Martinica Packs AI-Enabled Environmental and Gas Sensor Into an Arduino MKR-Compatible Board
Dev board incorporates Bosch's BME688 temperature, humidity, pressure, and VOC sensor.
Environmental monitoring means measuring fundamental quantities like temperature and humidity. The next level is detecting the gases in the surrounding air. While temperature sensing is straightforward, gas detection takes a bit more effort. Fortunately, to help address this difficulty, BlackIoT developed Martinica — a dev board with an AI-enabled Bosch sensor.
Martinica follows the Arduino MKR form factor. There are 2.54mm header pins on the long side of the board. The board has a USB connector on one short edge and a Wi-Fi module on the other. In addition, there are connectors for a LiPo battery and a 10-pin JTAG cable.
The ATDSAMD21 microcontroller has an Arm Cortex-M0+ core. And for wireless connectivity, Martinica uses an ATWINC1500 module. Since this combination mirrors the chips of the Arduino MKR1000, there should be strong software compatibility with existing Arduino libraries and example code. In addition to the Arduino IDE, you can program Martinica with Microchip Studio and X-Lab IDEs.
A Bosch Sensortec BME688 sensor module sets the Martinica apart from the MKR 1000. This sensor primarily detects gas as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It also monitors environmental properties like relative humidity, barometric pressure, and temperature.
Usually, detecting gases is a somewhat tricky process. To address this issue, the BME688 works with Bosch's AI-Studio and uses Machine Learning to accelerate the training process. As a result, you can effectively train Martinica to detect whatever compounds or gases matter most in your application.
BlackIoT plans to offer Martinica via a Crowd Supply campaign. Sign up here to know when it goes live. You can also download PDF versions of the schematics from the Martinica GitHub repo.
