2024 Digikey "Sense Everything, Enjoy Life" Creative Competition + Unboxing

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2024 Digikey "Sense Everything, Enjoy Life" Creative Competition + Unboxing [Copy link]

 

This time, I participated in the 2024 DigiKey "Sense Everything, Enjoy Life" competition, and received the STM32H7S3L8 development board, SIPEEDMAX 6+1 sound and light positioning module, SEN-21231 face recognition module, and BME280 and BME680 temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure sensors and air quality detection modules. My goal is to use these high-performance sensors and modules to build an intelligent environmental perception system and explore the possibility of combining environmental data with human-computer interaction. This is a great opportunity to innovate and show how to integrate IoT technology with real life.

Unboxing experience and packaging
The material packaging is very compact, and DigiKey's shipping box is sturdy and durable, ensuring safety during transportation. After unboxing, all components are neatly placed in anti-static bags to ensure that sensitive components will not be disturbed by static electricity. The overall packaging design is simple and practical, without extra fillers, and is very environmentally friendly.

When I unboxed the device, the most eye-catching thing was the STM32H7S3L8 development board, which has a moderate size, a reasonable layout, and clearly marked interfaces, making it easy to connect other sensors and modules. The SIPEEDMAX 6+1 acoustic and optical positioning module also caught my eye. Its compact design is convenient for embedded applications, and the optical and acoustic sensors are highly integrated, making it very suitable for my spatial perception project.

List of Materials
1. STM32H7S3L8 development board: This high-performance development board has rich interfaces and powerful processing capabilities. The maximum frequency can reach 600Mhz. It can manage multiple sensor data at the same time. The processing speed and memory capacity are quite satisfactory. This development board will serve as the core controller of the system, responsible for data collection, processing and feedback; the STM32 Nucleo-144 board provides users with an affordable and flexible way to try new concepts and build prototypes by selecting a variety of performance and power consumption feature combinations provided by STM32 microcontrollers. For compatible boards, internal or external SMPS can significantly reduce power consumption in operating mode; the ST Zio connector expands the connectivity of the ARDUINO Uno V3, while the ST morpho connector provides an easy way to expand the functionality of the Nucleo open development platform and provides a variety of dedicated shields.

The STM32 Nucleo-144 board does not require a separate probe thanks to the integrated ST-LINK debugger/programmer. The STM32 Nucleo-144 board comes with the STM32 comprehensive free software libraries and examples from the STM32Cube MCU software package.

2. SIPEEDMAX 6+1 acoustic and optical positioning module: The microphone array module is designed by Sipeed based on the MSM261S4030H0 digital microphone chip. The module has high sound recognition sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio. It consists of six microphones along the board and one central microphone. The 12 LEDs on the array board can be used to visually identify the direction of the sound source. Based on the GCC-PHAT algorithm, it can realize sound source positioning, speech recognition, beamforming and other demand occasions; this module can accurately sense the position of light sources and sounds, which provides great convenience for spatial perception in the project. I plan to use it to track the changes of sound and light sources in real time and build a dynamic response environment monitoring system.

3. SEN-21231 Face Recognition Module: This module can add advanced computer vision capabilities to your project without writing code! The Person Sensor from Useful Sensors Inc. includes a camera module pre-programmed with algorithms to detect nearby faces and return information through a simple Qwiic I2C interface. It is designed to be an input to the system, providing power and information through SparkFun's Qwiic I2C interface like other sensors. In addition, there is a separate interrupt pin TP1 to indicate whether a person is detected; the Person Sensor integrates an image sensor and a small microcontroller inside. It is a small, low-power (about 150 milliwatts) and affordable hardware module that can detect nearby faces and return information about the number of faces, their location, and facial recognition. This makes it easier to create smart projects, such as waking up the device when a person approaches, tracking faces, muting the microphone when no one is around, and even recognizing people to personalize the experience. The Person Sensor is designed to be a simple way to build smarter devices.

4. BME280 sensor module: BME280 is a humidity sensor developed for mobile applications and wearable devices, where size and low power consumption are key design parameters. The device combines high linearity and high precision sensors, which fully achieves low current consumption, long-term stability and high EMC robustness. This humidity sensor has an extremely fast response time, so it can meet the performance requirements of emerging applications such as environmental perception and high accuracy over a wide temperature range. I connected them to the development board to monitor environmental changes in real time and combined with the acoustic and optical positioning and face recognition modules for intelligent reactions.

5. BME680 sensor module: BME680 is the first gas sensor to integrate high linearity and high precision gas, pressure, humidity and temperature sensors. It is developed for mobile applications and wearable devices where size and low power consumption are key requirements. BME680 guarantees (depending on the specific operating mode) optimized power consumption, long-term stability and high EMC robustness. To measure air quality for personal health, the gas sensor in BME680 can detect a variety of gases, such as volatile organic compounds (VOC); I connected them to the development board to monitor environmental changes in real time, and combined them with acoustic and optical positioning and face recognition modules for intelligent monitoring.

Product details and preliminary testing

You can see that I have designed the peripheral circuit for the sensor and made the PCB, and conducted a series of tests.
After getting the development board, I first tried to connect the BME280 sensor for temperature and humidity data collection. The pin arrangement of the STM32H7S3L8 development board is very reasonable, and the connection is very smooth. After a few lines of simple code, the sensor started working and successfully read the temperature, humidity and air pressure data of the current environment. The sensor responded quickly, the data display was stable, and the initial test results were very good.

The installation and debugging of the SIPEEDMAX sound and light positioning module is a little more complicated, but through its rich interfaces and the powerful processing capabilities of the STM32H7S3L8, I successfully implemented the sound positioning test. Preliminary tests show that the module can accurately capture the direction of the sound source, which is very suitable for projects that require precise positioning.

Subsequent plans
After this unboxing and preliminary testing, I am very satisfied with the performance of these modules. The STM32H7S3L8 development board has powerful performance and high processing efficiency when used with multiple sensors; the sound and light positioning module also shows strong application potential. Next, I plan to integrate the face recognition module and combine it with environmental sensors to build an intelligent space perception system. This system will achieve personalized feedback and interaction through face recognition and environmental perception.
This unboxing experience was very smooth, and the workmanship and performance of each component met expectations. The materials provided by DigiKey are both high-performance and easy to use, and are very suitable for participating in intelligent perception competitions. If you are also looking for hardware equipment suitable for your creative project, I strongly recommend you to try these modules. I believe they can bring new inspiration and breakthroughs to your project.