For decades, we have always dreamed that all electronic devices used the future of standardized power connections. Most of us may not expect USBs to eventually play this role, but if this means the future, and every technology we purchased does not have new barriers, we will do our best. From the soldering iron to the laptop, it is really incredible to use a low USB cable.
This makes people spend so long to come up with a way to open and close USB devices through the network, which is even surprising. Sonoff said that its "USB Smart Adapter" will start shipping before the end of this year, which is the logic evolution of its very popular power supply voltage intelligent switch. The smart adapter is intended to move between the device and its existing power supply, allowing users to drag any USB power supply for kicking and screaming into its existing smart home settings. All costs are $ 6.50.
In the above video, Sonoff provides some potential purposes for smart adapters: from control a string of LEDs to restricting smartphones to charge. However, in fact, because of this gadget, almost unlimited quantities can be integrated into your home automation routine, so you can integrate them into the device.
On the other hand, those who wish to keep more stringent control over their own home can use smart adapters to ensure that their Google and Amazon listening device assistants are only energized in one day.
Although the Sonoff intelligent switch is very well-known, at least in this class of HackADAY is because they are based on well-known ESP8266 microcontrollers. In the case of a given size and its expected use, it is assumed that the device also uses a crazy popular chip. However, according to the representative of Sonoff, the USB smart adapter does not use ESP at all; therefore, it does not use ESP. It is not until people can really touch them and have a hacker issue until they have been hoped.
Challenger appears
Therefore, if there is no ESP8266 driven the core of this device, what is it? Sonoff said that this chip is called CKW04, it is obviously too new, there is almost no information about it online. The best source of information we have now is the Chinese technical documentation of the manufacturer's Coolkit to GitHub.
Slim QFN-48L chip size is only 6 x 6 mm, just like ESP8266, providing a combination of WiFi solutions. According to the document, it seems to have some integrated timer function, which can trigger a dedicated GPIO pin according to the delay or periodic interval.
No matter what other progress they have made on the chip, the excellent talents of Coolkit do not seem to improve the high energy consumption of ESP. These documents list the maximum current at 3.3 V of 345 mA, and the average energy consumption during normal operation is about 80 mA.
Unfortunately, there is no information about software, such as the tool chain required to get your own firmware on CKW04. There seems to be no files actually list the specifications of the chip. In addition to rapid mention of pins 10 and 11 can be used to refresh new firmware, you don't even know that it is programmable.
There are many hackers who want to write (or at least modify) the firmware running on its device, and in the Sonoff's ESP8266-based product, this is undoubtedly a selling point. Under the protection of the USB smart adapter, there is a new and only a small number of files recorded, and the Sonoff hacker community seems to have to catch up.
But who knows? The success of ESP8266 is just just to provide WiFi to serial bridge, which makes everyone feel surprised. Perhaps next year, CKW04 will become a hot new MCU that everyone is studying.
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Copyright Notice: Circuit City Original compilation, translation from HackADAY, please indicate the source!
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