Red Pitaya is the Swiss Army Knife of Measurement Tools
Last week at the Embedded World 2022 conference we sat down with Nina from Red Pitaya to talk about their range of multi-purpose open-source measurement tools. The boards themselves come in multiple configurations and can be used as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, software-defined radios, and much more.
The core of each board is a Dual-Core Arm Cortex A9 with an FPGA, which is programmable via a browser-based IDE provided free from Red Pitaya. The board can also slot into various software test setups, including LabVIEW, MATLAB, Python, and Scilab.To us, what makes Red Pitaya and other similar projects so exciting is the flexibility. Not only can a comparatively low-cost board like this remove the need for large amounts of expensive equipment when starting out with electronics, but it also gives engineers a test lab they can fit in their pockets.
To find out more, head to the Red Pitaya website.
Bonus: Red Pitaya's Education YouTube Channel
After the interview, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Red Pitaya has a beginner electronics course available for free on their YouTube channel.
It's a smart way to introduce the hardware capabilities of the Red Pitaya boards, as the course does not require the hardware to be useful to those starting out, but shows how precision measurement equipment can help with understanding electronics fundamentals.
Ian Buckley is a writer, musician, and perpetual tinkerer. Commonly found surrounded by hobby electrical components, he's also a keen programmer and likes to build crazy-sounding instruments with microcontrollers. In addition to Electromaker, Ian writes over at MakeUseOf and has bylines at the likes of Online Tech Tips as well as Help Desk Geek.
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