Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft), Author at CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

March 29, 2024March 31, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Orange Pi Developer Conference 2024, upcoming Orange Pi SBCs and products

Orange Pi held a Developer Conference on March 24, 2024, in Shenzhen, China, and while I could not make it, the company provided photos of the event where people discussed upcoming boards and products, as well as software support for the Orange Pi SBCs. So I’ll go through some of the photos to check out what was discussed and what’s coming. While Orange Pi is mostly known for its development boards the company has also been working on consumer products including the Orange Health Watch D Pro and the OrangePi Neo handheld console. The Orange Pi Watch D Pro is said to implement non-invasive blood glucose monitoring, blood pressure monitoring, one-click “micro-physical examination” and other functions to to help users monitor their health monitoring. The Watch D Pro uses a technique that emits a green light to measure glucose levels in the blood, and we’re told it’s accurate enough to […]

March 28, 2024March 28, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

BeagleY-AI SBC features TI AM67A vision processor with 4 TOPS AI accelerators

Texas Instruments AM67A single board computer

The BeagleBoard.org Foundation’s BeagleY-AI is an open-source hardware, credit card-sized SBC powered by a Texas Instruments AM67A quad-core Cortex-A53 vision processor with various programmable blocks capable of delivering up to 4 TOPS for AI algorithms. The board ships with 4GB RAM, relies on a microSD card slot for storage and OS booting, implements gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 6, and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity, and can drive up to three displays via micro HDMI, OLDI (LVDS), and MIPI DSI interfaces. The BeagleY-AI also comes with two MIPI CSI camera interfaces, four USB 3.0 ports, a USB Type-C port, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion. We can also see a 16-pin PCIe FPC connector that looks somewhat similar to the 20-pin PCIe connector on the Raspberry Pi 5 but officially supports PCIe Gen3 x1. BeagleY-AI specifications: SoC – Texas Instruments AM67A (J722S) “vision processor” CPU Quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A53 processor at 1.4GHz Arm […]

March 28, 2024March 27, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

LoLRa project – Transmitting LoRa packets without radio using CH32V003, ESP8266, or ESP32-S2 MCU

The LoLRa project is a firmware-only LoRa transmission open-source project that works without a Semtech radio and instead relies on an I2S or SPI interface (so not exactly bit-banging) to transmit data with microcontrollers such as WCH CH32V003, or Espressif Systems ESP8266 and ESP32-S2 microcontrollers. LoRa is a proprietary protocol by Semtech, but people have been trying to reverse-engineer the LoRa PHY for years, and this culminated with a LoRa GNU Radio SDR implementation last year. But CNLohr found out you don’t even need a radio to send LoRa packets and you can instead use SPI or I2S interfaces from general-purpose microcontrollers to send packets that can be decoded by commercial off-the-shelf LoRa gateways and other chips. The current implementation is designed for the ITU Region 2 (aka The Americas) targeting the 902-928MHz frequency band, but the code could be changed for Region 1 (EU, Russia, Africa) to target 863-870MHz […]

March 28, 2024March 27, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Ambiq Apollo510 Arm Cortex-M55 MCU delivers up to 30x better power efficiency for AI/ML workloads

Ambiq Apollo Cortex-M55 AI microcontroller

Ambiq Apollo510 Arm Cortex-M55 microcontroller delivers 30 times better power efficiency than typical Cortex-M4 designs and 10 times the performance of the Apollo4 Cortex-M4 sub-threshold microcontroller for AI and ML workloads. The new MCU also comes with 4MB NVM, 3.75MB SRAM, a 2.5D GPU with vector graphics acceleration that’s 3.5 times faster than the Apollo4 Plus, and support for low-power Memory-in-Pixel (MiP) displays. Like all other Ambiq microcontrollers, the Apollo510 operates at sub-threshold voltage for ultra-low power consumption and implements security with the company’s secureSPOT platform with Arm TrustZone technology. Ambiq Apollo510 specifications: MCU Core – Arm Cortex-M55 core up to 250 MHz with Arm Helium MVE, Arm TrustZone, FPU, MPU, 64KB I-cache, 64KB D-cache, 256KB I-TCM (Tighly Coupled Memory), 256KB D-TCM, Graphics – 2.5D GPU clocked at 96 MHz or 250 MHz with vector graphics acceleration, anti-aliasing hardware acceleration, rasterizer/full alpha blending/texture mapping, texture/framebuffer compression (TSC4, 6, 6A and […]

March 27, 2024March 27, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

ESP32-C5 beta board features 2.4GHz and 5GHz SMA antenna connectors, two USB-C ports

Espressif ESP32-C5 microcontroller was announced in June 2022 as the first dual-band WiFi 6 IoT chip from the company. It’s been quiet since then, but things are about to change as the ESP32-C5 beta board’s documentation has very recently been released. The ESP32-C5 was initially announced as a dual-band WiFI 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE SoC, but the user manual for the beta board indicates that it also supports Zigbee 3.0 and Thread 1.3, so there’s an 802.15.4 in the wireless microcontroller. The ESP32-C5 board itself features two SMA connectors for 2.4 GHz and 5GHz antennas or test equipment, two USB-C ports, two 12-pin GPIO header, Boot and Reset buttons, an RGB LED, and a 2-pin header for current measurements. ESP32-C5 beta board specifications: SoC – ESP32-C5-BETA3 CPU – Single-core 32-bit RISC-V processor @ up to 240 MHz Memory – 400KB SRAM on-chip Storage – 384KB of ROM on-chip, support […]

March 27, 2024March 27, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Vecow SPC-9000 fanless embedded system is powered by an Intel Core 7 Ultra 165U or Core 5 Ultra 135U SoC

Vecow SPC-9000 Fanless Intel Core Ultra embedded system

Vecow SPC-9000 fanless embedded system is powered by the 14th Gen Intel Core Ultra 7 165U or Core Ultra 5 135U 12-core Meteor Lake processor and targets Edge AI applications for factory management, data acquisition & monitoring, autonomous mobile robots (AMR), Smart Retail, and more. The device supports up to 32GB DDR5 RAM, offers M.2 PCIe sockets and a 2.5-inch SATA bay for storage, can drive up to three 4K displays through HDMI, DP, and USB-C ports, features two 2.5GbE ports, and a few USB ports. The SPC-9000 can also be fitted with a 4G LTE module, comes with two RS232/422/485 serial ports, takes a wide 9V-55V DC input voltage range, and can operate up to a -40°C to 75°C temperature range depending on the model. Vecow SPC-9000 specifications: Meteor Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Core Ultra 7 165U 12-core (2P+8E+2LPE) processor @ 1.2 / 1.7 / 4.9 […]

March 27, 2024March 27, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

R9A02G021 is the first microcontroller with Renesas 32-bit RISC-V CPU core design

Renesas R9A02G021 is the first MCU group to use the company’s in-house designed 32-bit RISC-V CPU core with 3.27 CoreMark/MHz, RV32I base plus M/A/C/B extensions, and features such as a stack monitor register, a dynamic branch prediction unit, and a JTAG debug interface. Renesas has been making RISC-V chips at least since 2022 with the likes of RZ/Five 64-bit microprocessor and R9A06G150 32-bit voice control ASSP. All those were based on Andes RISC-V cores, but since the company has now designed its own 32-bit core, future Renesas 32-bit RISC-V microcontrollers are all likely to feature the in-house core, starting with the R9A02G021 general-purpose MCU group. Renesas R9A02G021 key features and specifications: RISC-V Core Renesas RISC-V instruction-set architecture (RV32I + MACB + Ziscr, Control and Status Register (CSR) instructions + RISC-V Zifencei Instruction-Fetch Fence) Maximum operating frequency – 48 MHz Debug and Trace – RISC-V External Debug Support cJTAG Debug Port […]

March 26, 2024March 27, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

MaaXBoard OSM93 – Business card-sized SBC features NXP i.MX 93 AI SoC, supports Raspberry Pi HATs

MaaXBoard OSM93 is a single board computer (SBC) based on a Size-S OSM module powered by an NXP i.MX 93 Cortex-M55/M33 AI SoC and offered in a business card form factor with support for Raspberry Pi HAT boards through a 40-pin GPIO header and mounting holes. The board also comes with 2GB LDDR4, 16GB eMMC flash, MIPI CSI and DSI interfaces for optional camera and display modules, two gigabit Ethernet ports, optional support for WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, and 802.15.4, three USB 2.0 ports, and two CAN FD interfaces with on-board transceivers. MaaXBoard OSM93 specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX93 CPU 2x Arm Cortex-A55 up to 1.7 GHz 2x Arm Cortex-M33 up to 250 MHz GPU – 2D GPU with blending/composition, resize, color space conversion NPU – 1x Arm Ethos-U65 NPU @ 1 GHz up to 0.5 TOPS Memory – 640 KB OCRAM w/ ECC Security – EdgeLock Secure Enclave System […]