The new Huami's Amazfit GTR has not only inspired me but also you. Now it has just been introduced, but can now be ordered in the China shops. You get a very good price for $144.99 at Banggood for the bigger 47 mm version in the International Version. This supports English and Chinese language. The price is valid for the 47mm variation (42mm variants are currently not available) and will be adjusted as soon as you put the watch into the shopping cart (see figure at the end).

Get the Amazfit GTR now! (Discount Code: cf5902)

	Huami's Amazfit GTR 42 mm	Huami's Amazfit GTR 47 mm

One of the most coveted fitness trackers of 2019 is the new Xiaomi Mi Band 4. Unfortunately, due to its limited availability, Xiaomi does not directly sell the Mi Band 4 in Europe or North America, but it can now be ordered in the China shops. You can get a very good price for:

• $29.99 (+shipping costs) - Xiaomi Mi Band 4 "International" Version (Discount code: BGAhmed03 or BGdeliMband4)

Are the Xiaomi Mi Band 4 Chinese Version and NFC version suitable for non-Chinese speaking users?

Yes, they are!... Check these videos here!. You can change the language!

The device features a 0.95 inch AM...

Last year, I bought an ESP32-CAM board from Banggood and I wanted to use it with MicroPython. The board has an OV2640 without any chip (buffer) between the ESP32 and the camera. There are many implementation for Arduino or directly using Espressif, but I wanted to use MicroPython. Thus, the only solution was to use the I2S interface, but I didn't have time to write the driver. Thus, I put the project on hold. However, last week I was searching between the ESP32 boards that I have, I found the board again, and I also found that tsaarni has written the driver for MicroPython.

This tutorial is a...

The Preempt-RT patching article is one of the most visited articles in my blog. However, that article needed a small update: Raspberry Pi 4B is out there and with Raspbian Buster, a new version of kernel is available: 4.19.y.

I also uploaded the compiled and patched kernel to lemariva/RT-Tools-RPi. You can follow all these steps and compile the kernel by yourself or you can download the files from the repository and deploy the kernel on your Raspberry Pi 4B.

This tutorial is the second of a serie of three that evaluate the performance of the Raspberry Pi 4B. This time the performance of the st...

Banggood is celebrating its 13th anniversary by launching a grand sales that takes place between the dates August 27th and September 18th (my birthday! :)).

Fig. 1: Banggood's 13th anniversary image on an E-ink screen (tutorial)

Banggood, founded in 2006 and located in Guangzhou, is the fourth largest international e-commerce retailer in China. By running its website www.banggood.com and smartphone applications, Banggood sells more than 500,000 types of products to the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, Russia, Japan and many other countrie...

The last days, I was looking for an online project management tool with bug tracking system. The best platform that I know is Jira from Atlassian. Jira offers a bug tracking and agile project management, however, it costs between $8.33 and $10 (annual/monthly payment) for the standard version with under 10 accounts. We use Jira in Finealyze and I am very happy with it, but I was looking for a free alternative for myself. Then, I found OpenProject, which describes itself as "the leading open source project management software".

OpenProject is offered in three different ways: Community, Cloud an...

Last week, I published an article about the Raspberry Pi and an e-ink display:

• #Raspberry Pi: an E-Paper display with Widgets (see Fig. 1a).

This time, this tutorial is about processing and displaying images on the 7.5" e-ink screen as shown in Fig. 1b.

Fig. 1a: E-ink Screen connected to a RPi running ePaperWidgets	Fig. 1b: Banggood's 13th anniversary original image here

Hardware & Software

You find here a list of hardware and software that you could use for this tutorial:

Waveshare®

On July 4th, I ordered a Raspberry Pi 4B from Reichelt. On July 17th, I received the board, but it was broken, and a month later, finally I received a new board that seems to work OK :).

The new Raspberry Pi 4B has a lot of upgrades and one of the most important ones is the RAM: You can choose between three models (1GB, 2GB and 4GB). But, another main change is the CPU and the RAM bus: they changed from a Cortex-A53 64-bit (3B+/3A+) to a Cortex-A72 64-bit, both ARMv8, and from LPDDR2 SDRAM to LPDDR4 SDRAM. Thus, the CPU clock was increased to 1.5GHz (0.1GHz more) and the memory frequency to 2...

E-paper or e-ink displays are becoming more common in recent days. You can find them e.g. on readers, clocks and sensors. Thus, I looked for an e-ink display for the Raspberry Pi and I found the Waveshare® 7.5" E-ink Screen.

There are many projects with an e-ink display and the Raspberry Pi, but I first tried with an ESP32 and MicroPython. That solution didn't work (something was not working with the reset voltage - too much signal noise). So, that remains a work in progress and I will use this board. But now, in this tutorial, I uploaded a solution for the Raspberry Pi.

Fig. 1: Wa...

Last December, I wrote an article telling you that I was switching from Atom.io to Visual Studio Code to program MicroPython. Nowadays, I'm still using VSCode and the PyMakr extension. The latter enables the communication to a board running MicroPython using the built-in command line REPL. Thus, I can run a single file on my board, sync my entire project or directly type and execute commands using the Terminal on VSCode. However, I was missing some of the main features of VSCode, namely IntelliSense, autocompletion, and linting capabilities. Last month, BradenM contacted me and told me that he...

Last April, I published a tutorial about connecting the Aqara sensors to a Raspberry Pi without using the Xiaomi Gateway. To make that possible, I needed a CC Debugger to flash the TI CC2531 Zigbee Dongle. This debugger was used only one time, and then the Zigbee-USB dongle worked without any problem.

In this article, I will cover a way to flash the CC2531 without the CC Debugger. This reduces project costs (about $10 for debugger + cable adapters) and waiting time. Usually, you wait 30 days to get a low cost version of the debugger (using the cheapest shipping option). Let's start!

Hardware

On July 4th, I ordered a Raspberry Pi 4B. To be honest, I really didn't/don't need a new Raspberry Pi, I don't have any specific task for it, but I saw some cool stuff on the Internet, and I said: Ok, I need one! Thus, I bought the 4GB model on Reichelt. The expected delivery date was on July 10th but, I had to wait a little longer and I got it on July 17th! Everything was ok, and I got the following closed and sealed box (see Fig. 1):

Fig. 1: Box of the Raspberry Pi Model 4B (4GB RAM)

But, as soon as I opened the box, my joy faded! :( With a quick visual control, I checked tha...

This is a really misc. small article. Two month ago, I bought on Banggood two articles that I wanted to show you, but this time, these are not connected to an application, code or a detailed product review. This is only a misc. article to describe my purchase: The Xiaomi Wowstick Screw Driver and the TTGO ESP32 WROVER with 8MB PSRAM.

Hardware

Xiaomi Wowstick

If you are looking for a very small electric screw driver, then the Xiaomi Wowstick is an option for you. It includes everything that you need except the batteries. You need two AAA batteries and you can start disarming toys, clocks, cell...

First of all, this article is a product review which was/is not supported by Timeular GmbH or similar. I bought the product two weeks ago, because I wanted to test it. I missed out the Kickstarter campaign (2016) and the regular price for the octahedron was too expensive for me.

Fig. 1: Timeular application

This summer, the tracker is on sale with up to 50% discount and I bought the basic plan. I got an octahedron -called tracker- which connects to the Timeular application (Mac, Win...

I've been very busy the last weeks. I moved to a new apartment and I was living between moving boxes. Four days ago, I managed to put my desk together and now I have some time (not a lot) to write a new article.

Last month I've received from GearBest two Aqara sensors:

1. Aqara Cube
2. Aqara humidity, temperature and air pressure

These sensors use Zigbee and I connected them to a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian OS and a dockerized version of Home Assistant (DIY tutorial). This connection was made without using any Xiaomi gateway (DIY tutorial).

Hardware and Software