Mekotronics R57 is a fanless edge AI mini PC powered by a Rockchip RK3576 octa-core Cortex-A72/A53 SoC with a 6 TOPS NPU, 4GB LPDDR5, a 32GB eMMC flash, and features such as RS485 and dual gigabit Ethernet that makes it suitable for industrial automation.
I initially thought it was a cost-down version of the Mekotronics R58 mini PC that I reviewed with Android 12 as my first ever Rockchip RK3588 device. But while the mechanical design is similar and some of the ports are in the same position, there are some changes with the new model equipped with only one HDMI output, one HDMI input, two GbE jacks, and a terminal block with RS232, RS485, and digital inputs and outputs.
Mekotronics R57 specifications:
- SoC – Rockchip RK3576
- CPU
- 4x Cortex-A72 cores @ 2.2GHz, four Cortex-A53 cores @ 1.8GHz
- Arm Cortex-M0 MCU at 400MHz
- GPU – ARM Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 and 3.2, OpenCL up to 2.0 and Vulkan 1.1
- NPU – 6 TOPS (INT8) AI accelerator with support for INT4, INT8, INT16, BF16, and TF32 mixed operations.
- VPU
- Video Decoder: H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1, and AVS2 up to 8K @ 30fps or 4K @ 120fps
- Video Encoder: H.264 and H.265 up to 4K @ 60fps, (M)JPEG encoder/decoder up to 4K @ 60fps
- CPU
- System Memory – 4GB LPDDR5
- Storage – 32GB eMMC flash
- Video Output – HDMI 2.1 port up to 4Kp120
- Video Input – HDMI port
- Audio – 3.5mm audio jack, digital audio output via HDMI
- Networking
- 2x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports
- WiFi and Bluetooth
- Optional 4G LTE/5G cellular connectivity via mini PCIe socket and SIM card slot
- 4x antenna holes
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 2x USB 2.0 ports, 1x USB Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 alt mode
- Expansion – Terminal block with RS232, RS485, 2x digital inputs, 2x digital outputs, 12V, and GND
- Misc
- Power button
- H/L switch for the GPIOs to select “high effective or low effective”
- Power and Wakeup LEDs
- Power Supply – 12V DC via power barrel jack
- Dimensions – 186 x 106 x 33mm
- Weight – 362 grams
- Temperature Range – -10 to 75°C
Mekotronics will provide support for Android 14, Ubuntu, Debian, and Buildroot, and the system also supports AI frameworks such as TensorFlow, MXNet, Pytorch, and Caffe through the RKNPU2 toolkit like other recent Rockchip SoCs.
The Rockchip RK3576 fanless edge AI mini PC is available now, and the company told CNX Software that the sample price would be $140 for the default configuration (4GB/32GB). Additional information may be found on the product page. That’s the second hardware platform with RK3576 we’ve covered, the other being the Banana Pi BPI-M5 Pro single board computer.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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