on the LED strip as a single LED that is illuminated. The code is taken from the Roel Arits blog with minor changes in hardware and software. Specifically I use Arduino Nano and LED strip with 37 LEDs." [...]

IR Windshield Rain Sensor

"In this project a rain and ice sensor is implemented by analyzing the reflection of an infrared (IR) light source using GreenPAK™ SLG46620V. In this project, a rain and ice sensor is implemented by analyzing the reflection of an infrared (IR) light source. This project will use proven techniques based on multiple reflections of IR light in the internal walls of the target glass. It will aim to increase the capabilities of standard components by adding technical advantages offered by the LED device, such as increasing the power emission using pulsed energy applied ten times using high current strikes at one percent duty cycle. Below we described steps needed to understand how the solution has been programmed to design a rain sensor. However, if you just want to get the result of programming, download GreenPAK software to view the already completed GreenPAK Design File.Plug the GreenPAK Development Kit to your computer and hit the program to design the solution." [...]

Two Channel Smart Low-Side Power Switch for Inductive, Resistive and Capacitive Loads – Arduino Shield

"The project presented here enables users to switch all kinds of resistive, inductive and capacitive loads, limited by clamping energy (EAS) and maximum current requirement. The user may interface 2 x inductive, resistive, and capacitive loads such as solenoid, dc motor, high current contact switch, high current relay, LEDs, lamps, and piezo etc. The project is most suitable for inductive loads as well as loads with inrush current. The project has been designed using BTF3050TE IC which is a 50 mΩ single-channel Smart Low-Side Power Switch in a PG-TO252-5 package providing embedded protective functions. The power transistor is built by a N-channel vertical power MOSFET. The device is monolithically integrated." [...]

build an LC Meter

"An open source LC-Meter, which is very accurate and easy to build. All the documentation included. This is an open source project. You may use, modify and distribute both software and hardware as long as you give credit. All the project's files are available here: https://github.com/coreWeaver/LC-Meter This project is based on an original idea shared by Neil Hecht back in the mid 90's. Open Source LC-Meter." [...]

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