Mekotronics A58 – A 7-inch display with Rockchip RK3588 SoC and a DSLR camera mount for live streaming

Mekotronics A58 7-inch smart display is powered by a Rockchip RK3588 SoC with up to 16GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash, and ships with a DSLR camera mount to enable video broadcasting and live streaming on social platforms.

In the past, we’ve covered several Rockchip RK3588-powered Arm mini PCs by Mekotronics such as the R58, R58X, and more recently the R58X-Pro and R58X-HDD models, but the company has now leveraged its experience with the platform by launching a 7-inch smart display that can be used for live-streaming, but as we’ll see from the specifications below can also find many other uses.

Mekotronics A58 specifications:

• SoC – Rockchip RK3588 octa-core processor with four Cortex-A76 cores @ 2.4 GHz, four Cortex-A55 cores @ 1.8 GHz, an Arm Mali-G610 MP4 GPU, a 6TOPS NPU, 8K 10-bit decoder, 8K encoder
• System Memory – 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB LPDDR4X
• Storage
  • 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash
  • MicroSD card slot
  • 1x internal SATA
• Display – 7-inch touchscreen display
• Video Output
  • 2x HDMI 2.1 ports up to 8Kp60
  • Internal connectors – MIPI DSI, eDP, LVDS with one used for the built-in display
• Video Input – 1x HDMI 2.0 port
• VPU (in SoC)
  • Video Decoder
    • 8Kp60 H.265 VP9, AVS2
    • 8Kp30 H.264 AVC/MVC
    • 4Kp60 AVI
    • 1080p60 MPEG-2, MPEG-1, VC-1, VP8
  • Video Encoder – Real-time H.265/H.264 video encoding up to 8Kp30, also usable as a multi-channel encoder in parallel (at lower resolution)
• Audio – 3.5mm audio jack
• Networking
  • 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports
  • Dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (2T2R); Note Bluetooth is not listed in the specifications.
  • Optional 4G LTE via mini PCIe module and SIM card slot
• USB – 2x USB 3.0 Type-A ports, internal 4-pin USB 2.0 header
• Misc
  • IR receiver (but it’s unclear if it is usable in this design)
  • Internal headers with GPIO, RS232/RS485 (TTL)
• Power Supply – 12V/2A DC via power barrel jack
• Dimensions – TBD

The system runs Android 12 or Linux. The Rockchip RK3588 processor must be used for real-time H.265/H.264 encoding of the 4K video from the DSLR camera and uploading to social networks as demonstrated in the video below, where Mekotronics shows how to use the A58 with a DSLR camera connected to the HDMI input of the system and a 12V power bank for power in order to broadcast a video/livestream to Tiktok.

The Mekotronics A58 could also be used for multi-display solutions with the 7-inch touchscreen display and two additional displays connected to the HDMI ports, the video from the camera could go through a computer vision algorithm accelerated by the 6 TOPS NPU for face recognition, object detection, and so on, and it looks to be suitable for advanced HMI solutions. The company usually uploads the latest firmware on its website, but the one for the A58 smart display is not available yet.

Mekotronics sells samples of the A58 7-inch display for $297 with 4GB RAM and 32GB storage or $327 in 8GB/64GB configuration. Further details may also be found on the product page.

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