☕ Robo-Orders at Naver's Unique Starbucks

At the heart of 🇰🇷 Naver's futuristic 1784 building lies the world’s most unique Starbucks. Located on the second floor, this café features over 100 service robots known as "Rookie." These robots, about three feet tall and resembling water dispensers, are designed to navigate the building effortlessly.

The Rookies use facial recognition technology to identify their intended recipients, ensuring that each order reaches the right person. With animated "eyes" to communicate their movements, these bots interact intuitively with nearby workers, making their presence unobtrusive and efficient.

Employees can place online orders, and baristas prepare the drinks before loading them into the Rookies' storage compartments. These self-driving bots then deliver the beverages directly to meeting rooms and private seats, revolutionizing the traditional café experience.

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#news #robots

🚥 3 tips for using CMake with embedded software

CMake, an open-source and cross-platform tool, allows for efficient control over the software compilation process through platform-independent configuration files, generating native makefiles suitable for any compiler environment. This versatility makes CMake a valuable tool for managing complex build environments.

☑️Use Toolchain Files to Simplify Build Configuration:
➡️Different build types (Debug On-Target, Release On-Target, Simulation, Test, and Code Analysis) need specific configurations.
➡️Toolchain files help manage these variations, facilitating cross-compilation and implementation swaps.
➡️Typically, two toolchain files (host and on-target builds) are sufficient.

☑️Automate Build Commands with Custom Scripts:
➡️Avoid memorizing long CMake commands by encapsulating them in scripts.
➡️Custom scripts simplify the build process and reduce errors.
➡️Scripts can include parameters for toolchain files, build types, and other settings, making them useful in CI/CD systems.

☑️Pair CMake with Ninja for Faster Builds:
➡️Ninja is a high-speed build system focused on efficiency.
➡️Using Ninja with CMake can result in x4 to x6 times faster compilation times compared to traditional tools like Make.
➡️Simple setup commands integrate Ninja into the build process, significantly reducing build times and improving development efficiency.

Implementing these tips can streamline the build process for embedded software, making development faster, more efficient, and better suited to modern development practices.

⛓ More information...

#programming #cmake #software

🇳🇱 Our emoji pack was updated with 70+ new emojis!

More than a month has passed since the release of our emoji pack dedicated to the microprocessor electronics.

It was already installed by 500+ users. Today, we updated this pack. The update specifically focuses on robotics and AI.

Example of the new emojis:

🧠⌨️🧠🌦🧠
🏠🧠🤖🤖🤖
🚘🔌👇🖥💻
💻🌎💻🤖🤖
🤖🤖🤖🤖🤖

As of today, the pack contains 100+ emojis. This is not the last update so stay tuned and add the pack to your library if you like it!

✈️ Add the emoji pack

#news

🔋 Ultra Compact LiDAR Distance Meter

The Ultra Compact LiDAR Distance Meter/Range Finder is a super tiny gadget featuring a 0.49-inch OLED display, a micro battery, and a Xiao ESP32 microcontroller.

Designed for compactness and efficiency, it measures distances accurately using a VL53L0X TOF-based LiDAR sensor.

Hardware parts of the device:
➡️Xiao ESP32C3 with built-in battery management system
➡️0.49-inch OLED Display with 64x32 pixels
➡️VL53L0X TOF-based LiDAR laser
➡️Micro battery with rechargeable via USB port

The project integrates tiny components to create a functional, portable device capable of measuring distances accurately up to 1 meter.

⛓ More information...

#projects #sensors #esp32 #LiDAR

🍓 Raspberry foundation has released an affordable AI Kit

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched the Raspberry Pi AI Kit, priced at $70, in collaboration with Hailo. This kit, featuring an M.2 HAT+ board preassembled with a Hailo-8L AI accelerator module, is designed to enhance the Raspberry Pi 5's capabilities in neural networks (NN), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.

Key features of the kit:
➡️13 tera-operations per second (TOPS)
➡️Single-lane PCIe 3.0 connection running at 8Gbps
➡️Full integration with Raspberry Pi's software ecosystem
➡️Support for multiple cameras and NN configurations

The kit supports a range of AI applications, such as object detection and pose estimation, by running complex AI models on the Hailo-8L co-processor, thus freeing up the Raspberry Pi's CPU for other tasks.

⛓ More information...

#news #raspberry #artificial_intelligence

🖥 LVGL with ESP32 TFT LCD Touchscreen Display (Arduino IDE)

In this guide, you'll learn to use the LVGL (Light and Versatile Graphics Library) with a 2.8 inch TFT LCD touchscreen display and an ESP32 board using the ♾ Arduino IDE. The guide covers wiring the display to the ESP32, understanding the SPI communication protocol, and utilizing the ILI9341 driver.

You'll explore LVGL's features, including creating graphical user interfaces with buttons, sliders, images, and animations. By following the detailed instructions, you'll gain the skills to develop sophisticated, interactive displays for your microcontroller projects.

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#articles #arduino #esp32

💻 5 best practices for writing ISRs

Interrupt Service Routines (ISRs) are essential for embedded systems, but poorly written ISRs can cause race conditions, poor responsiveness, and high CPU usage.

To write effective ISRs, it's crucial to keep them short and fast to minimize CPU cycle consumption and avoid timing issues. Avoid calling functions within ISRs to reduce execution time and prevent system instability. Instead, use static compilation, preprocessor, and inline functions to streamline ISR code without compromising modularity.

Additionally, offload intensive processes to other threads by using flags, queues, and proper synchronization to ensure efficient and responsive ISRs. Declaring shared variables as volatile prevents compiler optimizations that might lead to unpredictable behavior. Customize default ISR handlers to set diagnostic flags instead of infinite loops to handle unexpected interrupts safely. By following these best practices, you can enhance the performance and reliability of your embedded systems.

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#programming

🍏 Apple Intelligence: Apple’s New Generative AI Unveiled

At WWDC 2024 which took place today, Apple introduced Apple Intelligence, a generative AI integrated across its ecosystem. Apple Intelligence is designed to offer highly personalized experiences while prioritizing user privacy.

It’s personal intelligence, and it’s the next big step for Apple
Tim Cook

This announcement underscores the integration of Apple Intelligence into iOS, macOS, and VisionOS. SVP Craig Federighi highlighted that much of the processing occurs locally on Apple silicon, with additional support from Private Cloud Compute for tasks needing cloud resources.

The key moments of the presentation:
➡️Enhanced Siri: Deeply integrated with new capabilities, including text-based queries and expanded App Intents for first and third-party apps.
➡️App Integration: Helps compose messages in Mail and supports Smart Replies.
➡️Image Playground: On-device image generation for apps like Messages and Keynote.
➡️Image Wand: A tool for Apple Pencil to create images from text.

Apple Intelligence will be available on iPhone 15 Pro and M1 Mac and iPad devices with upcoming OS updates. Additionally, Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into Siri, offering advanced image and text generation features.

⛓ More information...

#news #artificial_intelligence

©️ Strategies for Handling Padding in C Programming

In C programming, padding refers to the extra memory space added between members of a structure to align the data in a way that the CPU can access it more efficiently. Normally, the compiler adds padding to structures to align data members according to their natural boundaries. Consider the following structure in a firmware written for a 32-bit system:

struct foo {
  uint32_t i;
  uint8_t b;
};

In this example, the compiler adds 3 bytes of padding after "b" to ensure the structure’s total size is a multiple of 4 bytes, making it 8 bytes in total.

To address this issue the referred article proposes several strategies regarding structure padding to optimize memory layout and access efficiency, particularly focusing on packed structures.

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#programming

🍏 New Embedded Programming Language by Apple

The last week at WWDC 2024, Apple showed its new programming language for resource-constrained systems. Embedded Swift is a specialized version of Apple's 🖥 Swift programming language designed for microcontrollers like the 🇨🇳 ESP32, 🍓 Raspberry Pi RP2040, 🦋 STM32. It enables the development of IoT and low-power devices with Swift's familiar syntax and features.

Features of the language:
➡️Supports value and reference types, closures, optionals, and error handling
➡️Designed for the constrained environments of microcontrollers
➡️Seamlessly integrates with existing C and C++ SDKs
➡️Wide range of supported microcontrollers and plenty of code examples

Embedded Swift brings the benefits of Swift's ergonomics, safety features, and ease of use to embedded development, making it accessible for both hobbyists and professional developers familiar with 🖥 Swift language.

More information:
🔗 The main article
😹 The GitHub repository
📺 The YouTube video

#news #swift #programming

💻 Qt vs. Flutter: Which Framework is Right for Your Embedded Project?

Choosing between Qt and Flutter for embedded project development depends on the specific technical needs of the project.

Qt, built on C++, excels in native performance and efficiency, making it ideal for complex, high-performance applications. It offers extensive libraries and robust community support, catering to projects that require sophisticated functionalities and direct hardware access, such as medical devices and low-end hardware without GPU support.

On the other hand, Flutter focuses on rapid development and cost-effectiveness, utilizing Dart for an accessible programming experience. Key features like hot reload enable quick iteration, and a single codebase ensures consistent UI across platforms.

To sum up, Qt is suited for intricate, performance-critical applications, while Flutter is ideal for projects prioritizing speed, cost-efficiency, and cross-platform consistency.

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#articles #qt #flutter #programming

🇸🇬 Singaporian Researchers developed a flexible battery for smart contact lenses

A team from Nanyang Technological University has developed a flexible and thin battery for smart contact lenses that can be powered by a wearer’s tears.

The development overcomes the limitations of current rechargeable batteries that depend on metal electrodes or induction coils. Offering a safer and more efficient alternative, this new battery can produce enough power for smart contact lenses which might be used in augmented reality, health monitoring, and disease treatment.

Right now researchers are working towards commercializing their invention and collaborating with contact lens companies to further enhance the technology.

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#news #battery