1st #MonthlyWrap-up in 2022: Jan&Feb at Seeed, 4 Breaking News, 7 FREE PDF Courses and Resources to Download, and More
Yes! 2 months in one piece. A little body often harbors a great soul.
Hey community,
It has been some time (2 months to be specific) since our last recaps (which is the Seeed’s Year in Review of 2021). So, are you ready for a looooong wrap-up as I have accumulated two months into one piece. 🙂 For this post, we’ll cover 4 breaking news that you might want to know about, 6 awesome projects from the community, countless technical write-ups, 4 successful manufacturing cases, 4 stories on how to deploy IIoT Solution to solve real-world issues, and many PDF courses and resources for FREE Downloads. If I must squeeze out a few keywords, here are some of them: Tech4Good, TinyML, Robotics, Microsoft, LoRa, Helium, and more.
Now, please enjoy our first Monthly Wrap-up in 2022 for Jan & Feb, and we hope you will have a good read.
News that You Might Wanna Know️️
01 Seeed Launches “#Tech4Good Bounty Program”: All-Year-Round Open Source Hardware Sponsorship for Social Good
To better support makers who have already applied open source hardware to build sustainable projects, and to inspire the community to make for good, we’re excited to launch a “#Tech4Good Bounty Program”, which is an ALL-YEAR-ROUND open source hardware sponsorship program to support your built-up SDG projects. By joining the program, you can win various proportional 𝐑𝐄𝐅𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒 (covering up to 𝟏𝟎𝟎% of the hardware costs that you spent in the project), global exposure for your project and even scale-up support with Seeed’s prototyping, customization services, and global distribution efforts. Learn more and apply here.
02 We Moderated and Co-organized 2 tinyML Events with tinyML Foundation
To support the emerging tinyML Global community, we’re happy and honored to support tinyML Foundation as a Gold Sponsor. And starting from January 2022, the team at Seeed and Chaihuo x.factory is organizing monthly TinyML events both online and offline to contribute to growing the tinyML community. In January, we did a kick-off meetup at Chaihuo x.factory where 50+ members gathered to share and community (Event Recap here). In February, we invited MB Jallow to share on “TinyML’s Application in Healthcare” for near 200 attendees from all over the world (Click here to watch the recap video if you’ve missed the talk).
03 We Listen and Take Action Initiative Launched
At the beginning of 2022, we decided to do something meaningful to leverage suggestions from the community. To make it more easy for you to offer any feedback to our products and services, we’re relaunched our Wishing Well, a platform to collect and gather your voices on what you’re looking for at Seeed. And based on the voices we heard from the Wishing Well, we’ve taken the following two actions:
1) Seeed Shipping Fee Cut Down by Half: Less Than $5 Shipping All over the World.
2) LoRa-E5 Modules are Available in Tape/Reel Packaging with Seeed Fusion NOW.
04 Seeed Participated at The Things Conference Embedded
In January, the Founder of Seeed Studio, Eric Pan was invited to give a keynote speech at The Things Conference Embedded organized by The Things Network. During his talk, Eric addressed how Seeed supported bringing the Generic Node Sensor Edition from prototype to the market with our expertise in hardware development, manufacturing, and supply chain management. Here we’d love to share a video of how Generic Node Sensor Edition is manufactured at our factory, which is also part of Eric’s speech. Check out the video recap here.
Community Project Spotlight
（based on our LinkedIn impressions）
01 Oil Tank Leak Detector by Sashrika Das
This ML-powered device is built on Wio Terminal using Edge Impulse & Blynk. It can smell diesel and send real-time notifications to your mobile when it detects the oil tank leak. More details here.
02 Bio-reTerminal by Jaime Andres Rincon Arango
It is a biosignal recognition system that can be used in remote cities without medical personnel. The system is based on the Raspberry Pi CM4 powered-up reTerminal, Qubitro, Intel AI, and OpenVino to develop a smaller, more powerful, and portable system, which can analyze the bio-signals using machine learning models. It also Integrates different communication protocols such as LoRa, Bluetooth and WiFi to transmit these bio-signals to the bio-terminal. More details.
03 3 easy to make gadgets with the Wio Terminal by Liam Davis on DIYODE Magazine
In detail, Liam put the Wio Terminal to use in three different ways. First, he use the Wio Terminal standalone as a Quote Generator. The second project is a game called Whack-A-LED. Finally, he build a multi-channel data logger that can be switched between various data sources to log them to an SD card for future analysis. Read the tutorial here.
04 Burglar Alarm Light and Push Notification by Asad Zia
When an unauthorized person is detected, Asad Zia’s ML-enabled burglar alarm system triggers the lights and sends a push notification. No more false alerts due to pets and stray animals! More details on Hackster.
05 LoRa-E5 Communication without LoRaWAN by Sufian Kaki Aslam
This project achieves the goal of exchanging messages between two or more LoRa-E5 devices without the need to have a LoRaWAN gateway. Read the project tutorial here.
06 How to monitor a beehive with Arduino Nano 33BLE (bluetooth) by Clément Chamayou, Jade EVRARD, Margaux Launois, Jeremy Royer, Nicolas Stein
Considering that living environmental conditions of beehives directly contribute to the survival and growth of bees, as well as to glocal BeeExtinction scenarios, this is able to measure: Temperature inside and outside the beehive, Beehive’s weight, Battery of the system and Humidity inside and outside the beehive by applying Arduino Nano, Grove Sensors and Microsoft Azure. More details about the project.
New Open-Source Products & Updates
01 Meet The First Joint-effort Device between Seeed and Paul (disk_91): #WioLoRaWANFieldTester Powered by Helium
We’re excited to announce this new collaboration with Paul Pinault to launch the Wio Terminal LoRaWAN Field Tester Kit together. It’s a plug-and-play and all-in-one LongFi network monitor for Helium Inc the People’s Network. Learn more here.
02 Meet PITAKURU, an Autonomous towing robot capable of towing loads in the warehouse, created by Seeed’s partner KEISUUGIKEN
PITAKURU, developed by KEISUUGIKEN, is an autonomous towing robot capable of towing loads in the warehouse. “PITAKURU” can track humans while towing heavy objects and can be operated indoors and outdoors. It uses laser tracking, enabling to follow individuals without being affected by external light, and there is no need to install accessories such as tracking beacons. Seeed is happy to support “PITAKURU“ with our powerful Jetson SUB Mini PC and TOF Lidar RPLIDAR S2. Read here.
03 Seeed partners with Balena to enable container-based application deployment and fleet management for embedded devices
We are glad to share with all community now our ODYSSEY-X86 series is now supported on balenaOS and fully compatible with balenaCloud. With the balena technology stack, developers can bring cloud microservices workflows to embedded devices and minimize friction for fleet owners. Balena aims to make the process of deploying IoT applications as easy as deploying web applications (or even easier!). Explore more about the blog here.
04 How to increase the size of a Raspberry Pi CM4-Powered Seeed Mini Router (with eMMC)
Planning to build a Raspberry Pi CM4 project but realized there’s no available space? Mark has the guide for you! In his guidance, he goes through how to increase the size of a Raspberry Pi CM module (with eMMC). After installing OpenWrt on the Seeed Mini Router, he used a Linux machine and also installed GParted to increase the size of the Raspberry Pi CM module. Read the full tutorial here.
05 Seeed XIAO RP2040 and LoRa-E5A Review on EEWeb.com
A big shout-out to Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio in his piece on EEWeb.com, who explored two products of our products (the XIAO RP2040 and the LoRa-E5) in-depth and explain how these two meet the needs mentioned above while maintaining programming simplicity. 📖Read Maurizio’s full article here!
06 Highlights: PDF Courses Resources for Free Download
“Making Technology Accessible for All” has always been the vision of Seeed since day one. To make documents and open source technologies more inclusive for a larger community, we’re wrapping up a list of FREE PDF courses that we shared on our LinkedIn for the past 2 months.
- Codecraft Graphical Programming Course Based on Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino
- No-Code Programming to Get Started with TinyML on Wio Terminal
- No-Code Program for Biology on Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino by Dr. Stephanie Norwood
- FarmBeats for Students Curriculum by Microsoft
- TinyML with Wio Terminal Using Edge Impulse Courses
- Grove Beginner Kit for Arduino User Manuel with 10 Project Tutorials
07 Wio Terminal Review with Projects by notenoughtech.com
“An all-in-one development board to ease you into programming, or take your existing idea to a new level thanks to a nice form factor, capable processing, and pretty impressive I/O on a device with sub $30 price tag.” Read the full review here.
08 mmWave Radar? : Everything You Need to Know About FMCW
Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) Radar is a special type of radar sensor which radiates continuous transmission power like a simple continuous-wave radar. It has been widely applied to many fields. How do FMCW Radar sensors work? What are their advantages and application scenarios? You’ll get the answers here.
IIoT Solutions & Their Success Cases
01 SenseCAP Barometric Sensor Detected The Hunga Tonga Eruption and Tsunami
The Hunga Tonga eruption and tsunami that happened on 15, January 2022 was the biggest volcano eruption of decades. The eruption has caused barometric pressure changes all around the world on 15, Jan 2022, and the SenseCAP ONE Weather station and LoRaWAN barometric sensor deployed on our balcony both have captured the pressure changes from 101300Pa to more than 101500Pa and recorded the changes. Check out more here.
02 Tryolabs’ Face Mask Detection Solution Powered up by Seeed’s Jetson Platform Edge Devices
MaskCam is an Open Source Smart Camera to Detect Face Masks solution by our solution partner Tryolabs with the leading technology from BDTI, Jabil, NVIDIA Embedded. It can detect people passing through a security-like camera and identify if they were using a face mask or not. And Seeed is glad to apply this solution with our Jetson Platforms edge devices such as the A206 Jetson Carrier board and Jetson SUB Mini PC-Blue. Learn more.
03 SenseCAP LoRaWAN’s Environmental Monitoring for Sustainable Durian Farming in Malaysia
Seeed’s SenseCAP LoRaWAN devices enabled IIoT solution in Malaysia’s durian farming sector, tracking environmental growth conditions of the sensitive tropical fruit. The Project was successful in drastically decreasing the amount of human labor and natural resources, and predicting suitable irrigation patterns and pest control periods. More details of the case can be found here.
04 Drag and Drop Robotics Development and Deployable Solutions for NVIDIA Jetson Platform by Cogniteam and Seeed
Seeed is glad to partner with Cogniteam, aiming at delivering the easiest ever robot development process, from prototyping to production, including configuration, testing, deployment, and operations management. Try Nimbus with Seeed’s Jetson Platform carrier boards and Jetson Sub kit, attach sensors such as RPLidar and cameras to build your create your robotic application from scratch. You can also seamlessly connect your existing ROS projects to Nimbus. Based on the open-source Robot Operating System (ROS), Nimbus is truly a plug-and-play solution. More details about the partnership SOLUTION. Learn how to make ROS development cycle manageable with Cogniteam on Seeed Devices here.
Prototyping and Manufacturing with Seeed
01 PCB Design for Manufacture Brochure Available for FREE Download in 8 Languages
Design for Manufacturing (DFM) is a critical part of the product development cycle. to make the DFM easier for you, our Fusion team has created a PCB Design for Manufacture Brochure, which details specific design parameters and considerations for Printed Circuit Board manufacture including assembly considerations. This brochure is available in 8 languages including English, Japanese, Russian, French, Portuguese, German, Bengali, and Spanish thanks to many contributors in the community! Learn more and download for free now.
02 Fusion Case Study: Low-Power Snow Depth Sensor Monitoring for IoT Smart City Based On LoRa-E5 Applied in Norway
Eivind Holt, a software developer in the field of e-health, used a Seeed LoRa-E5 mini Dev Board and a MaxBotix Inc. HRXL-MaxSonar MB7374, and made a Low-Power snow depth sensor device that can measure how much snow has accumulated on the ground. It is able to run on small batteries for years, survive sub-zero (Celcius) temperatures and uses LoRaWAN to transmit measurements to the internet for further processing. The device has a watertight enclosure 3D-printed with resin SLA, and it has been applied to real uses for a month now with achievement of 2600 transmitted measurements. In the upcoming future, our team will join Eivind to explore how our Fusion prototyping and customization services can help scale up the project. Learn more about the case here!
03 #ManufacturingwithSeeed Quad UAV Project Powered by Seeed Fusion
Who you work with as the prototyping and manufacturing partner will impact everything from the quality to the delivery of your project or product to the market on time. Lately, R&D System Engineer Islam Mohamed is building his own quad UAV, and he selected our Fusion services to power up his UAV project. Check out Islam’s project documentation on Hackaday!
04 Fusion Case Study: Loko a tiny, open-source, battery-operated GPS tracker powered by Seeed LoRa-E5 Module
Loko is a tiny, simple, useful device that sends navigation data to its receiver via peer-to-peer LoRa radio. It is radio communication based and doesn’t require a sim-card/ monthly fee. It also works anywhere, even if there is no 2G/ 3G/LTE coverage. Loko is designed with Ultra-Low-Power consumption in mind which can work 30+ days on a single charge with the tiny, built-in coin cell battery. All these features make it perfect for tracking drones, tractors, expensive equipment in real-time. More details about the project!
05 Fusion Case Study: Marine Litter Detective Project Developed by MakerBay, WWF & Seeed
Marine Litter Detective is a GPS-tracking device for monitoring marine pollutants, such as plastics and oil spills. This was developed by WWF Hong Kong in cooperation with MakerBay and Seeed using Fusion services. As a result, this Project has enabled the tracking of the origins and whereabouts of trash floating on the water surface (and inside the marine ecosystem), which disclosed how the marine litter ends up in the ocean from the land. Learn more details here!
Notes at the end.
If you’re new to this session, here is a brief intro to it. We have gotten dozens of requests over the years for a Seeed Monthly Newsletter. Although we already have a newsletter for weekly updates, we still need a place to host overall information about what’s happened on a monthly basis. It can offer an efficient and friendly way to get updated for the whole community. And that’s what we expect for our Seeed Monthly Wrap-ups. Instead of putting it a subscribe-to-read, we’re publishing them on our blog, keeping it as open and accessible as possible for the whole community. For each entry, we will cover awesome projects from the community, campaigns that we are running, new products, IIoT Solutions and even secret recipes of prototyping and manufacturing. Click the following to have a look back:
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