As a European: why are there chips in this? I just broke open mine and it looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/muz7FIy I bought 50 of these 2 weeks ago. Were 3-4 euro a piece.
Nope. We just get overcharged.
There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
121–130 of 199 posts
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#122Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
The expensive price of the tests is actually a whole different problem. For the last tests that I bought at Walgreens (InteliSwab) I paid around $25 for two tests. Meanwhile I'm currently in Europe and as a consumer I can buy Antigen tests for around 3 Euro per test (would be less than 2 Euro if bought in bulk). As far as I know those prices are not subsidized.
Propublica has been covering this, the FDA has been throwing up barriers to rapid tests while Europe has been embracing them. One of the barriers is that "users are supposed to be able to execute the test without training " which I suspect is what's leading to the inclusion of optical sensors etc. https://www.propublica.org/article/this-scientist-created-a-...
Which is pretty much an impossible goal - the user still needs to be able to follow quite detailed instructions to get the sample, correctly mix in the buffer solution, and dose the correct number of drips. Sure, thats something 99% of people can do, but then 99% of people can see 1 or 2 lines on the test without the help of an app...
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's only a recent thing really.
It's a recent thing on a world scale. But it's always been an issue and applies to anything you buy - the more sophisticated, the fewer items are stocked in warehouses. It's not that they wouldn't be available, it's that once you start ordering hundreds, the lead time will change from days to weeks at some point.
Hundreds is really a loose retail quantity if we talk about microcontrollers, the first real price break point is typically 1000pcs. Smaller quantities are cut and priced by distributors themselves.
In normal times, most products not marked as EOL would be available in tens of thousands with short lead times.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#125For those interested: I ported FreeRTOS 9 to an nRF52840 in my previous job. This family used a lot. It's in my Tado smart radiator knobs, in the AirTags. I can only compare it to FreeScale chips, but one thing that pleasantly surprised me is the flexibility in pin-assignment. Instead of the pin-mux that we'd have to do on the MK24, I could just assign pins during usb/i2c init without any limitations. The SDK is quit…
An any-to-any IO multiplexer turns out to be pretty large in silicon area. You're paying extra for that feature as opposed to devices where each pin has a choice of just say 3 functions.
For most users, they prefer to have the chips cheaper and spend an extra few minutes of engineer time figuring out which pins need to be hooked up to what.
I can see for smaller volume devices where engineer time dominates, and devices that you want to be really field reconfigurable, the all-to-all mux is worth it though.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#126The Lucira test is in my opinion a bit more interesting: https://aseq.substack.com/p/inside-the-lucira-check-it-covid They include an STM32, but the instrument is performing an Isothermal PCR molecular test which makes the inclusion of a microcontroller a requirement. Obviously throwing out electronics like this seems quite wasteful. But overall our society is fairly wasteful when it comes to disposable electronics.
Wow, that is wonderfully complex!
I do wish that there was an established recycling pipeline available for them though.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#127Seems like unnecessary e-waste to me.
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Europe a COVID19 quick test is 1-2 USD. This is 20-40 USD? For a device you only use once. Why is there any kind of market for this?
Quick self-test is 8€ here in Belgium. Are we being ripped off?
In the UK, you can get free 7-packs of LFTs from most big pharmacies or online from gov.uk.
https://www.gov.uk/order-coronavirus-rapid-lateral-flow-test...
Although it looks like you need a (free) "collect code" at the moment (because we ran out a couple of weeks back, IIRC.)
https://test-for-coronavirus.service.gov.uk/collect-lateral-...
Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#129I wonder why they didn’t use NFC. They could get away with a much simpler chip, or even a fully analog solution if they didn’t need the complexity of Bluetooth. Seems like you could just about accomplish the same thing with a pair of NFC tokens, a photodiode, and some transistors. Basic components. Connect one of the two NFC chips to the coil depending on how much light is reflected off the test strip. When you scann…
Because of apple.
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Re: There's an ARM Cortex-M4 with Bluetooth inside a Covid test kit
#130As a European: why are there chips in this? I just broke open mine and it looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/muz7FIy I bought 50 of these 2 weeks ago. Were 3-4 euro a piece.
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