Category: Electronics

A team at MIT’s Lincoln Lab have designed a new shape of quadcopter propeller which drastically reduces the noise generated from the drones.

In figuring out why it works so well, they realized that the vortices generated by the design are distributed across the whole of the propeller instead of just the tips, making it dissipate faster in the atmosphere.

https://twitter.com/MITLL/status/1611438712683958306

From video description:

“Arm prostheses are becoming smarter, more customised and more versatile. We’re closer to replicating everyday movements than ever before, but we’re not there yet. Can you do better? Join teams to revolutionise prosthetics and build a world without barriers”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stRGJR3HE-E
https://cybathlon.ethz.ch/en/events/edition/cybathlon-2024

At CES Frore Systems showed off the AirJet, an active cooling chip for use in electronics. It’s 2-3mm thick, silent, and outperforms fans.

Every chip has a cavity filled with vibrating membranes. This vibration creates back pressure which pulls air through holes in the top of the chip at 200km/h, which in turn hits a copper heat spreader and cools the processor.

https://www.froresystems.com/

A joint team of US and Korean researchers have developed a new type of microbattery designed for use with microdevices. They achieved this by foregoing standard packaging to reduce size and making the entire battery hermetically-sealed, fully-dense and stackable.

So far the batteries come in 3 stackable variations, single- (∼4V), double- (∼8V), and triple-stacked (∼12V) configurations with energy densities reaching 990 Wh/Kg and 1,929 Wh/L.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666386422005239

Arya Voronova over at Hackaday has written another interesting article on USB-C, this time focusing on the many aspects of power delivery.

https://hackaday.com/2023/01/09/all-about-usb-c-power-delivery/

The Fairphone team recently announced that after 7 years, software support for the Fairphone 2 will be coming to an end after March 2023.

The team do note that third-party builds of LineageOS and /e/OS are still actively supported, which means that users will continue to receive security updates for as long as those developers support the phone.

https://www.fairphone.com/en/2023/01/09/an-update-on-fairphone-2/

From description: “Featuring some of the latest and greatest of possibilities from Brelyon and LG; This pixel guzzling 8K computational display is the worlds first 8K OLED virtual monitor with 155 degree field of view featuring some of the Brelyon’s lightfield expansion and depth modulation technologies.

The display shows a 120″+ virtual images to the user with surround sound and surround telecom capabilities. This model is now available to enterprises for flight simulation and telepresence applications in limited volume.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxYd1gTDzpw
https://brelyon.com

At CES last week, Arduino introduced the new Nicla Voice board, a sensor packed module aimed at AI and voice recognition applications. The Nicla Voice runs audio inputs through the Syntiant NDP120 Neural Decision processor, and has a microphone, 6-axis motion sensor and magnetometer.

https://blog.arduino.cc/2023/01/05/have-you-heard-nicla-voice-is-out-at-ces-2023/
https://www.arduino.cc/pro/hardware-nicla-voice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDPZ9oi9Xf8

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced the new Camera Module 3, which comes with powered autofocus, which can focus from 5cm to infinity.

The module has a few variations, including standard and wide field of view, and visible light and infrared light options.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/new-autofocus-camera-modules/

Raspberry Pi staff member Alasdair Allan recently confirmed in a tweet that Bluetooth support is coming to the Pico W sometime in January 2023.

It was recently added to the 1.5.0 release of the Pico C SDK. You can veiw the comments on the official Github page.

https://twitter.com/aallan/status/1610616300597907456
https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk/issues/1164

Iridium satellite communications recently announced a new partnership with Qualcomm to enable satellite messaging and emergency services in smartphones powered by Snapdragon.

This will enable two way satellite messaging through smartphones, starting with devices based on the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Mobile Platform, starting Q3 2023.

https://investor.iridium.com/2023-01-05-Iridium-and-Qualcomm-Collaborate-to-Support-Satellite-Messaging-in-Smartphones
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2023/01/qualcomm-introduces-snapdragon-satellite–the-world-s-first-sate

At CES 2023, Samsung held an invitation-only exhibit showing off some prototype OLED products. Among these was the ‘Flex Hybrid’ which combines both foldable and slidable capabilities into one display and large-screen slidables.

The company says these types of displays are in development for potential future laptops, including a screen which expands from 13inch to 17.3inch.

https://global.samsungdisplay.com/31057
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZrtvghyUUU

Saw this phone and thought it was unique. The Hisense Hi Reader Pro is a 6.1 inch smartphone with an e-ink display. It’s specs are pretty midrange with Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage, and is currently for sale for under $250.

It would be nice to see these displays make their way to the hobbyist market.

https://liliputing.com/hisense-hi-reader-pro-is-an-android-smartphone-with-a-6-1-inch-e-ink-display/