Author: Gareth Halfacree

Gareth Halfacree is a technology journalist and technical author best known for his work on the Raspberry Pi User Guide and an upcoming book covering the BBC’s micro:bit project. A keen open source advocate and RISC-V fan, Gareth is responsible for curating our fortnightly community round-up posts.

Intel Movidius Myriad 2 VPU Chip Hits the Skies

Intel’s innovative Myriad 2 vision processing unit (VPU) has found its way into the drone market through a partnership between start-up Ryze Tech, Intel, and drone specialist DJI. Designed to offer ease of flight and remote photography with smartphone control, the Ryze Tello is described by the company as a… Read More

Semtech Announces Next-Gen LoRa Chips

Analogue and mixed-signal semiconductor specialist Semtech has announced next-generation chips for LoRa radio devices with a claimed 50 percent reduction in power draw, 20 percent boost in range, and 45 percent reduction in component footprint. Designed for devices using the LoRaWAN long-range low-power wide area network protocol, Semtech’s new SX1226,… Read More

Arm Releases Low-Resource, High-Resiliency LittleFS

Arm’s MBED division has announced the release of LittleFS, a file system designed to offer high-integrity storage for embedded devices with minimal RAM and flash usage. Built into Mbed OS 5.7 as an alternative to the classic File Allocation Table (FAT) file system, LittleFS is designed to reduce resource usage… Read More

Esperanto Announces 4,112-Core RISC-V AI Chip

Esperanto, a company run by The Case for RISC co-authors Dave Ditzel and Dave Patterson, has announced its first RISC-V products – including a 4,112-core processor aimed at high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Detailed in full on WikiChip Fuse, Esperanto’s aim is to produce three intellectual property (IP) core… Read More

Device Solutions' LoRa Guide Illustration

Optimising LoRa Performance in Embedded Applications

The rise of low-power long-range radio technologies like LoRaWAN has been a boon for the Internet of Things (IoT), but working in radio brings unique challenges – as demonstrated by Embedded.com’s new guide to optimising the performance of embedded radios. Written by Chris Lamb and Rod Williams, the guide… Read More

CRU: PULP Interview, HiFive Unleashed, 3D Printed Sensors, and More

The IoT and sensor network focused Parallel Ultra Low Power (PULP) platform is described as a “silicon-proven parallel platform for ultra-low power computing targeting high energy efficiencies,” and project lead Davide Rossi has been kind enough to walk us through it in our latest Open Source Digital Design Insights… Read More

IBM Releases 120 Permissively-Licensed Code Patterns

IBM’s developer arm has completed the release of a series of permissively-licensed code patterns, described by the company as “roadmaps for solving complex programming challenges” and offering up techniques for everything from building to-do lists and insurance applications on the blockchain to implementing computer vision for computer game analysis. Brought… Read More

The Things Network Launches Quick-Start LoRaWAN Hardware

Wireless Internet of Things [IoT] specialist The Things Network has announced the launch of a trio of products which allow for the creation of a network based around the LoRaWAN standard in as little as five minutes. Launched in Amsterdam and now to be found in 550 cities across the… Read More

SiFive, Microsemi Partner for High-End HiFive Unleashed Board

Microsemi and SiFive have announced a partnership that will see the latter join the former’s Mi-V RISC-V ecosystem and the launch of a new development board combining a RISC-V system-on-chip (SoC) with a field programmable gate array (FPGA) for enhanced flexibility. “Microsemi is pleased to welcome SiFive to our Mi-V… Read More

Researchers Demonstrate 3D Printed Passive Wi-Fi Sensors

Researchers from the University of Washington have demonstrated wholly passive, electronics-free Internet of Things [IoT] sensors, produced on commodity 3D printers, which are nevertheless capable of transmitting data to nearby Wi-Fi receivers. Based on similar backscatter principles as radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, Vikram Iyer and Justin Chan’s work takes… Read More

CRU: Rusty RISC-V, LoRa, FPGA Brains, and More

Opal Kelly has launched a crowdfunding campaign to produce a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) development board, Brain-1, featuring its Syzygy open standard for high-performance peripheral connectivity. Designed to coexist with existing interconnection standards including PMOD and FMC, Syzygy is claimed to be entirely vendor-agnostic and compatible with products from… Read More

Semtech Unveils LoRa-Based “Disposable Nano-Tag”

Analogue and mixed-signal specialist Semtech has announced a “disposable nano-tag” featuring LoRa wireless communication, aimed at remote communication of specific trigger events in everything from healthcare to asset tracking. “By offering a lower cost, disposable LoRa-enabled tag, we can expand the current landscape of use cases for Semtech’s LoRa devices… Read More