Getting Started

Karyni Core Board is ready to use out of the box

Powering Up

Karyni Core Board comes pre-loaded with a program to interact with it out-of-the-box.

Connect a charged Li-Ion battery, or plug in a micro USB cable to the Karyni Core Board to power it up. The ‘power-path‘ circuit automatically selects the source with the higher voltage to power up your Karyni. Battery charging will also commence if a USB power source is connected and a battery is plugged in and requires charging. (Learn more about the battery charger)

Once on, place the Karyni Core Board level with the ground, and see the RGB LED fading through the rainbow colors. Pick it up and move the board around to see the LED change colors in response to your movements.
This is the BMC150 IMU in action!

[GIF of RGB LED Fading colors when level]
[GIF of RGB LED Fading colors when moved]

Considerations when powering with a battery

Karyni has built-in support for single cell Li-Ion battery. Connect the battery to the connector highlighted in the image, marking the correct polarity. Warning! Incorrect polarity will permanently damage the power supply section of Karyni Core Board.

The FAN49100 based power supply regulates voltage at 3.3V throughout the Li-Ion battery voltage range.
Note that undervoltage protection of this device starts at 2.5V, which is too low for Li-Ion cells. Due to this, it is recommended to use Li-Ion batteries with built-in protection, or to implement low-voltage shutdown in your program. Alternatively, the 18650 adapter module can be used, which introduces on-board battery protection features.

First Run

On first power-up, Karyni will host an access point by the name of Karyni-XXXX, where XXXX is part of the unique MAC address of your Karyni Core Board. Connect to this access point with the password being the full MAC address, without its dashes.

E.g. If the MAC address is AA-BB-CC-12-34-56, enter password AABBCC123456.

(Mac address is printed on the back of your Karyni Core Board, and on a sticker on the retail box.)

Once connected, you can choose to connect the Karyni to your home WiFi, or directly interact with it on the access point. If you choose the second option, Karyni will not have access to internet as Karyni relies on WiFi connection for internet access. In this case, any applications relying on internet access will fail.

Your Karyni Core Board by default comes equipped with MicroPython with OTA firmware update capability.

You can begin experimenting with your Karyni using the MicroPython ‘WebREPL’ on your browser. Have a look at the examples below. (More information on ‘Programming with MicroPython‘)

Connecting Karyni to WiFi

If running Karyni with the built-in firmware, connect to the access point as described in ‘First Run’ above.

Once connected, open a browser and navigate to ‘192.168.4.1’. This is the IP address on Karyni in access-point mode.

When the page loads, click on ‘Setup WiFi’. Click on ‘Scan’ to scan for available WiFi connections, or enter the SSID of your WiFi network in the SSID field. Enter the password in the ‘Password’ field, or leave blank if the connection is ‘open’.

Click on ‘Connect’ to attempt connecting to the network. If the connection is successful, you will be shown a ‘Connection Successful!’ message, along with the IP address and the local domain-name for accessing Karyni on the WiFi network.

Going further



Project Ideas



Expansion Modules

i

Programming Resources

Open Source

Karyni Development Ecosystem is completely open source.

All hardware documentation is available at /hardware.

Hardware Design Files:

Schematic (PDF)

Bill of Materials (XLSX)

Production Gerber Files (ZIP)

Eagle Project (ZIP)