SpecialBoards

A wave of specialized micro controller boards

For a project with interactive kites: https://airlaboart.wordpress.com, I bought and investigated a lot of boards with special characteristics.

All the different categories below require quite a bit of time to get used to and to get it working.

Sometimes you have to write in another programing language, like Micropython

Sometimes you have to install a new tool chain, using the terminal window.

A few links showing this tool chain pain:

https://airlaboart.wordpress.com/2019/07/04/further-intelligence/

https://airlaboart.wordpress.com/2019/07/07/and-the-third-toolchain-maix-dock/

After this project I investigated also the

BBC Microbit (22,95) https://www.floris.cc/shop/en/home/1848-microbit-go-bundel-microbit.html

Adafruit circuit playground express (29,95) https://www.adafruit.com/product/3333

SD cards included

For fast real time data collection. The data are stored on the SD card and can later be retrieved and analyzed, for instance using Processing.

Boards with SD-card:

Sparkfun Razor Razor

IMU sensors incorporated – https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/9dof-razor-imu-m0-hookup-guide/all#libraries-and-example-firmware

Adafruit feather M0 adalogger (22,93 euro) https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather-m0-adalogger/

Teensy 3.6 https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensy36.html

If the SD card is not on the board you can use this device:

OpenLog: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/openlog-hookup-guide?_ga=2.10013043.776216311.1558331043-1571920724.1558331043#firmware

Acceleration included

A lot of boards have acceleration sensors included.

These sensors come into a few variaties.

3 axes, acceleration x,y,z
6 axes, acceleration x,y,z, gyro x,y,z
9 axes, acceleration x,y,z, gyro x,y,z, compass x,y,z
10 axis, acceleration x,y,z, gyro x,y,z, compass x,y,z and ....

Only the

You could think that integrating the acceleration would make it possible to keep track of the sensor and calculate the position after a certain time. The formulas from physics suggest this: just integrating over time. The problem is that the errors are building up.

Camera included

The bigger boards now have cameras included:

OpenMV7 (75 euro) https://www.antratek.nl/openmv-h7-camera, https://openmv.io

Maix Dock one (30,95) https://www.antratek.nl/sipeed-m1w-ai-dev-board-with-lcd-and-camera

AI included

Speech recognition:

Sparkfun Edge (18,09) https://www.antratek.nl/edge-development-board-apollo3-blue

Gesture recognition:

Intel Curie Tiny Tile

Slow and Fast Sensors

Some data have to be tracked fast, like acceleration, gyro, compass, others can be sampled at a lower rate, like temperature, pollution, air pressure.

This means that different sets of sensors can be grouped together.