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November 6, 2019

New Product: RasPiKey eMMC Module for Raspberry Pi

Our new product RasPiKey is released today!

RasPiKey is a 16GB eMMC module designed for Raspberry Pi. It can be inserted into the micro SD card slot on Raspberry Pi and work as a faster (especially 4k read/write) and more endurable SD card.

On Raspberry Pi 3B+, RasPiKey shows much better performance than SD cards (using the benchmark introduced in Jeff Geerling’s blog):

Benchmarks on Raspberry Pi 3B+

RasPiKey can also be used on Raspberry Pi 4B, however you will need to update your Pi4’s bootloader first. At the time being, RasPiKey gets limited support by Raspberry Pi 4B and doesn’t get speed boost like those good SD cards, its performance on 4B is not that outstanding, however it still has better 4k read/write speed than SD cards.
Updated on 2020.12: Now with the latest official firmware, Raspberry Pi 4B supports DDR52 timing mode, which boosts the performance of RasPiKey, and make RasPiKey faster than SD cards on Raspberry Pi 4B.

Plug and Play

RasPiKey has Raspbian preinstalled, and also provides some tools to make setting Wi-Fi connection and enabling SSH login much easier. It is possible that you insert RasPiKey into your new Raspberry Pi, power it on and then use it via SSH session on your computer. You can enjoy your Raspberry Pi without having another set of display, keyboard and mouse.

Price and Where to Buy?

RasPiKey’s retail price is 520 CZK (about 20.37EUR / 17.53GBP / 22.55USD).
You can order it from our e-shop or you may be able to order it from our resellers soon.

News

emmc | raspberry pi | raspikey | sd card | uugear

July 1, 2019

We Now Have Witty Pi 3!

Today we proudly announce our new product: Witty Pi 3, which is the direct descendant of Witty Pi 2, and has more exciting features.

Also, Witty Pi 3 supports the newly released Raspberry Pi 4!

What’s New?

Witty Pi 3 finally has its own brain: a micro controller (ATtiny841). Thanks to this micro controller, Witty Pi 3 behave much smarter and can detect and process much more complex situation. The firmware for ATtiny84 is developed with Arduino IDE, and is open-source (will be available on GitHub soon). If you don’t mind losing warranty, it is possible to modify Witty Pi 3’s firmware and change its behavior as you wish.

Witty Pi 3 also added an LDO voltage regulator (LM29150) on board, which allows you to power Witty Pi with higher voltage. Now you can directly use 6V or 7.4V battery to power Witty Pi 3 + Raspberry Pi. The 5V micro USB connector is still there, and you can power Witty Pi 3 directly with 5v too.

Besides all those that can be done with Witty Pi 2, Witty Pi 3 also monitor the input voltage and output current. You can tell Witty Pi 3 to gracefully shutdown your Raspberry Pi when input voltage is lower than certain value; you can also let Witty Pi 3 to wake up your Raspberry Pi when input voltage increase to certain value. All these setting can be done via I2C interface, and Witty Pi 3’s software already takes care of the hard work. You can make a lot of configurations via the software. The software installation is as simple as before, just run two commands:

wget http://www.uugear.com/repo/WittyPi3/install.sh
sudo sh install.sh

Price and Where to Buy?

Witty Pi 3’s retail price is 530 CZK (about 20.82EUR / 18.66GBP / 23.57USD).
You can buy it directly from our e-shop or you may be able to buy it from our resellers soon.

Can I still get Witty Pi 2?

Yes, but it will be less convenient. Witty Pi 2 is now officially retired and will only be produced on request. We suggest all new customers to choose Witty Pi 3, which has more features and can do anything that Witty Pi 2 can do. I your product is using Witty Pi 2 already, and you don’t want to switch to Witty Pi 3, you can request us to produce some Witty Pi 2 boards for your project.

News

February 26, 2019

New Product: Ace4U is a cable-free USB hub for Raspberry Pi A+/3A+

Good day dear friends, today we announce our new product: Ace4U!

What is Ace4U?

We already have BIG7 USB hub for Raspberry Pi 2B, 3B and 3B+, and have Zero4U USB hub for Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W, now we finally have a USB hub for Raspberry Pi A+ and 3A+: Ace4U!
Ace4U is a cable-free, 4-port USB hub for Raspberry Pi A+/3A+. It uses 4 pogo pins to make connection between the USB hub and Raspberry Pi, so no soldering will be required.

Ace4U can be attached under Raspberry Pi A+/3A+, and give you a compact piece of hardware:

You can also place it into an Acrylic case:

Want to Know More?

You can find more details about Zero2Go Omini in its user manual: http://www.uugear.com/doc/Ace4U_UserManual.pdf

Where to Buy?

You can order it now from our online shop. Our resellers may also resell this product.

News

4-port | ace4u | Raspberry Pi 3A+ | Raspberry Pi A+ | USB hub

September 3, 2018

New Product! Zero2Go Omini is Here!

Today we proudly announce our new product: Zero2Go Omini!

What is Zero2Go Omini?

Zero2Go Omini is the second member in the Zero2Go family. Just like the first generation of Zero2Go, Zero2Go Omini is a Raspberry Pi Zero sized (or pHAT shape) and it can work as wide input range power supply for Raspberry Pi.

power_sources
Zero2Go Omini supports all Raspberry Pi models that has the 40-pin GPIO header, including A+, B+, 2B, 3B, 3B+, Zero and Zero W.

What’s New?

Zero2Go Omini inherits the main features from its ancestor, and introduces a lot of exciting new features:

Multiple Input Channels

The first generation of Zero2Go has only one input channel and all input connectors are linked in parallel, which disallows you to connect multiple power supplies to Zero2Go at the same time. The new Zero2Go Omini has 3 separated input channels (A, B and C), so you can connect up to 3 different power supplies to it. All input channels can accept 3.5~28V DC, and Zero2Go Omini will automatically use the one with highest voltage.
input_abc

Auto Step-Up / Step-Down

The first generation of Zero2Go only supports “pass-through” and “step-down”. The new Zero2Go Omini supports “step-up” and “step-down” and it will switch between these two modes automatically. When input voltage is below 5.5V, the step-up engine will be used; otherwise the step-down engine will be used. You can tell which mode is currently used by checking the LED on Zero2Go Omini: blue means step-up/pass-though, green means step-down.
howitworks

Monitor Input Voltages

After running the software for Zero2Go Omini, you can read the voltage value on each input channel.
The voltage values can be accessed via I2C interface, so you can also write your own program to read them.

Working as Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)

Now it is possible to specify a low-voltage threshold and a recovery voltage threshold to Zero2Go Omini. Zero2Go Omini will gracefully shutdown your Raspberry Pi when all input voltages are below the low-voltage threshold, and will turn on your Raspberry Pi when input voltage is higher than the preset recovery voltage threshold.
This feature is very useful for applications powered by battery, and with proper configuration Zero2Go Omini can work as a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). You can find more details in the user manual.
ups

MCU onboard

Zero2Go Omini uses an ATtiny841 micro controller. and thanks to that, it has very low standby current (0.1~0.9mA, depends on input voltage).
Also the MCU onboard allows us to define rather complex behavior for Zero2Go Omini. If you have ever used Witty Pi or the first generation of Zero2Go, you know none of them can work with NOOBS, because NOOBS delays the booting and that cause the power cut before actual booting happens. Zero2Go Omini doesn’t have this kind of limitation, it can work very well with NOOBS because it wouldn’t monitor the TXD pin before the booting is finished.

Want to Know More?

You can find more details about Zero2Go Omini in its user manual: http://www.uugear.com/doc/Zero2Go_Omini_UserManual.pdf

Where to Buy?

You can buy it now from our online shop. Our resellers may also start to resell this product soon.

News

omini | ups | zero2go

February 21, 2018

New Revision of BIG7 USB Hub

BIG7 USB hub is a 7-port USB hub designed for Raspberry Pi, and it allows your Raspberry Pi to connect more USB devices at a time. When using it with Raspberry Pi 3, you can use the 4 pogo pins (included in package) to finish the connection without using a USB cable.
Now we have a new revision of BIG7 USB hub. The newer revision looks very similar with the older one (see the picture below), and it introduces a new feature that allows user to turn on/off the power of USB ports via software or external switch.
004
From the picture you can see the new unpopulated pin header (P7), which contains ENABLE and GND pins. The ENABLE pin is pulled up to 3.3V by default, if you short it to the GND pin, BIG7 will cut off the power for all USB ports. This feature is useful when you want to save power consumption from the USB devices, or you want to fully reset the USB devices without rebooting the system.
You can connect an external switch to the P7 on board, and use it to turn on/off the power of USB devices.
external_switch
You can also connect the two pins in P7 to Raspberry Pi’s GPIO header, and control the power of USB ports via software. The ENABLE pin is in 3.3V level, so it is safe to connect it directly to Raspberry Pi’s GPIO header. Below is an example that uses GPIO-23 (BCM naming) to turn on/off the USB devices. You can use any software or library to set the status of GPIO pin.
gp23_control_power
The new revision does not include the short USB cable in the package. The pricing is the same with the older revision.
BIG7 USB Hub Rev2 is now in stock.

News

big7 | Rev2 | Revision 2 | USB hub

September 20, 2017

New Product! Witty Pi Mini is a new member of Witty Pi family

Today we are very proud to announce our new product – Witty Pi Mini.

What is Witty Pi Mini?

It is a new member of Witty Pi family and it has pHAT shape. Comparing to its older brother Witty Pi 2, Witty Pi Mini is much smaller (65 x 30 x 4mm) and has (almost) all the functionalities.

What’s New?

It uses a 0.08F (equals to 80,000uF) super capacitor for off-power time keeping, and can keep the RTC time without external power supply for about 17 hours. It is true that Witty Pi 2 with CR2032 battery can keep time for much, much longer, but considering the use case of Witty Pi, that may not be necessary as Witty Pi is suppose to be connected to power supply all the time (otherwise it won’t wake up your Raspberry Pi). Sometimes you may want to move your Witty Pi to another room, or make some special wiring before powering Witty Pi again, 17 hours off-power time keeping should be enough. If you really need a much longer off-power time keeping time, you can make use of the “Vbat” testing pad on the back and connect your own battery for much longer time keeping. You can find more details on page 31 in the user manual.
Different than Witty Pi 2, Witty Pi Mini doesn’t have those colourful jumpers. However the functionalities of those jumpers still exist, but you will use them in a different way. The red and blue jumpers are replaced with two SPDT switches, and the yellow and green jumpers are replaced with zero-Ohm resistor. You can still change the pin used by Witty Pi Mini, but you will need to unsolder the R26 or R27, and wire the pad to the new pin accordingly.
Witty Pi Mini has a red LED on board as power indicator, which will light up when your Raspberry Pi gets powered. This is very handy when you use Witty Pi Mini with Raspberry Pi Zero (W), which doesn’t have power indicator on board. Raspberry Pi Zero (W) should have the 40-pin GPIO header (not included in the package) soldered before connecting to Witty Pi Mini. The plastic screws, nuts and spacers in the package can firmly fix them together.

Although Witty Pi Mini has pHAT shape, it can also be used on other models of Raspberry Pi. In order to get reliable connection and also have access to the GPIO pins, you may need to mount the stacking GPIO header (not included in the package).

What’s Not New?

Witty Pi Mini uses the same software with Witty Pi 2, and the process to install the software is the same. Also Witty Pi Mini uses the same schedule script so you can our web application to generate the schedule script for it:

Want to Know More?

You may find more details in the user manual of Witty Pi Mini.

Where to Buy?

Now you can buy Witty Pi Mini from our online shop, or from The Pi Hut.

News

mini | witty pi | wittypi

June 14, 2017

New Revision of Witty Pi 2

Witty Pi 2 is a HAT-shaped add-on for Raspberry Pi that adds accurate realtime clock (DS3231SN) and power management, which allows you to define complex ON/OFF sequence of your Raspberry Pi with simple script. Witty Pi 2 is one of our flagship product and is becoming more and more popular recently. Today we announce the second revision of Witty Pi 2, which only has slight difference on the look and introduces a small enhancement, yet significantly simplifies our assembly process.
The figure below shows the different look of reversion 1 and reversion 2:

Until recent days, both Witty Pi and Witty Pi 2 use a rather complex assembly process. The 40-pin stackable header needs to be soldered manually on the board first, and then a plastic pin holder will be pressed on the board, to make the board look nicer.

Soldering the 40-pin stackable header is a huge workload, and we could hardly bear it, as the demand of Witty Pi 2 goes higher. So we take the idea from the Sense HAT, and use a surface-mounted female header to assembly the stackable header.

Witty Pi 2 (reversion 2)

This SMD female header is customised, and has only 2mm plastic height (the one on Sense HAT has 3.5mm plastic height). This slim header can make sure the stackable header be hold firmly, and still has enough length of pin exposed on top. This female header increases the BOM cost, but it saves us a lot of time on soldering the stackable header.
Although the stackable header is fixed in place, you can still take it away if you wish. By doing so your Witty Pi 2 becomes a very slim board and more suitable for portable project. For example, you can connect it with Raspberry Pi Zero:

In reversion 2, we also made a small enhancement on the design, and prolong the delay time (for 2~4 seconds) before Witty Pi 2 cuts the power. The purpose of this enhancement is to avoid “hard shutdown” unintentionally. This change doesn’t make Witty Pi 2 more NOOBS friendly, since the delay on NOOBS menu is way longer. You will still need to avoid using NOOBS, or disable the NOOBS menu to make Witty Pi 2 work. More details about this issue can be found on page 5 of Witty Pi 2 user manual.
The second revision of Witty Pi 2 is now in stock, and the pricing is the same with the first revision.

News

realtime clock | rtc | witty | witty pi | witty pi 2

January 2, 2017

The 7-Port USB Hub is Back with New Name!

Happy New Year everyone! We wish you all the best in year 2017!
Today we are glad to announce our newer revision of the 7-port USB hub, and this time it has a new name: BIG7!

What’s New?

Comparing to the previous revision, BIG7’s look doesn’t change a lot. You can see two more pogo pin holders near to the upstream port, which can install two more pogo pins to make data connection to Raspberry Pi (B+, 2B or 3B) without using a USB cable. As a result, your Raspberry Pi (B+, 2B or 3B) now have a very neat solution to increase the number of USB ports.

Considering the pogo pins need to connect to 4 points on the back of Raspberry Pi now, we changed the crown head pogo pins to cupped head pogo pins, which is much easier to make the alignment.

Want One?

The price is the same with previous revision (480 CZK per unit), and you can buy it now from our online shop.

News

7-port | big7 | mtt | USB hub

November 22, 2016

New Product: Zero2Go can power your Raspberry Pi in many ways!

Some customers have asked us if we have a product that can do power switch like Witty Pi 2 and accepts higher input voltage, now we proudly announce that we have one!

Zero2Go is a Pi-Zero sized power supply board that can accept 5~26V input and output 5V for your Raspberry Pi. It also has a button on board, so you can turn on and off your Raspberry Pi with a single tap (just like Witty Pi 2).
compare_wittypi2
Thanks to the wide range of input voltage, Zero2Go can power your Raspberry Pi with many kinds of power sources, such as power bank, Li-Po battery pack, solar panel, car battery or different kinds of power adapters etc.
power_sources
You can use the pogo pin connector (included in package) to connect Zero2Go with Raspberry Pi without soldering.

Or you can solder a 40-pin header (not included in package) on Zero2Go to connect it with other models of Raspberry Pi:

How Much? When and Where to Buy?

The price of Zero2Go is 350 CZK, which roughly equals to 12.95EUR/10.85GBP/13.65USD.

Zero2Go is now in stock and you can order one here.

News

new product | power supply | power switch | zero2go

July 28, 2016

New Revision of Zero4U (for V1.3)

Due to the high demand of Zero4U, we have to manufacture this product faster. We made a new revision of Zero4U, which modified the layout a little bit, and use the SMD version of XH2.54 connector and 12MHz crystal. Hence these two components do not need to be soldered manually, and the assembly can speed up a lot. The figure below shows the different between the two revisions:
rev2_vs_rev1 As you can see, the XH2.54 connector has been moved to the right side, and the IC and crystal are moved to the center now. All USB ports and pogo pins are not changed. The sizing, functionality and pricing of the device are the same between two revisions.
We have the new revision in stock. If you order Zero4U (for V1.3) now, you will get the new revision.

News

SMD | zero4u