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Pocuter - The coin sized 12-in-one WIFI & BLE micro computer

by: May 06,2022 1936 Views 0 Comments Posted in Engineering Technical

Crowdfunding Project

The Pocuter is a mini-computer can comptible with Arduino and combine a full color OLED, a Microcontroller with WiFi and Bluetooth capability, Micro SD card connector for up to 512GB of storage, three assignable buttons, microphone, accelerometer, temperature sensor, ambient light sensor with PPG capacity, RGB LED and charging module in a coin sized package.


Every important module - on a single board

Everything you could possibly need. A charging module gurantees that you can use the Pocuter easily as a portable device without any big modification.

The Pocuter combines all components that around it.


The size of Pocuter is similar to a 50 cent coin.


Specs and Features

The onboard full color OLED with 96x64 pixels inside a 0.95 inch panel can display bright and saturated 16-Bit colors, and the result is better than you might expect.


256KB of internal Flash and 32KB SRAM with an 32-Bit ARM® Cortex®-M0+ Core running at 48MHz is enough processing power to utilize everything on the board - All at once.


Live render of the Pocuter — on the Pocuter

The 3D model of the Pocuter consists of 279 polygons and is rendered live while still being around 25 frames per second.


The ESP32 adds WIFI & Bluetooth to the Pocuter. This makes it much more powerful together with the Pocuter API & Cloud.


Micro SD Slot

Load endless sketches, images and other things with a micro SD card without having to reupload sketches every time with the help of Pocuter OS. A micro SD card will act like a hard disk for your comp.

The library provides a function that enables you to check if an SD card is physically inserted. This prevents unnecessary waiting times since the main MCU is busy trying to establish a connection.


The connector itself also has a push-push mechanism. That makes if far easier to remove the micro SD card even though it costs more valuable space on the PCB.


Hotkey Buttons

Control the Pocuter without needing any external components. There are three user assignable buttons to navigate through your great sketches and masterpieces!


Microphone

An onboard electret condenser microphone that is also widely used in smartphones enables voice commands, dictating text and recording voice. Together with a speaker it would even enable calls.


Accelerometer

The 3-axis accelerometer enables the Pocuter to detect motion and which way it is tilted to. A shake and specific tilt detection enables automatic wakeups. 


Temperature Sensor

The temperature sensor is built into the same IC as the accelerometer. It enables you to linearly measure the current temperature.


RGB LED

All colors of the RGB LED are connected to PWM ports so it is possible to display every single color variation.


Light Sensor

The ambient light sensor enables you to detect differences in the light level. This can be helpful to see is something is opened or how bright it is right now.


Alternatively, you can use it as photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor to detect heartbeats. We intentionally placed the RGB LED near the ambient light sensor with a to make that possible.



IMPORTANT NOTE: This feature is not confirmed to be included into the final product. Reading the heartbeat requires a much higher gain in the amplifier circuit. That prevents reading environmental light levels. We will work on it to enable both features.


Native USB Port

A micro USB port is used to upload new firmware or Arduino sketches directly onto the chip. The SAMD21 has native USB, so no external programmer or bridge is needed.


USB-C was not an option for now since we didn't have any space to add it. Moreover, it also is not really needed since the Pocuter only uses the USB data ports.


Battery Charger

 In most cases, the Pocuter is used as a portable device ran by a Lithium Polymer or Ion battery. The onboard battery charger ensures that you never have to exchange batteries, just plug it in with a micro USB cable.

Power management & Bypass charging:


An onboard voltage regulator provides up to 600mA and provides power to all components except the OLED screen which has a separate LED driver.

While the battery charges, the entire circuit is run by the energy provided by USB. This ensures that the battery doesn't loose its capacity quickly.


Breadboard Compatible

The Pocuter exposes its power ports, 6 breadboard compatible GPIOs, I2C & SPI ports. We used most pins that lack features for the fixed internal components and exposed the pins with the most features including ADC & PWM!


Software and SDK

The Pocuter OS brings possibilities on another level! Load Arduino sketches and other compatible binary files directly from your 'hard disk' - the micro SD card!

This way, you can load hundreds even thousands of apps without reuploading the codes every time!


If you use the Pocuter library, everything you need will be pre-implemented so you don't have to worry about compatibility. Standby modes, settings and many more things are synced with the settings file on the SD card.

image


Pocuter App store

It is exactly what you think! Developers can upload their apps to our Pocuter app store and make it easily available for all users to just download directly onto the Pocuter!


There is a built in app store where you can browse and download apps, but to make it easier, the app store will also be available on our website!


Every app is downloadable as a binary file or you can just load it onto your Pocuter if it is connected to your network. The apps will be ordered in different categories and groups like Smartwatch, Smarthome, Bike & More!


This a rough introduction about Pocuter, if you want to know more about what can Pocuter do, click here:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zepsch/pocuter.


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