Salvatore Raccardi's OBJEX Link Aims to Be the Smallest Modular, Reusable Board for the IoT
Powered by an ESP32-PICO-D4, this compact board uses modular add-ons in an effort to improve reusability in IoT product design.
Italian computer engineering student Salvatore Raccardi has unveiled the latest incarnation of OBJEX Link, claimed to be "the smallest modular IoT [Internet of Things] board" around — built with reuse in mind.
"OBJEX Link is a modular IoT board, is designed for hobbyists, makers, students and can also be used in industrial applications," Raccardi explains of his creation, which is is now at release version 1.5. "It is designed to develop IoT devices, which are easy to repair and reusable at the end of the device life cycle."
"The form factor of OBJEX Link is meant to fit several applications like IoT button, security camera, motor driver, etc. With modules, the user can customize easily the hardware for your projects."
The OBJEX Link mainboard, powered by an Espressif ESP32-PICO-D4 and in the Arduino IDE or via MicroPython and other languages, is only part of the ecosystem. The other parts are made up of module boards, which add sensors, relays, motor drivers, cameras, displays — or even just break out the pins on the base of the mainboard.
"The possible uses of OBJEX Link are endless," Raccardi claims. "You can potentially use OBJEX Link for any device with the right module. If you need very compact and reliable hardware for your IoT devices, OBJEX Link is the best choice."
"OBJEX Link has one goal, to make the hardware in IoT devices easy to reuse. Connecting devices is very important and exciting to build the society of the future but protect the environment is even more important," Raccardi continues.
"There are other solutions on the market, but few of them are designed to actually reuse the hardware. Many devices have custom hardware/PCBs so it makes it impossible to recycle it for other devices."
Full details on the hardware can be found on the project wiki, while design files and source code has been published to GitHub under the CERN Open Hardware License Version 2 — Weakly Reciprocal (CERN-OHL-W) license.