Thursday, January 21st, 2021

Time	Event
3:21p	Raspberry Pi Foundation Launches $4 Microcontroller With Custom Chip Meet the Raspberry Pi Pico, a tiny little microcontroller that lets you build hardware projects with some code running on the microcontroller. Even more interesting, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is using its own RP2040 chip, which means that the foundation is now making its own silicon. From a report: If you're not familiar with microcontrollers, those devices let you control other parts or other devices. You might think that you can already do this kind of stuff with a regular Raspberry Pi. But microcontrollers are specifically designed to interact with other things. They're cheap, they're small and they draw very little power. You can start developing your project with a breadboard to avoid soldering. You can pair it with a small battery and it can run for weeks or even months. Unlike computers, microcontrollers don't run traditional operating systems. Your code runs directly on the chip. Like other microcontrollers, the Raspberry Pi Pico has dozens of input and output pins on the sides of the device. Those pins are important as they act as the interface with other components. For instance, you can make your microcontroller interact with an LED light, get data from various sensors, show some information on a display, etc. The Raspberry Pi Pico uses the RP2040 chip. It has a dual-core Arm processor (running at 133MHz), 264KB of RAM, 26 GPIO pins including 3 analog inputs, a micro-USB port and a temperature sensor. It doesn't come with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. And it costs $4. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
11:30p	The DeLorean Might Be Coming Back As an Electric Car An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: The DMC DeLorean has been out of production for almost 40 years, but now we've learned that the iconic vehicle might be coming back as an electric car. In 1995, Stephen Wynne bought the company's old inventory and trademark to relaunch the brand based in Texas. At first, the plan was to bring back the same vehicle with more modern technology in low volume. For the past 5 years, the company pushed for the adoption of new rules for low volume vehicle production with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). These new rules were finally recently adopted, but the delay was so long that it complicated DeLorean's plans. The engine that they plan to use is not going to be compliant with emission standards starting in 2022 and the landscape has changed significantly. In a new blog post, the company is now hinting that going electric with the DeLorean: "That said, with EV's becoming more mainstream, we've been considering switching to an all-electric as the future. It certainly makes for an easier path through emissions maze which still looms large over any internal combustion engine. While an electric Cobra or Morgan may be a little extreme for their potential market, we've already seen that an EV DeLorean -- as we displayed at the 2012 New York International Auto Show -- is not such an 'out there' idea." The company hints at being in the process of looking to secure financing to bring an electric DeLorean and says "stay tuned." Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)

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