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February 22, 2023

Witty Pi 4 Package Content Change

Starting from the first generation of Witty Pi, a CR2032 Lithium battery (usually in IKEA brand) is included in Witty Pi’s package. This convention is changed now: Witty Pi (4) no longer come with a CR2032 battery, instead it comes with a 22AWG 30cm XH2.54 cable (the same as this one).

The reason for such a change, is the restrictions of Lithium battery from more and more carrier companies. Nowadays even a small Lithium battery like CR2032 in package can be considered “dangerous” and the whole package needs to be specially processed. Considering CR2032 battery is very easy to buy locally, we replace it with a 22AWG 30cm XH2.54 cable, which we believe is more useful to most of Witty Pi 4 users. You may use this cable to connect Witty Pi 4 to power supply up to 30V, and the DC/DC converter on Witty Pi 4 will provide 5V to power Raspberry Pi.

By the way, that CR2032 battery is also not necessary for Witty Pi 4 usage. In case of not putting any battery in the battery holder, the worse situation is the RTC loses the time when power supply is disconnected, and it can be fixed by synchronising the time with Internet again. If Witty Pi 4 connects to power supply all the time, which is suppose to be the case for normal usage, its RTC will not forget the time.

The unit price for Witty Pi 4 remain the same after such change. If you ordered Witty Pi 4 during the end of February, you may receive either the old or new package. Starting from March we are sure we only send out Witty Pi 4 with new package content.

 

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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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July 20, 2022

New Product: Witty Pi 4 Mini

After we announced Witty Pi 4, there is no surprise that Witty Pi 4 Mini is also on its way. Today is the day, and we now announce our new product Witty Pi 4 Mini.

Witty Pi 4 Mini has same shape factor as Witty Pi 3 Mini, and the connector locations are not changed. This make Witty Pi 4 Mini and Witty Pi 3 Mini physically exchangeable.

What’s New?

Comparing to Witty Pi 3 Mini, Witty Pi 4 Mini uses USB type-C connector instead of micro USB connector, and it has another unpopulated 7-pin header in the middle of the board.

Comparing to the full-sized Witty Pi 4, Witty Pi 4 Mini uses super capacitor instead of CR2032 battery for off-power time keeping. Witty Pi 4 Mini doesn’t come with an on-board DC/DC converter.

Similar to the full-sized Witty Pi 4, Witty Pi 4 Mini also uses the “single I2C device” design. Instead of exposing the realtime clock and temperature sensor directly to Raspberry Pi, it uses micro-controller (MCU) to emulate one I2C device (with address 0x08), and only exposes this I2C device to Raspberry Pi. On the other hand, it implement its internal I2C bus to communicate with the realtime clock and temperature sensor.

 

Witty Pi 4 Mini’s firmware is basically the same with the one in Witty Pi 4 Mini, except that it has a different firmware ID. Just like Witty Pi 4, Witty Pi 4 Mini’s firmware also maps all I2C registers in realtime clock and temperature sensor into its own I2C device, and you can access all I2C registers in realtime clock and temperature sensor via single I2C device.

Since the address of the single I2C device is configurable, you can always avoid the I2C address conflicting.

Same as full-sized Witty Pi 4, Witty Pi 4 Mini can also turn your Raspberry Pi into a temperature controlled device. You can put it into sleep when temperature is rather high, or the other way around.

Migrate from Witty Pi 3 Mini to Witty Pi 4 Mini

If you are using Witty Pi 3 Mini in your project, you may want to know more details about the the difference between Witty Pi 3 Mini and Witty Pi 4 Mini.  In the user manual, you can find a chapter (chapter 13) about how to migrate from Witty Pi 3 Mini to Witty Pi 4 Mini.

How about Witty Pi 3 Mini?

Witty Pi 3 Mini is discontinued. We unfortunately do not offer the possibility to continue producing Witty Pi 3 Mini, due to the shortage of DS3231SN chip.

We will do our best to help our customers to migrate from Witty Pi 3 Mini to Witty Pi 4 Mini.

Price and Where to Buy?

Witty Pi 4 Mini ’s retail price is 18.00 EUR (about 15.32GBP  /  18.42USD  /  23.74CAD), and you can order it here.

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

 

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June 8, 2022

New Product: Witty Pi 4

Today we are very proud to announce our new product: Witty Pi 4!

This is the 4th generation of Witty Pi. Comparing with Witty Pi 3, it has same shape factor and same connector locations, and have some interesting new features.

Witty Pi 4

What’s New?

Witty Pi 4 uses a new structure to organise its hardware resources. Instead of exposing the realtime clock and temperature sensor directly to Raspberry Pi, it uses micro-controller (MCU) to emulate one I2C device (with address 0x08), and only exposes this I2C device to Raspberry Pi. On the other hand, it implement its internal I2C bus and connect the realtime clock and temperature sensor to that internal I2C bus.

Witty Pi’s firmware also maps all I2C registers in realtime clock and temperature sensor into its own I2C device, so you can access all I2C registers in realtime clock and temperature sensor via single I2C device.

Because the address of this single I2C device is also configurable, you can always avoid the I2C address conflicting.

A new feature of Witty Pi 4 is to turn your Raspberry Pi into a temperature controlled device. You can put it into sleep when temperature is rather high, or the other way around.

In Witty Pi 3, you cannot specify the “seconds” in scheduled shutdown time, and that was due to the limitation from the realtime clock hardware. In Witty Pi 4, the alarms for startup and shutdown are implemented by the firmware, and hence you can specify the “seconds” in both scheduled times.

There are other differences between Witty Pi 3 and 4, and you can find a chapter about how to migrate from Witty Pi 3 to Witty Pi 4 in the user manual (chapter 13).

How about Witty Pi 3?

Witty Pi 3 is discontinued. We understand it is not good for ongoing projects who use Witty Pi 3, and we wanted to continue producing Witty Pi 3 for a while. Unfortunately due to the shortage of DS3231SN chip, we can not do so and have to discontinue Witty Pi 3.

We will do our best to help our customers to migrate from Witty Pi 3 to Witty Pi 4.

Price and Where to Buy?

Witty Pi 4’s retail price is 25.00 EUR (about 21.48GBP / 29.80USD / 36.77CAD), and you can order it here.

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

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January 25, 2022

New Product: PiGear Nano and Case Kit

Dear visitors, today we are happy to announce our first new product in year 2022: PiGear Nano!

This is a Nano–ITX (12 x 12cm) carrier board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. It comes with eight USB 3.0 ports, NVME SSD M.2 interface, Mini PCIE LTE/4G/GPRS interface, four 18-bit ADC channels, digital inputs/outputs, RS232, RS485, CAN bus, HDMI, Ethernet, realtime clock etc. With so many resources on-board, PiGear Nano is competent for industrial applications and all kinds of home projects.

PiGear Nano

PiGear Nano is also supported by UWI (UUGear Web Interface), and you can easily access your PiGear Nano via mobile phone, tablet or PC.

You can find more detailed information about PiGear Nano in its user manual.

At the same time we also announce a case kit for PiGear Nano.  The design of this black case will be open and we will publish the STL files soon. Meanwhile this case kit can also be ordered in our e-shop.

PiGear Nano in the Case

Price and Where to Buy?

PiGear Nano’s retail price is 169.00 EUR (about 145.20 GBP / 201.45 USD / 248.59 CAD), and you can order it here.

The black case kit’s retail price is 15.00 EUR (about 12.89 GBP  /  17.88 USD  /  22.06 CAD), and you can order it here.

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

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August 2, 2021

New Product: MEGA4 – USB 3.1 PPPS Hub for Raspberry Pi 4!

Dear visitors, today we are proudly announcing a brand new product: MEGA4! This is a USB 3.1 hub designed for Raspberry Pi 4B, and it supports PPPS (per-port power switching)! It adds 4 more USB 3.1 ports to your Raspberry Pi 4B, and the power on each port can be turned ON or OFF separately via software.

MEGA4

MEGA4 is also fully supported by UWI (UUGear Web Interface), so you can use your web browser to monitor and control your MEGA4 device(s).

MEGA4 @ UWI

MEGA4 on the Phone

 

The advantage of being able to control power for each port is that you can turn OFF specify USB device(s) when they are not needed, to save energy. Also it is possible to fully reset a USB device by doing a full power cycle when it doesn’t function well after a long run. All these turning OFF/ON operations can be done remotely (either via SSH section or via UWI).

MEGA4 has the same board size with Raspberry Pi 4B and can be mounted underneath. It can also be daisy-chained like other USB hubs. The picture below shows an example to stack 3 MEGA4 devices together and that Raspberry Pi 4B eventually has 11 USB 3.1 ports.

You can find more information about MEGA4 on MEGA4 product page, or in MEGA4 user manual.

Price and Where to Buy?

MEGA4’s retail price is 28.00 EUR (about 24.06GBP / 33.38USD / 41.19CAD).

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 14, 2021

Zero2Go Omini Rev2 is Here!

Zero2Go Omini Rev2 is released today! This is the second revision of Zero2Go Omini and it looks very similar with the first revision. Because the connectors, switch and LED are at the same locations, the new revision and old revision are almost physically interchangeable (except the USB type C connector).

Zero2Go Omini Rev1 and Rev2

What’s New?

One obvious change is that Zero2Go Omini Rev2 uses USB type C connector instead of micro USB connector. USB type C connector is easier for connection and can bear higher current.

You may also notice that newer revision has an unpopulated 3-pin header on the left ledge of the board. It is the VIN-GND-VOUT header which allows you to:

  • Add additional channel(s) to the board (using VIN and GND)
    Additional channel
  • Using Zero2Go Omini to control other devices (using VOUT and GND), for example a 5V relay.

More details about this VIN-GND-VOUT header can be found in the user manual.

The new revision uses the same firmware and software like the old revision.

Price and Where to Buy?

Zero2Go Omini Rev2 has the same price as the first revision, which is €15.72 (about 13.51GBP / 18.74USD / 23.12CAD).

You can order it from our e-shop or you may be able to order it from our resellers soon.

How About the Rev1?

Zero2Go Omini Rev1 will be discontinued.

At the time being we still have some of them in stock, you can order them if you like micro USB connector more.

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July 1, 2021

We are moving to the Netherlands!

Dear customers and friends, I am glad to let you know that we are moving to the Netherlands! This move has been planned for more than one year, and it is finally happening now. We will move to Elst, the Netherlands, which is a very beautiful Dutch town close to the Germany–Netherlands border. Physically moving to the new place takes longer than we expected. A lot of things were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we can not finish the move with just one step. We have to take July as transition period: during this period we may ship orders from either addresses (Netherlands or Czechia).

We corporate our Dutch company (Dun Cat B.V.) , which takes over our e-shop business since 1st July, 2021. We will continue using “UUGear” as a trade name of our Dutch company. This website has been fully remade and you will notice some obvious differences. Here I can list some:

  • We have a slightly revised logo on website
  • We use Euro currency (EUR)
  • We accept iDeal payment and bank transfer
  • We temporarily do not charge VAT

The reason that we do not charge VAT now, is that our Dutch company is new and it has not been registered as VAT payer yet. However this is temporary, and our Dutch company will be obligated to register VAT once the sales to EU countries reach 10,000 EUR threshold. Our estimation is the transition period will last 1-2 months, and our Dutch company will become VAT registered before the end of August. For non-business customers, it will be a bargain to purchase our products during the transition period because we don’t charge the VAT.

We have migrated the website accounts to new website, however the order history stays in the old site. If you want to access your order history before July 2021,  you can still login the old site to view them. The old website will be turned down after one year.

Last but not the least, we will continue making good products. We will announce some new products in the second half of the year, so please stay tuned.

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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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January 7, 2021

New Variety: 32GB RasPiKey eMMC Module for Raspberry Pi

Since we released RasPiKey, we received a lot of inquires about variety with bigger storage capacity. Now the 32GB RasPiKey is finally here!

What’s New?

Not much really, only the storage capacity is doubled comparing to the 16GB variety. The 32GB variety has the same read/write performance, because it uses the eMMC chip from the same family (16GB RasPiKey uses Samsung KLMAG1JETD-B041 while 32GB RasPiKey uses KLMBG2JETD-B041).
Besides checking the marks on the chip, you can also tell which one is 32GB from its packaging. The 32GB RasPiKey comes with a blue lanyard (16GB has black one) and it has “32GB” printed on the label on its antistatic bag.

Bootloader and OS Version

Raspberry Pi 3B+ or earlier models of Raspberry Pi all supports RasPiKey directly.
Newly produced Raspberry Pi 4B has rather new bootloader, which can directly recognise RasPiKey. However if your Raspberry Pi 4B is from older batch, you may need to upgrade bootloader. Both 16GB and 32GB RasPiKey has necessary files to upgrade bootloader for your Raspberry Pi 4B.
Since today (2020.1.7), all our RasPiKey have files that allow you to upgrade boot loader to version “c305221a6d7e532693cc7ff57fddfc8649def167” (released on 3rd September 2020).
Since today (2020.1.7), all our RasPiKey have flashed Raspbian (Raspberry Pi OS) disk image released on 2nd December 2020.
You can of course install different version of OS into RasPiKey, just like you did on a normal SD card. Please don’t forget to backup those handy applications for WiFi and SSH settings, if you want to use them after installing new OS.

Price and Where to Buy?

32GB RasPiKey’s retail price is 720 CZK (about 27.54EUR / 24.96GBP / 33.98USD ).
You can order it from our e-shop or you may be able to order it from our resellers soon.

 

Updated on 2022.06.20:

Since today (2022.06.20), all our RasPiKey have flashed Raspbian (Raspberry Pi OS) disk image released on 4th April 2022 (2022-04-04-raspios-bullseye-armhf.img).

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