Have you ever heard of M5Stack HACKATHON? It is a creative contest for M5Stack inner staff that started in 2019. The first M5Stack HACKATHON of 2020 was held last Friday. In order to encourage staff innovation using M5Stack products and promote teamwork and problem solving, to let all staff know more about in-house products.
The theme is “Smart Office” for this time. From 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, it is the time of the “marathon” to design and program “Smart Office" projects for each group. There are four groups to join the contest. Different groups have different projects to show. The project show started at 5:00 PM, the members from the four groups show their project.
The Projects from Four Groups.
Hardware: M5Stack Fire
Software: UIFlow
The project mainly implements the function of receiving the message in the office.
Hardware: M5Stack Fire and M5StickC
Software: UIFlow
This is a fantastic project! "It can recognize who is your loyal friend!" said by the speaker from this team.
Hardware: M5Stack ATOM Matrix
Software: UIFlow
Most keyboard shortcuts require the user to press a single key or a sequence of keys one after the other. Other keyboard shortcuts require pressing and holding several keys simultaneously. Keyboard shortcuts may depend on the keyboard layout. However, the common keyboard shortcuts still difficult to remember, inconvenient to use, easy to press wrong. ATOM Board form MoYu Group can save you a lot of time, easier to use.
Hardware: M5Stack ATOMIC, M5Stack ATOM Matrix, M5Stack ATOM ECHO, M5Stack Basic Core
Software: UIFlow
The project is mainly used to remote security alarm. The ATOM will become an alarm when you touch the door. The alarm will sound when you opened the door, the holder of M5Stack Basic Core will receive the message that the door has been opened.
This is an interesting and exciting day! Finally, thanks to all participants!
The main controller device is called the “Core”. These “Core” products play a pivotal role in our product category. Most of them can be modular and stackable with other modules via connectors called M-Bus such as LiPo battery module, GPS receiver module, and LoRa / NB-IoT / LTE-4G wireless communication module, etc. We have several kinds of Cores, the following figures show the main difference with them.
The products of the series are perfect for people who want to make advanced ESP32 projects with a display, user interface, speaker, and a couple of buttons. It’s super easy to snap in other M5 blocks to add sensors, interfaces, or cameras, no soldering required.
The products of the M5Stick series are smaller than ESP32 IoT Core Series. Especially, M5StickC is suitable for wearables.
There are a bunch of libraries, examples, and other cool stuff all open source for prototyping of your ideas. So, if you’re interested in developing your own wearable gadget, which works according to your requirements, all you need is an M5StickC. Yes, none other, but M5StickC. And it is also a kind of cost-effective kit. Maybe, you can’t even imagine that it was called an IoT platform on your wrist.
M5stickV is the visual sensor module based on Kendryte K210, which can perform high-speed convolution neural network calculation under ultra-low power consumption. Use scenarios such as target detection and image classification tasks based on convolutional neural network, face detection and face recognition, multi-class object detection, and recognition.
Obviously, M5StickT has gotten a lot of attention in 2020 due to the product’s potential role in detecting people who may be infected with COVID-19. It is an Infrared Thermal Imaging Camera. It adopts the advanced FLIR Lepton 3.0 long-wave infrared (LWIR) camera core with an effective resolution of 160 * 120 for a clear and stable image. Its main control chip is ESP32 which provides a different IoT power and performance.
M5Stack ATOM series are the latest items. M5Stack ATOM Matrix, ATOM Lite, and M5Stack ATOM ECHO are the core category from the M5Stack ATOM series. A great many peripherals have been released so far such as ATOMIC Proto Kit, ATOM Tail485, ATOM TailBat, ATOM HUB Proto Kit, ATOM 2D/1D Barcode Scanner Kit, ATOM GPS Kit (M8030-KT) and ATOM TF-Card Kit.
ATOMIC Proto Kit is a versatile DIY kit for users to unleash a new wave of creative ideas and opportunities. It is ideal for you to design your own projects!
ATOM Tail485 is an RS485 converter designed for M5Stack ATOM, which is used for converting RS485 signals to TTL.
ATOM TailBat is an accessory external battery designed for M5Stack ATOM. It can directly supply power to the M5Stack ATOM. ( 190mah battery )
ATOM HUB Proto is a DIY proto board module designed for use with the ATOM series. You can build circuits or create prototypes and end-use devices for various scenarios.
ATOM 2D/1D Barcode Scanner Kit is an ESP32 M5Stack Atom compatible module with wireless connectivity for reading Barcode/QR-codes. Compatible with Arduino, it easily captures all common barcodes (2D/1D) on labels!
M5Stack ATOMIC GPS is a GPS+Glonass positioning module based on ATOMIC. The navigation chip is M8030-KT, together with a flash and a button cell can save your history configuration.
M5Stack ATOMIC TF-CARD is an ATOM-based TF (MicroSD) card module. It can support up to 16GB TF card.
ATOM (refers to ATOM Matrix and ATOM Lite) will be equipped with various peripherals!
M5stack was rapidly growing in the first half of 2020, successfully defying market volatility by the global outbreak of the virus. Certainly, the most critical for reasons why M5Stack increasingly focused on user’s experience and M5Stack products are widely preferred in most of the engineers. There has been an increasing demand for no breadboard and wires, no prototyping board, no solder required. Modular and Stackable dev kits may become a classic hobby that can be enjoyed by both young and old.
The smallest ESP32 dev board ATOM is already launched. It is mainly designed for portable embedded systems and IoT development projects. ATOM is more of a complete system rather than a single embedded functional module.There are some awesome projects for ATOM. In case you missed it！
The internal IMU sensor for M5ATOM Matrix used to detect tilt. If the display shows more red pixels than green pixels, the device has to be tilted to the right. If there are more green pixels, then the unit must be tilted to the left.
We are planning to develop more extension boards for ATOM such as ATOMIC and AtomEcho. It is expected that they will be available on this Friday!
Furthermore, our engineers will be developing new gadgets for ATOM to play with! AtomFLY, TailBat and Tail485！
This project shows how the current data of the COVID-19 pandemic can be visualized with ESP32 M5Stack. Time series data of confirmed infections and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic strongly illustrate the seriousness of the situation.
If you want to compare the data of certain countries directly in one graph. You could write a software to load and display the data of 5 countries as combined graphs on a M5Stack. More details for this project you could find in Hackster.
Our user designed the project to measure staff's temperature for office.
The Thermal Camera Unit communicates with the M5Core through the Grove A interface.
The COVID-19 creates enormous demands for non-contact and thermal imaging.
During a global pandemic, one of the cheapest, easiest, and most important ways to prevent the spread of a virus is to wash your hands properly and frequently. Here’s everything you need to know about how to wash your hands the right way.
Washing your hands can protect you and your loved ones.
Have you been looking for a STEM LEARNING KIT for your children? Then look no further than M5GO IoT Starter Kit.
You don't often hear the terms fun and STEM in the same sentence, but trust us when we say these STEM kits and toys really are fun and educational. With M5GO, your children will love learning about some basic STEM fundamentals whilst playing for hours on end.
10 Serial official tutorial videos for "M5Go" are coming to our YouTube channel!
"M5Go - IoT starter kit" also comes with an official guidebook, contains 16 courses with robotics and IoT cases step by step. GET THE FREE BOOK NOW!
This M5GO IOT Kit is easy to programming using UIFlow. You children will get more hands on experience for coding and electronics from this kit. It’s a great teaching or learning science kit for any age who is interest in coding and electronics.
Check the DHL situation for your country via https://www.simplydhl.com/covid-19updates
Digi-Key is one of the fastest growing distributors of electronic components in the world. The company provides electronic parts and online design services to engineers all around the world.
1. RF Evaluation and Development Kits, Boards
3. Evaluation Boards - Expansion Boards, Daughter Cards
4. Wearables
6. Accessories
Maker Faire Bangkok 2020 takes place on Jan. 18-19, 2020 at the Street Ratchada, Bangkok, Thailand. This is currently the largest exhibition of inventions and innovations by makers in Southeast Asia.
The famed and much-awaited Electric Parade returns to celebrate the 5th year of Maker Faire Bangkok. There was also a series of DIY workshops and makers’ talk sessions. Visitors exchange information and insights with makers, together which enhanced a deeper understanding of maker culture.
M5Stack exhibits a series of IoT application cases, Smart hospital infusion system, PM2.5 inspection kit, the upcoming new product "Though" for industry IoT, etc.
STEAM Education is also one of the topics this year. During the exhibition, hundreds of participants had attended the M5StickC and M5StickV workshops presented by local University professor.
During the Maker Party, M5Stack shared the industry insights and presented the new product "Atom" and "Atom Lite" for the sponsor talk. M5Stack is willing to take one step further for makers, by providing more cost-effective and more complete product. It takes the maker spirit to the next level - transforms ideas to reality, not only make something happen but make it in a better way.
Thanks for local partners, distributors, fans, and visotors. Hope the maker community grow and thrive, 2021 Thailand BangKok MakerFaire, See you next year!
2019 has come to a successful end. In the past year, M5Stack has produced nearly 100 new products. Let's take a look at the top selling ones.
Highlights: Switch a penel, switch a feature, as easy as changing clothes.
ToF is a popular sensor to measure distances. Compared with general ultrasonic sensors, it is not affected by the object material. There is a better performance in sensitivity and tolerance. Obstacle avoidance and measuring distances can be easily implemented.
Highlights: Simple, practical and diverse.
As the most cost-effective camera solution, the ESP32CAM-PSRAM maximizes the potential of ESP32. It is an ideal choice for geeks at the same price level for both remote camera monitoring and ID recognition.
Highlights: The cost-effective camera solution.
To satisfy users' portability and universality, CardKB was made, which has a full keyboard function but it is very light. It is only half the size of a mobile phone, suitable for some temporary situations where users have to use the keyboard.
Highlights: It is an essential product in the multi-key entry.
Integrating temperature, humidity and air pressure sensors, IoT is a must-have for beginners. As a basic sensor, ENV can help you better understand the screen diagram display, MQTT data publishing and subscription with the help of rich network learning resources. It is also the easiest geek experiment project to get started.
Highlights: Basic IoT platform entry cases are required and there are plenty of basic tutorials.
It is the current powerful product with bigger FLASH and more PSRAM. You can easily combine with lego bricks to get creative due to It is compatible with lego holes. In addition, UIFlow makes programming easier, even if you're new to it.
Highlights: Excellent programming, high configuration and various hardware.
PIR is also a sensor with practical value in daily life. It is a good choice to use it as alarm or body sensor.
Highlights: Easy to use, flexible application.
As an AI camera, the M5StickV equipped with K210 has neural network computing capability. Combined with other M5 products, AI projects can be easily combined, such as object tracking, color recognition, face recognition and so on.
Highlights: Small and powerful, good at AI vision projects.
M5StickC has been a best-seller influencing product since its launch. It is popular not only for its tiny size but also for its low price. As a mini controller, M5StickC has a lot of applications and online resources, so if you're a novice trying to get your foot in the door, you can consider starting.
M5StickC has been a best-seller influencing product since its launch. It is popular not only for its tiny size but also for its low price. As a mini controller, M5StickC has a lot of applications and online resources, so if you're a novice trying to get your foot in the door, you can consider starting.
Highlights: The code is plentiful and the device is cost-effective.
BASIC is still a best-selling product keeping Its original DuPont interface. It greatly meets the geek master's play space and wins the fans. Due to the openness, there are many open source modification projects emerging, it is also easier to DIY. As the most experienced Core, online code resources are very rich.
Highlights: It is the most popular Core product and more flexible connection.
These are the most popular products in 2019. At the beginning of 2020, M5Stack will bring more amazing and interesting products to us. Let's look forward to the future!
This year's Shenzhen Maker Faire was held on November 9th -10th at Shenzhen’s Nanshan Vanke Cloud Design Corporation. As the leading large-scale maker gathering in China, this exhibition comprised of 108 exhibit booths. Exhibitors and visitors from all over the world embraced the most cutting-edge technology experience here.
Every year, Maker Faire brings a lot of things to people, and this year was no exception. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Open-Source hardware, wearables, robotics, 3D printing, and a wide range of other exciting fields. As one of the exhibitors, M5Stack has also come prepared with a series of interesting exhibits for this Maker Faire.
Let's take a look at the portfolio for this exhibition.
M5Stack, which is good at putting creative ideas into products, has a particular enthusiasm for research and development of smart medical devices in addition to developing daily smart home appliances. The following exhibit is a “MEDICAL INFUSION ALARM SYSTEM,” which is an excellent implementation of the concept of "using technology to solve traditional problems."
In general hospitals and clinics, patients need to check whether the fluid in an infusion pump is appropriately infused, and when the infusion is complete, they need to call the nurse to change the fluids. For patients who are not in the condition, there is a risk of fluid loss and reflux, leading to pain and dangerous situations. So, we at M5Stack have developed a better and intelligent system to address this problem.
The infusion alarm system consists of a nurse station and an infusion monitoring terminal(smart infusion pump). Both of them are connected via WIFI, where the nurse station acts as an Acess Point to which several infusion monitor terminals are connected and transmits data through UDP connection. This eliminates the requirement of a router and simplifies the whole process.
Photoelectric sensors determine whether the liquid in the infusion tube is being pumped and whether the fluid in the IV bag is completed by calculating the refractive index. When the liquid is below the detection level, a message prompt is instantaneously sent to the nurse station alerting about the condition. This can, many times, be a lifesaver.
Our second exhibit is for hardware enthusiasts. There are hundreds of different electronic components with dozens of various specifications. And when you really need to use a specific model, it is common that you go rummaging the inventory cabinet and end up finding every other component except the one you are looking for ☹.
With hundreds of boxes with different resistors, capacitors and ICs, going through each and every one of them to find a single resistor is a real pain and unbearable. It gets increasingly difficult as the number of components in your inventory starts to get huge. At some point, you feel like you are searching for a needle in the haystack.Therefore, the careful M5 engineers saw the user's pain and developed the "M5 Cells". This inventory management system works by inputting the component categories and specifications of the query, and the position of the component box is highlighted instantly. This removes all the unnecessary hassle and improves your work efficiency. Don't mention more!
In daily life, classifying objects is becoming really frequent and tedious. "Material classification," "Garbage segregation," and the demand for various methods to sort and regroup things is increasing rapidly.
Compared to the traditional way of manual sorting, AI-based intelligent IDing and sorting can not only reduce the workload but also speed up the whole process. But for many novice users, the word AI seems to be very "distant and strange," so we decided to use the M5Stack hardware system to build an intelligent sorting application model for encouraging more and more people to learn to use “AI”. Our AI camera helps you learn about AI to make your own AI-based application.
The model adopts M5StickV’s smart AI camera. And the V-Training object recognition model training service provided by M5 gives the camera the ability to recognize the object. Then the stepper motor module works in tandem with the steering gear module to identify the object, classify and sort it accordingly.
“Do you often find yourself in a situation using the computer, forgetting the time and sit hours together and loose all the to contact with real-life?” or “Do you constantly slouch and sit in an awkward position that gets you neck pain and headache?”. Then the engineers at M5STACK designed this "sedentary reminder" just for you!
When using, all you need to do is just to place the reminder under the computer monitor. The Time of Flight laser ranging sensor used to detect the distance between the user and the PC in real-time, to determine whether the user has been sedentary for a long time or too close from the monitor, and issues a warning signal. When you see the light, take a break and have a good interaction with your colleagues over a cup of coffee 😊.
The next exhibit on the list is the “Smart Library,” equipped with all the necessary hardware and software to perform the scenarios of borrowing a book from the library along with the billing. There are scanners to scan the label of the book and the borrower’s card. Based on this, the M5Stack does the billing and gives a printed invoice.
Our AI face recognition setup made from our very own M5STACK, M5SticV and M5SticT, counts the number of people passing in front of it and displays the count on the screen of the M5 core. The additional thermal camera from the M5StickT allows you to see the infrared spectrum that is invisible to the human eye.
Fans are enthusiastic and continue to heat up!
In addition to the M5 booth itself, we also found a lot of our M5 products in other exhibition booths. There, we got the opportunity to see innovative ideas that we have never explored. All of these were designed by our fan makers.
Every year the MakerFaire gives us a lot of inspiration along with the opportunity to get genuine feedback and user experience from many makers and engineers from all around the world. Giving back the best products to the community based on this accurate feedback is what M5Stack has been doing.
This MakerFaire has come to a successful conclusion, and we will see you next time!
UIFlow is a Web based IoT programming platform using Blockly and Python. With UIFlow, you can build your project faster and easier, as well as learn python.
Currently UIFlow has been updated to 1.4.0 (beta), introducing the new features.
Now you can use UIFlow to access SD card, read and write files to it.
Map is the commonly used dictionary function, to easily create or edit a dictionary and to find or create keys and values in it.
Handling JSON is often used for network data processing and the new UIFlow version comes with blocks help simplifying the process.
ESP NOW (from Espressif) can establish a low power local network (peer to peer) connection for non-Wi-Fi based control and data collection.
Now an HTTP request link can be sent easily to get network data by just ‘drag and drop’ of a single block, no longer needing to write the POST and GET request codes.
These set of blocks can be used to create UI (User Interface) Dashboards to visualize data and control the core remotely through MQTT.
Go Visit UIFlow Here
In this week, we updated some new function for M5StickV.
Provide an online object recognition model training service.
Shoot 35 pictures and you can train your own classifier model on M5StickV! End to end AI model maker.
More information pls click the link to view:
https://docs.m5stack.com/#/en/related_documents/v-training
