Author: Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

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.
Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments on Maker Go RA4M1-R4 core board is a cheap Arduino UNO R4 Minima clone taking up to 50V DC input

Maker Go RA4M1-R4 core board is a cheap Arduino UNO R4 Minima clone taking up to 50V DC input

Cheap Arduino UNO R4 Minima Clone

The Maker Go RA4M1-R4 core board is another Arduino UNO R4 Minima clone but offered at a price point much lower than the original and the Waveshare R7FA4 Plus A (another clone) since it shows up for only $0.99 on AliExpress with free shipping. Note that the ultra-low price is because of a “Welcome deal” on AliExpress, and the regular price is $7.76, so not everyone may get it for $1. About $8 is still cheap compared to the $20 (18 Euros) asked for the official Arduino UNO R4 Minima board. Let’s look at the clone in more detail to find out if they’ve made any changes to the board. Maker Go RA4M1-R4 core board specifications: Microcontroller – Renesas RA4M1 Arm Cortex-M4F MCU @ 48 MHz with 32KB SRAM, 256KB flash USB – 1 x USB Type-C port for power and programming Expansions – Arduino UNO female + male headers […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 26 Comments on NanoPi R3S – A low-cost Rockchip RK3566 SBC and dual gigabit Ethernet router

NanoPi R3S – A low-cost Rockchip RK3566 SBC and dual gigabit Ethernet router

NanoPi R3S

FriendlyELEC NanoPi R3S is a low-cost Rockchip RK3566 SBC and router with two gigabit Ethernet ports, a USB 3.0 host ports, a USB-C port for power and data, a microSD card slot, Reset and Mask buttons, and a few LEDs.  It also features a MIPI DSI connector for people wanting to connect a display. Its design and size are similar to the NanoPi R5C dual 2.5GbE SBC and router, so it could be viewed as a low-cost alternative with dual GbE, no M.2 socket for WiFi & Bluetooth, only one USB 3.0 port, and no HDMI video output.  The company promotes it as an inexpensive platform for IoT applications, basic NAS solutions, and so on. NanoPi R3S specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MP2 GPU NPU – 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator VPU 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoder 1080p60 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on T-Display-S3-AMOLED-1.43 – A 1.43-inch round AMOLED touchscreen display with an ESP32-S3 wireless MCU

T-Display-S3-AMOLED-1.43 – A 1.43-inch round AMOLED touchscreen display with an ESP32-S3 wireless MCU

T-Display-S3-AMOLED-1.43

We’ve already seen a few ESP32-S3 boards with an AMOLED display and plenty with round displays such as SB Components’ Dual Roundy, LILYGO T-RGB ESP32-S3, MaTouch ESP32-S3 Rotary IPS display among others, but I had yet to see an ESP32-S3 board with a round AMOLED display. That’s just what the LILYGO T-Display-S3-AMOLED-1.43 has to offer. The ESP32-S3 board features a 1.43-inch round AMOLED with 466×466 resolution and a capacitive touchscreen, a microSD card slot for storage, an RTC with backup battery, two 14-pin headers and a Qwiic UART connector for expansion, a USB-C port for power/charging and programming, and a 2-pin connector for a LiPo battery. T-Display-S3 AMOLED-1.43 specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP32-S3R8 CPU – Dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration Memory – 8MB PSRAM Wireless – WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE + Mesh connectivity Storage – 16MB SPI flash, MicroSD […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments on Android support for 16KB page size boosts performance by up to 10 percent

Android support for 16KB page size boosts performance by up to 10 percent

Android 16KB page size

Most operating systems are set to use a 4KB page size since that’s what most CPUs support, but Android is often running on Arm CPUs that can support 16KB page size. So Google decided to enable 16 KB page size as a developer option in selected Android devices since it can deliver a 5 to 10% boost in performance, at the cost of using around 9% extra memory. Contrary to 32-bit/64-bit mode, a page size is not an Application Binary Interface (ABI), so once an application is fixed to be page size agnostic, it can run on both 4 KB and 16 KB devices without modifications. Apps written with Java or Kotlin don’t need modifications, but those that use native code (C/C++) or dependencies must be recompiled for compatibility with 16 KB page size devices. Google provides some details about the benefits of 16 KB page sizes on the developer […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on platform-espressif32 fork to enable PlatformIO support for ESP32-C6, ESP32-C5, ESP32-H2, and ESP32-P4 SoCs

platform-espressif32 fork to enable PlatformIO support for ESP32-C6, ESP32-C5, ESP32-H2, and ESP32-P4 SoCs

PlatformIO ESP32-C6 ESP32-C5 ESP32-P4 ESP32-H2

When Espressif Systems released Arduino ESP32 Core 3.0.0 we noted that PlatformIO support was in doubt due to business issues between Espressif and Platform IO developers. There has been no progress since then, and PlatformIO is not even reviewing or merging community contributions to their platform-espressif32 library. So if you want software that’s officially supported by Espressif, you should stick to the Arduino ESP32 Core. But if you are a fan of PlatformIO for ESP32, there’s hope even for the newer chips like ESP32-C6, ESP32-H2, and ESP32-P4 among others, as pioarduino community members have now forked the platform-espressif32 library to keep the project alive. Users can still rely on the official PlatformIO repository for existing ESP32 boards and microcontrollers, but new ESP32-C6, ESP32-H2, ESP32-C5, ESP32-H4, and ESP32-P4 SoC will only be supported by the fork. pioarduino which stands for “people initiated optimized arduino” will maintain the fork, and currently, Arduino […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Raspberry Pi Pico Arduino core 4.0 adds support for RP2350 boards

Raspberry Pi Pico Arduino core 4.0 adds support for RP2350 boards

Raspberry Pi RP2350 Arduino

Earle F. Philhower, III has just released the Raspberry Pi Pico Arduino core 4.0 with support for a range of Raspberry Pi RP2350 boards beside the official Raspberry Pi Pico 2. Shortly after the RP2040-based Raspberry Pi Pico board was released, we got two Arduino SDKs, the first being the community-supported Raspberry Pi Pico Arduino core maintained by Earle, and the second being the official Arduino Core Mbed 2.0 for boards as such as Arduino Nano Connect RP2040. We are again likely to have two Arduino SDKs for the RP2350 starting with the Raspberry Pi Pico Arduino core. Key changes in Raspberry Pi Pico Arduino core 4.0: Adds Raspberry Pi RP2350 support (Arm only; RISC-V cores are not supported at this stage) Migrates to Pico SDK 2.0 since it is required for RP2350 support and includes a new OpenOCD and Picotool. Tested features: SPI, I2C, LittleFS, EEPROM, PWMAudio, LWIP-based networking, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments on Comparison of Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB and 8GB RAM – Hardware, benchmarks, and power consumption

Comparison of Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB and 8GB RAM – Hardware, benchmarks, and power consumption

Raspberry Pi 5 2GB vs 8GB RAM

The Raspberry Pi 5 with 2GB RAM was launched last week, and since I got a sample for review, I decided to compare it to the Raspberry Pi 5 with 8GB RAM to see if I could find any noticeable differences between the two boards. I’ll start with a visual inspection to show differences on the PCBA, then check system information, run some benchmarks, check power consumption, and finally try to open as many tabs in Firefox until the 2GB RAM is filled and the system becomes unusable. Raspberry Pi 5 2GB vs Raspberry Pi 8GB – visual inspection We should first have a quick look at the boards and packages there’s no obvious difference apart from seeing 2GB RAM and 8GB RAM on the respective packages. But if we look closer, we can see the resistors for memory capacity detection are in different locations for “2G” and “8G”, and […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Flexduino is an Arduino UNO clone made of a flexible PCB

Flexduino is an Arduino UNO clone made of a flexible PCB

Flexduino

YouTuber “EDISON SCIENCE CORNER” has designed yet another Arduino UNO clone but with a twist as the board is made out of a flexible PCB. Companies like JLCPCB, PCBWay, and others have been offering flexible PCB manufacturing services for a while, mostly for flat cables or small boards that need to fit around a case, but the Flexduino is a complete Arduino UNO clone made of a flex PCB, and it looks rather cool. The flexible Arduino board does work as shown with the RGB LED and power LED in the photo above and YouTube video below, but its usefulness is rather limited, and some corners had to be cut as for instance there’s no ground plane. Nevertheless, it’s a nice demo of flexible PCB technology.  The video on the EDISON SCIENCE CORNER channel provides a short demo, shows how the PCB was designed (EasyEDA), and go through the ordering […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC