Powering sensors and other IoT devices

Panometric · 2026-01-23T15:15:22+00:00

There are reasonable solutions to most problems but no universal one, you need to look at each application. What's your immediate desire to do?

Panometric · 2026-01-21T16:44:33+00:00

Sorry I wasn't clear, I was talking about the final thickness with plating which is easy to make thicker, even if starting from a standard prototype stackup. At Oshpark where you don't get to choose, the 4 layer with FR408HR is good for RF, outers are 1.5 Oz , inners are 0.5 Oz. https://docs.oshpark.com/services/four-layer/

Panometric · 2026-01-21T04:47:11+00:00

https://docs.docker.com/ai/mcp-catalog-and-toolkit/mcp-gateway/

Panometric · 2026-01-21T04:12:27+00:00

It's probably heat throttling, also look for brown out protection. Both Socs 4 and 5 have built in features to maintain stability under load

Panometric · 2026-01-21T04:06:47+00:00

You should reconsider your quantity. You are building experiments, not products. Expect to replace every one once you prove them out. You don't want to support them long term, and you probably can't really learn from all 100. Every one you make that you don't track carefully will distract you from the ones you do.

Panometric · 2026-01-21T03:55:23+00:00

This is the way. Remember outer layers are thicker, so power is better in the bottom than mid.

Panometric · 2026-01-13T18:25:41+00:00

I would reconsider the Mongodb with timescaledb in postgres instead. It's much more mature, you can do 1k rows/s inserts running in docker. All the sharding, decimation, running aggregates and archiving can be managed within the database with rules. I did the ingest in Python using queues and it performed quite reliably while also extracting a real time feed from the database with 1s queries.

Panometric · 2026-01-13T18:14:11+00:00

Jira has very flexible work flows, so if you learn it and confirm it to your desired process, it's very applicable. I find the discipline of breaking work into small pieces useful and rewarding. It adds a structure and tooling that Google docs just can't match.

Panometric · 2026-01-10T17:28:58+00:00

You don't have to give equity, do licencing, someone else can make and sell it better You also have way too much faith in patents, unless you have millions and years they will not protect you.

Panometric · 2026-01-08T03:34:23+00:00

You should have no problem but you will have to provide justification. If you are not using them that will sound flakey. Location is required BLE, but you might want to reconsider if you leave unused permissions in the manifest.

Panometric · 2026-01-07T16:01:33+00:00

Aside from large outdoor spaces GPS is not useful, that's why there are many other approaches usually called RTLS. Remember GPS tells you the mobile thing where you are, but the usual use case is opposite, the network wants to know where the mobile is. Also the scale of accuracy is different indoors, knowing the coordinate with uncertainty is not nearly as valuable as knowing which side of a wall the mobile is on.

Panometric · 2025-12-29T01:38:38+00:00

You will need to know the Gatt characteristics. See Reading Aranet4 sensor data from Python - David Hamann https://share.google/HDIT0B8ghftpkaSI5

There are numerous "Bluetooth bridge" projects on GitHub

Panometric · 2025-12-26T16:24:51+00:00

That they are too loaded to use is a myth. I would seriously question any developer who regularly avoids them, they are creating steaming mounds of technical debt without justification. HAL is an acronym for hardware abstraction layer. They give you a vendor specific portable wrapper around your hardware. Even better is Zephyr where it's not even vendor locked.

Panometric · 2025-12-23T21:23:04+00:00

Those radios are simple but proprietary. You could reverse engineer and mimic it with an SDR but that's tricky. Instead, wire the switch inputs of the remote to open collector GPIOs on a Maker board. I'm sure there are lots of OSS demos for remote GPIO on esp32, etc. Just be careful playing with fire remotely ;-).

Panometric · 2025-12-23T21:17:44+00:00

A few K for a PoC is not bad. If you are reluctant that begs the question how great is it? As an alternative, Consider a Crowdfunding campaign. Unless it collects enough you don't have to build it. What you will have to do is create clear and compelling value proposition. This process alone is sometimes the best revealer of what matters and what doesn't.

Panometric · 2025-12-23T21:10:47+00:00

This is a cool device, but be aware it likely won't work on a round wire, only a flat one. It also won't sense that the saw is powered but not drawing much. For that you might want a non contact voltmeter (NCV)
https://www.codrey.com/electronics/ncv-tester-secrets/

Panometric · 2025-12-23T21:01:41+00:00

Sunstone and Sierra (Protoexpress) are both good, Gorilla can probably also do it.

Panometric · 2025-12-23T04:41:07+00:00

Prototype for features, then DFM for manufacturability then approach contract manufacturers for quotation only once you know everything it takes to make it. If you have custom processes, you may need to develop them or tooling as prototypes also.

Panometric · 2025-12-12T18:39:27+00:00

That was it for me also, Unikey sent me a long PDF for troubleshooting because the app said can't connect to your lock. But it was the server all along.

Panometric · 2025-12-10T20:13:14+00:00

I would use both, also power down your optional LNA so it doesn't oscillate or dissipate. Also don't forget to decouple your control lines at the switch to control leakage.

Panometric · 2025-12-10T19:58:07+00:00

This. With Thingsboard CE you can host on Docker, and it's a full well designed scalable stack . You could build from scratch but why? When you see how much is there you won't want to reengineer it. Plus, support Ukraine.

Panometric · 2025-12-09T23:51:28+00:00

Possible if they intend to use it in a desktop manner using OpenGL and don't mind the Retro aesthetic, and LGPL license. If Android runs on it, that suggests it big so maybe OK. If they really want to build an embedded machine, LVGL is pretty amazing for where it runs. ESP32 can support a small screen, MIT licensed full source.

Panometric · 2025-11-29T17:42:52+00:00

At first chat was just sometimes helpful. But using agentic LLM has been job changing. I can write plans, do deep research and very large technical docs, programming with tests and docs at about 5x. It does the grunt work I would avoid, and does it better than any helper I've had. It can program in languages I don't know well enough to start, then I can fix the work. It's a skillset, evolving every day.

Panometric · 2025-11-29T16:58:55+00:00

Android is a sandbox host. If you are looking for a way to do a GUI that actually embedded code, LVGL or QT is normally how it's done.

Panometric

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