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December 2, 2022

New Product: Witty Pi 4 L3V7

Today we hereby announce the new member of Witty Pi 4 family: Witty Pi 4 L3V7. This is the first Witty Pi product that integrates the battery charging circuit and hence can be used directly as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).

Witty Pi 4 L3V7 has the same shape factor as Witty Pi 4 Mini, but it includes more functionalities. The table below shows the comparison between Witty Pi 4, Witty Pi 4 Mini and Witty Pi 4 L3V7.

The diagram below demonstrate how Witty Pi 4 L3V7 will get connected.

Witty Pi 4 L3V7

After connecting a chargeable 3.7V Lithium ion/polymer battery to Witty Pi 4 L3V7, you can use it as an UPS.  If 5V power supply is connected, the device will be powered by USB power and the battery will also be charged. If the 5V power supply is off, the battery will immediately take the palace and power the device. When its voltage drops under the preset threshold, it will shut down your Raspberry Pi.

Witty Pi 4 L3V7

More information bout this new product can be found on its product page.

Witty Pi 4 L3V7 ’s retail price is 23.00 EUR (about 19.58GBP  /  23.54USD  /  30.34CAD), and you can order it here.

You may be able to order them from our distributors soon.

 

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February 5, 2021

New Revision of Witty Pi 3!

Today we are proud to announce Witty Pi 3 Rev2: a new revision of Witty Pi 3. This new revision changes the 5V input connecter from micro USB to USB type C, and replaces the onboard linear regulator (LM29150) with switching DC/DC converter (MP4462). These changes give Witty Pi 3 much better ability to output higher current, and also practically widen the range of input voltage.

What’s New?

The appearance of Witty Pi 3 Rev2 is very similar to the first revision (please see the picture below). The locations of headers and switch remain the same, that means the new revision and old revision are physically interchangeable (except that you need to use type C plug instead of micro USB plug, if you want to give it 5V).

To type C connector and the new DC/DC converter is at up-right corner of the board. The table below compares the two revisions with detailed parameters.

Because the first revision uses linear regulator (LM29150), its efficiency drops very quick when the input voltage increase. That means using it on 12V or 24V system is not practical: even if the regulator can work with extra heat sink, the efficiency will be so poor and that ruins the advantage of using Witty Pi, which is saving energy in most cases. Now the new revision comes with a decent switching DC/DC converter, which can work up to DC 28V without adding extra heat sink, and still keeps the efficiency above 80%, that is indeed a comprehensive improvement.

Firmware and Software Update

Witty Pi 3 Rev2 comes with newer version of firmware (V1.03, with ID=0x23). This firmware allows setting the power cut delay to a bigger value (up to 25.0 seconds). The purpose for this update is to workaround the boot delay caused by USB boot or NOOBS. More details can be found in its user manual.
The software is also updated to V3.12, to allow users to actually set a longer power cut delay. Also the we made some improvements on Internet time synchronisation, to avoid writing incorrect time into system, when the network is not stable.
UUGear Web Interface (UWI) is also updated to V1.01, to support the new revision of Witty Pi 3. When you install the new software, it will install the latest UWI for you (given you don’t have “uwi” folder in your home directory).
Please notice the firmware and software update are not dedicated for Witty Pi 3 Rev2. Witty Pi 3 (Rev1) and Witty Pi 3 Mini can also use the new firmware and software. However you will need to upgrade the firmware by yourself.

Price and Where to Buy?

Witty Pi 3 Rev2’s retail price is 570 CZK (about 22.01EUR  /  19.30GBP  /  26.40USD).
You can order it from our e-shop or you may be able to order it from our resellers soon.

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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.

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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:
rev1_vs_rev2
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.
40_pin_header_assembly
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.

smd_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:
with_rpi_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.

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