See Through Walls Like Superman
Our new Qwiic Pulsed Coherent Radar Sensor featuring the Acconeer XM125 is here, along with a brand new Thing+ equipped with the ESP32-S3!
Hello everyone and welcome back to another Friday Product Post here at SparkFun Electronics! This week, we have three exciting new products to show off and it all starts with our new Qwiic-enabled Pulsed Coherent Radar Sensor! This imaging board features the revolutionary Acconeer XM125 that allows you to even see through walls and around corners. Not kidding about that, check our Rob's video below for more. Following that, we have a brand new Thing Plus for you featuring the new ESP32-S3 module from Espressif. We wrap the week with OpenMV's new WiFi camera module, the RT1062! Alright, let's take a closer look at each of this week's new products!
Get your hands on the newest 60GHz radar technology!
Forget ultrasonic and infrared sensors; the SparkFun Qwiic Pulsed Coherent Radar Sensor - Acconeer XM125 brings powerful 60GHz radar technology to your projects. This sensor isn't limited to surface detection; it can see through walls, cabinets, and even pockets (depending on the material), making it perfect for unique applications. Measure distances with millimeter precision, detect motion, the speed of an object, or even gestures!
The XM125 boasts an impressive range of up to 20 meters, allowing you to create long-range sensing projects. Despite its power, the sensor has remarkably low in power consumption, which is ideal for battery-powered applications. The real magic lies in the sensor's ability to do more than measure distance; the XM125 can differentiate between stationary objects and moving targets using pulsed coherent radar. This means you can sense an object's presence and how fast something is moving!
The SparkFun ESP32-S3 Thing Plus adds a powerful and versatile IoT development platform to the Thing Plus product line. It features the ESP32 WROOM-S3 MINI wireless module from espressif™. The ESP32 WROOM-S3 is built around an Xtensa® 32-bit LX7 processor with massive processing power that operates up to 240 MHz. It supports 2.4 GHz WiFi and Bluetooth® 5 (LE) with a built-in PCB antenna. This version of the ESP32-S3 has 4MB Flash memory and 2MB of dynamic/PSRAM, and the board also has a µSD card slot for those who need more storage space.
The OpenMV Cam RT1062 is a small, low power, microcontroller board which allows you to easily implement applications using machine vision in the real-world. You program the OpenMV Cam in high level Python scripts (courtesy of the MicroPython Operating System) instead of C/C++. This makes it easier to deal with the complex outputs of machine vision algorithms and working with high level data structures. But, you still have total control over your OpenMV Cam and its I/O pins in Python. You can easily trigger taking pictures and video on external events or execute machine vision algorithms to figure out how to control your I/O pins.
That's it for this week. As always, we can't wait to see what you make! Shoot us a tweet @sparkfun, or let us know on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. Please be safe out there, be kind to one another! We'll be back with more new products next week so make sure to check back then. Happy hacking!
