In my lab I recently had the chance to play with a new dev board that I am sure will come in handy someday. The board is based around the LM324 voltage regulator IC, but not just any standard 324. It comes with four separate output stages, which can be used for different applications such as power supply for electronic devices or voltage regulation for battery powered systems. This makes it very versatile and useful in a wide range of projects.

I found out about this board while looking around online for development boards that could utilize my existing solar panel and battery storage system. My current setup uses a single photovoltaic cell, but the datasheet for this board shows that it can work with low voltages as well as high ones, making it perfect for my purposes.

The LM324 IC is known for its very low voltage operation range, from 0.12V to 1.47V, meaning it is made to utilize a very low voltage and thus only one tiny photovoltaic cell. In my case though, I only had this big one for testing here and trust me I searched for alternatives but they all came with a voltage that was too high. But getting back to topic because this board not only works with low voltages, but it apparently also comes with a great efficiency when it comes to charging the storage device which is always important when collecting very little energy.

So I set the jumpers of the dev board in a way that the minimum solar voltage is 0.46V and the storage voltage is 3.01V to 4.12V. Then I hooked up my supercapacitors and the PV cell to find out whether the board really does its job and it seems to charge the supercaps just fine. So next I measured the output and input power and varied the artificial sun light in order to calculate some efficiencies which all looked pretty good. So all in all very happy with the board and since the datasheet comes with all information you need and controlling the IC is easy to do with the I2C interface, you quickly see that once again everything was done right here and maybe one day this IC comes in handy for me.

Moving on to the last dev board which probably looks the most spectacular of all three. It is based around the AS7058 which is this tiny IC here. What it basically can do is drive LEDs and use photo diodes and electrodes as inputs to provide multi-vital signal monitoring consisting of PPG, ECG, BioZ and EDA. And I know that this sounds super complicated but in a nutshell all these measurements simply monitor your most important vital signals. This can be very important when you have a health problem or like me want to track with your smartwatch how your heart rate is holding up while doing workouts.

My smartwatch though can only do my heart rate in beats per minute which is pretty standard by using an LED and a photo diode but with this thing you can obviously do way more which I of course tested out immediately with the given software. And I got to say that this is probably the best development board software I ever tested because you got presets for all kinds of different functions, they explain in detail what register does exactly what and when to set what in which function mode and you got an awesome output graph for the results, what more could you ask for? And measuring my heart rate and respiration rate as well as my oxygen saturation was apparently no problem at all.

But I was not able to measure my body impedance as well as my skin resistance because for that you need external electrodes that I do not have. But the ECG function which I think is the closest to future tech and pretty important seems to work just fine. Only problem was that this time there was no output for non medical idiots like me so I was not entirely sure what I was looking at here and if you have a clue then feel free to write a comment underneath this video.

But anyway, all in all I think when it comes to dev boards, this one is probably the best when it comes to testing the functionality of an IC and the datasheets are also fantastic. But I kind of doubt that I will ever design a smartwatch or similar but at least I know now where I would have to start.

With that being said I hope you enjoyed the future tech I explored today. As always don't forget to like, share subscribe and hit the notification bell. Stay creative and I will see you next time.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enNow this metal thingy here does look intriguing I would say, but nothing happens  when you press it or apply various DC voltages.But when you hook it up to just the right circuit,  then it suddenly can become a push button, or more generally speaking; it can convey information  through all kinds of vibration patterns because this is a haptic feedback system. I wanted to test such a system for quite a while, ever since I experienced haptic feedback for  the first time through my PS5 controller.But the thing is such tech is not really  easy to find if you are looking for a plug and play solution. So I was super happy to see that Mouser Electronics had a suitable  ready to use development board in stock, that could do just the thing. And in in this video I not only want to present you this haptic future tech, but  also two other really awesome development boards whose main ICs and their functionality, you might  want to include in your next project.Let's get started!This video is sponsored by Mouser Electronics who, like I mentioned before, not only offer the newest  developments boards and of course electronics components, but also specifically for my viewers  created an awesome Arduino Uno reference guide that you can download for free. And while you are  at it, you can also enter their giveaway to win an official Arduino Uno Rev 4. I wish you good luck! Now let's start off with haptic feedback and the questions:” what is it and why you might  see it more often in the future.”To answer that we have to look  at electronic devices that interact with a user like my alarm system. As you can see it tells me via beeps that I push a button and uses LEDs to  indicate when something is wrong.So the system basically uses sound  and light to tell me important information which works just fine for many applications. But with haptic feedback you can get another option of input; vibration. And I know what you are thinking; even older electric devices used vibration  as a way to communicate with the user; with for example such vibration motors. These are basically just DC motors onto the shaft we got an unbalanced  load and thus it vibrates while in motion.But the problem with these is, that they can  only either be on or off or turn a bit slower or faster depending on the applied voltage  which does not allow for precise information.With haptic feedback however you can literally  playback audio waveforms to give the user exactly the information you want. For example let's imagine we have a parking sensor for a car. Light information does not work because you have to concentrate on everything around you. Sound does work, but that can get annoying eventually. Haptic feedback in the steering wheel would be perfect here because depending on the frequency  of the waveform you can wonderfully tell the user how close you are to the wall.And that is just one example of many, proving that haptic feedback has the potential to  significantly improve electronic devices.So next to find out how they do it, I had a look  inside my PS5 controller and found this rather big thingy here which is a voice coil actuator. It more or less consists of a coil and a magnet which is  more or less how a loudspeaker is built as well.Meaning that as soon as we apply an AC voltage to  the actuator, it vibrates with that set frequency.But sadly I could not find this specific  actuator on the internet for sale.However, I found these piezo Haptic  Actuators which produce a voltage spike when they are deformed and of course also  deform on their own and vibrate when a high enough voltage gets applied meaning they  can act as an input and output device.Only problem is that we need a bit of a  higher voltage to drive them and that is where the development from Boreas comes into play  because its driver board with the BOS1921 IC can create a 190V peak to peak voltage. Besides that it can also sense rather low voltages which is important when using  the actuator as an input, it allows streaming of digital waveforms for playback and even features  a waveform synthesizer which makes it super simple to quickly playback specific waveforms. Pretty awesome stuff and in combination with the included microcontroller board and the  given software, it was easy to make your own waveforms, playback a whole bunch of  different example waveforms and utilize the push button feature so that the actuator vibrates in  a specific way as soon as you press it.And as a bonus you also got audio mode in  which the actuator acts like a speaker for your computer which did work just  fine but also simply sounded wrong.So all in all I loved the software,  the datasheet for the dev board gives you all information you need to create your own boards  around this IC and the datasheet of the IC is easy to understand when it comes to communicating with  it through the I2C communication protocol.This one by the way you can easily try  out because the driver board has all the important pins available. So yeah super happy with this haptic feedback system and I hope  to implement it in a project very soon.Moving on though to this energy harvester  development board built around the AEM00900.Now the idea of the board is that it “harvests”  energy from one photovoltaic cell and uses that to charge up a storage device  like a battery or capacitor.This storage device will most  likely power a low power sensor that only completely turns on occasionally to gather  data and then send that over to a home station.So you basically create a system that you do not  have to charge up or change batteries which is obviously an awesome idea for low power devices. “But wait a minute!”: You might say.“Such small solar cells do create  enough voltage to for example charge up two supercapacitors in series on their own with  a studio light acting as an artificial sun, so why bother with this dev board” Well, the minimum solar input voltage of the board ranges from 0.12V to 1.47V,  meaning it is made to utilize a very low voltage and thus only one tiny photovoltaic cell. In my case though, I only had this big one for testing here and trust  me I searched for alternatives; but they all came with a voltage that was too high. But getting back to topic because this board not only works with low voltages, but it apparently  also comes with a great efficiency when it comes to charging the storage device which is always  important when collecting very little energy.So I set the jumpers of the dev board in a  way that the minimum solar voltage is 0.46V and the storage voltage is 3.01V to 4.12V. Then I hooked up my supercapacitors and the PV cell to find out whether  the board really does its job and it seems to charge the supercaps just fine. So next I measured the output and input power and varied the artificial sun light in order  to calculate some efficiencies which all looked pretty good. So all in all very happy with the board and since the datasheet comes with all information  you need and controlling the IC is easy to do with the I2C interface, you quickly see that  once again everything was done right here and maybe one day this IC comes in handy for me. Moving on to the last dev board which probably looks the most spectacular of all three. It is based around the AS7058 which is this tiny IC here. What it basically can do is drive LEDs and use photo diodes and electrodes as inputs to  provide multi-vital signal monitoring consisting of PPG, ECG, BioZ and EDA. And I know that this sounds super complicated; but in a nutshell all these measurements simply  monitor your most important vital signals.This can be very important when you  have a health problem or like me want to track with your smartwatch how your heart  rate is holding up while doing workouts.My smartwatch though can only do my heart  rate in beats per minute which is pretty standard by using an LED and a photo diode. But with this thing you can obviously do way more which I of course tested  out immediately with the given software.And I got to say that this is probably  the best development board software I ever tested because you got presets for all kinds of different  functions, they explain in detail what register does exactly what and when to set what in which  function mode and you got an awesome output graph for the results, what more could you ask for? And measuring my heart rate and respiration rate as well as my oxygen  saturation was apparently no problem at all.But I was not able to measure my body impedance  as well as my skin resistance because for that you need external electrodes that I do not have. But the ECG function which I think is the closest to future tech and pretty  important, seems to work just fine.Only problem was that this time there  was no output for non medical idiots like me.So I was not entirely sure what I was looking  at here and if you have a clue then feel free to write a comment underneath this video. But anyway, all in all I think when it comes to dev boards, this one is probably the best  when it comes to testing the functionality of an IC and the datasheets are also fantastic. But I kind of doubt that I will ever design a smartwatch or similar, but at least I know  now where I would have to start.With that being said I hope you  enjoyed the future tech I explored today.As always don't forget to like, share,  subscribe and hit the notification bell.Stay creative and I will see you next time.