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There have been many projects over the last 5-10 years to introduce new languages to the embedded development space. While they still haven’t made huge inroads against C/C++ in the professional embedded development world, in the hobbyist world projects like Micro/CircuitPython and Espruino have strong followings. Well, you can now add Swift to that list! Yes, the Apple-created but now fully open-source language has made its way into the embedded sphere, thanks to the SwiftIO Mainboard and the SwiftIO Playground!

Using a combination of Swift, the Zephyr RTOS and a powerful i.MX RT1062 microcontroller, the basic development system uses Visual Studio Code and a library simply called SwiftIO. The communication with the board is all built into the Visual Studio Code extension created by the developers. Once your code is ready, simply compile and hit the download button, and the code is programmed into the board and starts executing!

The benefit of higher-level languages like Swift is in prototyping speed and ease of use. It’s straightforward to quickly sketch out your ideas, even complex ones, and let the library handle the nitty-gritty complexity behind the scenes. This can make getting a new project up and running extremely fast, with fewer debug cycles and often easier-to-read code.

The SwiftIO Playground Kit includes the main board and a huge number of sensors and actuators to play with, all housed in a nice case. As delivered, all the components are connected via the carrier PCB, allowing you to get started right away without having to wire up a single jumper. If you later decide to use just a few components in a project, they all easily snap out of the PCB and then can be connected with common 4-pin JST PH connectors (aka Grove/STEMMA connectors).

If you’re a Swift expert and have wanted to get into the world of embedded electronics, this looks like a great way to get started!

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The Micro USB Dual Supply module can give you some great options to add redundancy to USB-powered projects. This unit is built by the highly reputable 8086 Consultancy, so you know it’s going to be a tried, tested and dependable building block!

Designed for 5V USB supplies, there are a pair of Micro USB sockets on the input side and a stacked pair of USB A sockets on the output. Power from either of the Micro USB inputs is routed through a MOSFET acting as an ideal diode to the output USB A. The ideal diode arrangement means that power is prevented from feeding back into the Micro USB ports and it will automatically balance the draw between the two inputs, favouring the input with higher voltage first. Though it’s a simple circuit, it’s very effective, and a great way to have redundant power for, say, a Raspberry Pi running your Home Assistant/openHAB server.

Data is also passed through the system should you require it, but it isn’t mixed! The Micro USB are labelled as are the stacked USB A (labelled “top” and “bottom”) and each micro USB connects its data lines to one of the outputs. This is a feature that is often missing in boards that combine different power sources.

With one input being driven by a battery, and the other driven by an AC adapter, you can easily homebrew a simple uninterruptible power supply. You can even use whatever is being powered (like a Pi or Arduino) to monitor the system and automatically shut down if the voltage gets too low. There are a lot of projects out there that could benefit from having a reliable power backup! Make sure to check out the product page for more details.

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Capacitive touch sensing can make a project feel very slick and futuristic, especially if you have a matrix of touch buttons. Adding capacitive touch to the Pico isn’t too difficult, but this Pico Touch 2 board makes it even easier. Simply mount a Pico, either surface mount or with headers, and voila! You’ve got 23 capacitive touch channels.

With that many capacitive touch channels, you can do a lot of neat things, including large keypads or a row of many keys (such as, maybe, a piano as seen in the video below!) And of course all the non-capacitive touch pins are also broken out, so you can easily mount the entire thing into your project and keep everything nice and tidy.

JC Devices (aka Jeremy Cook) is known for creating quality components and useful widgets, and as a special offer he’s generated a 20% off coupon code good until the end of March 2024 — make sure to go to the product page and read carefully to take advantage of it!

(Note that the PCB design in the video is a slightly earlier design!)

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The EGCPH-S Generic Chest harness is a generic chest mount platform for people to build interesting and useful chest mount wearable projects.

At first glance, you might be thinking “What is the difference between this and a chest harness sold by any number of action camera manufacturers?” Well, at first glance not much,  but when you delve deeper into the product listing and read about the design approaches you realise this product has had a lot of thought and care in development.

A really excellent feature is that all the straps and clips/buckles are designed so that everything is on the front of the harness. This makes it potentially much more comfortable and compatible with other gear such as rucksacks, climbing harnesses or other load-carrying or safety equipment. The chest plate itself is rugged, made with a semi-rigid polyurethane, which is flexible enough to be comfortable for the wearer yet rugged enough to withstand most impacts. Polyurethane is also inert and resistant to many chemicals making it suitable for all manner of industrial environments.

Eschewing webbing for full weave elastic straps, the maker states that the EGCPH-S is suitable for extended periods of wear, perfect for long shifts and more.

While it doesn’t come with any particular mount for any particular equipment we could easily see this being incorporated into many projects, from simple body camera mounts to tool holders to communications and radio attachments — it’s a great starting platform for your wearable needs!

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CoI declaration: concreted0g is a fellow Tindie Blog writer and a friend. Though I wouldn’t write about their project unless I genuinely thought it was worthwhile, it’s important to us that our readers are informed of any potential conflict of interest up-front.

Many robotics platforms are out there, but few are as simple and easy to use as this one. The StoRPer is an all-wheel drive robotics platform, designed to use a Raspberry Pi Pico as the brains, but because the system is designed to be modular it would be straightforward to hack in your microcontroller of choice.

The pictured example uses mechanum wheels, which allow travel in any cardinal direction by simply changing the rotation direction of certain wheels. Note that the base kit doesn’t include wheels or motors, but N20 motors with standard motor mounts work perfectly. Or you can 3D print whatever kind of motor mount your project requires!

The motor drive is accomplished using the inexpensive but easy-to-use L9110S H-bridge driver IC. These make driving DC motors very simple — just send a high signal to one pin and the motor turns one way, a high signal to another pin and it spins the opposite way. The chip is easier to use than discrete MOSFETs as it prevents shoot-through, which can reduce efficiency and even destroy your FETs. Though they are only rated for 500mW each, with 4 wheels and low impedance connections to the motor, this should be more than adequate for most applications.

concreted0g has aimed to make these boards affordable, which is commendable as many kits can get very expensive very quickly. If you’ve been looking for a simple platform to get your project moving, the StoRPer is an excellent choice!

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Into chiptunes? Are you yearning for that glorious era of SNES music filling your ears? Somewhat of a purist? Then the Fisher SNES Music PLayer V1.5 might be just the thing!

At first glance, you might just think this is a DIY MP3 player or some such device. No, this fabulous build is a dedicated .SPC file player, the file type of choice for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Your next thought might be, “Oh, OK it’s an emulator for SNES music!”, which also is not the case! This system eschews emulation in favour of the original hardware.

The main device onboard is the SPC700 chip which is the Sony chip the original SNES systems utilised for audio. It features 8 DSP channels with each channel being 16-bits, one of the reasons the SNES had pretty high-fidelity sound. If you’re interested in the SPC700 there is a wiki page here.

Aside from the SPC700, the Fisher SNES Music player has a built-in display and a nice looking interface for negotiating through your .SPC files. The files are stored on an SD card and this device comes with a 2GB card with sample files loaded. There’s volume control and the output is a 3.5mm stereo jack socket. Also included is a 9V DC power supply.

It comes fully assembled, which means it’s easy to get up and running quickly! This is a great device for those with SNES nostalgia and it’s definitely worth at least checking out the product page. Check out the video below for an example of how it sounds!

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While we’ve seen many encrypted messaging devices before, this might be the easiest way to get an encrypted communication device and become part of the ever-growing Meshtastic network. The HelTXT Lite is a small, entry-level LoRA-equipped messaging device that supports Meshtastic out of the box!

What is Meshtastic? It’s an open-source, fully decentralized mesh network that seamlessly adds and removes nodes as they come and go. All messages that devices receive, even those not intended for it, are re-broadcast to create a repeater network, extending the range by using multiple transceivers, just like a traditional mesh network. The difference is you can only decrypt messages that are intended for you.

With a good quality antenna and some distance off the ground, it’s possible to reach many tens of kilometres, with the record for Meshtastic devices being over 250km! While this device is intended as an entry-level device, there’s no reason it can’t be modified with a better antenna to reach further. Just make sure you stay within the law; though anyone can broadcast on the frequencies used by LoRA, there are power limits — don’t be the person using a 1000W linear amplifier to try and reach Europe with a LoRA device (unless you have a license to do so, in which case, make sure to let us know about it).

Amateur radio operators can legally broadcast with higher power, as long as they stay within their own band limits and power restrictions. Meshtastic actually supports this out of the box, allowing you to append your callsign to each packet. Note however that this disables encryption, as all amateur traffic must be decodable by anyone listening. In any case, happy hacking and have fun sending encrypted messages to friends and strangers alike!

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In case you don’t know the Minitel was an astonishing French Video Teletext network system with terminals all over the country. As a pre-internet system, it stayed in popular usage for many years, booking travel tickets, and disseminating news for many years (in fact up until 2012). The Minitel terminals therefore are prime targets for hardware hackers and tinkerers. The Miniplay is an incredible development of a game cartridge for compatible Minitels!

Built around a DIN plug, these satisfying circular cartridges contain a familiar ATmega328p which uses a hardware serial connection to talk to the Minitel. There isn’t any USB on board, but the ISP header is broken out, so connecting this up to the Arduino IDE is pretty trivial. “Videotex” games can then be developed and there are a couple of example games over in the project repository.  Also in the repository is some useful information about the compatibility of Minitel terminals as some don’t have the correct power supply to the DIN connector. However, don’t fear; if you happen to have an incompatible Minitel there are workarounds to power the cartridge from an external source.

Finally, we’re struck by just how pleasing a cylindrical cartridge with a DIN connector is. We can’t think of any other systems that have used this form factor but we think perhaps more should! We hope to see a community build up around these Minitel terminals, creating new games and breathing new life into this awesome vintage hardware.

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The Sysrox High Performance IMU AHRS may have a complex name but in simpler terms it’s a Swiss Army knife of tools for projects that fly!

Onboard this small assembled PCB is a lovely collection of modern and accurate sensors. There is a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis gyro, a 3-axis magnetometer and a barometric pressure sensor. These are newer than the classic sensors like the MPU6050 and BMP280, which are great, but perhaps a little superseded in 2024.

All these sensors sit on the small board terminated with 2.54mm pitch header pin pads so it can be easily hooked up to your microcontroller of choice. There are clear code examples for getting this device up and running with Arduino and ESP32. The software on board sounds very fit for purpose with Kalman filtering assuring cleaner data. It’s compatible with CANbus, Protobuf and the Mavlink protocol. This means it’s relatively painless to set up a drone or other flying project with a robust attitude heading reference system (AHRS).

It’s supplied with some pin headers and a stick-on cover which is designed to smooth out the airflow hitting the barometric pressure sensor and increase accuracy. There is a heap of documentation linked off the project page to get you up and running — or flying!

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We probably don’t need to talk to the Tindie blog readership about how large the impact of 3D printing has been in terms of making cool niche things! The fact that many of us probably have a machine that can turn out a pretty accurate plastic material part is pretty amazing. However, not everyone does and not everyone has invested the amount of time to learn how to model objects in 3D CAD software. Therefore we think it’s great that people can offer relatively simple parts for sale to those who need them but don’t have a printer. A good example are the DJI Mini 2 Landing boots.

The DJI Mini 2 is an excellent quad-copter capable of long-range flights, 4K video capture with transmission and more. It’s a popular small drone at a price point where most users want to take good care of it.

The DJI Mini 2 has landing gear which consists of feet at the front which are a long plastic part below the motors and at the rear, some smaller plastic feet moulded directly into the body shell. These hard plastic feet are prone to getting worn, scuffed and cracked if you regularly land on harder surfaces like concrete and tarmac.

The DJI Mini Landing Boots are a pack of four 3D printed boots, printed in rugged flexible TPU filament, that fit over each of the feet and provide protection. The kit comes with 2 pairs of boots for the two different pairs of feet and an alcohol wipe to clean up the feet on your DJI Mini 2 before applying them. The front boots are larger and have a friction fit whereas the rear boots come with a small pre-inserted adhesive patch to help them adhere to the smaller body shell feet. Check out how easy they are to install in the video below:

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