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) - 11 Comments on Intel Processor N95 vs N97 vs N100 vs Core i3-N305 benchmarks comparison

Intel Processor N95 vs N97 vs N100 vs Core i3-N305 benchmarks comparison

Intel N95 vs N97 vs N100 vs Core i3 N305 benchmarks

Intel Alder Lake-N processors have been pretty popular in mini PCs and to a lesser extent in single board computers in the last year or so, thanks to their excellent performance/price and features/price ratios. All processors have more or less the same features, but performance differences do exist and do not always match the increasing part number. Since we’ve reviewed a bunch of Alder Lake mini PCs, I’ve decided to compare the performance of the Processor N95, Processor N97, Processor N100, and Core i3-N305 CPUs to have a better understanding of the differences between each part. For this purpose, we’ll rely on five mini PCs: Blackview MP80 (Processor N95), Blackview MP80 (Processor N97), the Intel N100-powered MINIX Z100-0dB and GEEKOM Mini Air12, and the Weibu N10 with a Core i3-N305 CPU. A summary of the specifications is listed in the table below. Some important remarks: Prices are taken from Amazon […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments on WeAct ESP32-C6-Mini is the cheapest ESP32-C6 board so far going for less than $4

WeAct ESP32-C6-Mini is the cheapest ESP32-C6 board so far going for less than $4

WeAct ESP32-C6-Mini board

WeAct ESP32-C6-Mini is a small development board based on Espressif Systems ESP32-C6 WiFi 6, Bluetooth, and 802.15.4 wireless SoC that’s the cheapest we’ve seen so far selling for just $3.86 on Aliexpress. WeAct was one of the first companies to launch a third-party ESP32-C6 development board year with the price starting at just $6. I still remember the excitement around the first $5 ESP8266 WiFi 4 module when we first covered it in 2014, and ten years later, we can get a full $4 development board with a more powerful 160 MHz RISC-V microcontroller, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0, and an 802.15.4 radio for Thread, Zigbee, and Matter. WeAct ESP32-C6-Mini specifications: Wireless SoC – ESP32-C6-N4 CPU Single-core 32-bit RISC-V clocked up to 160 MHz Low-power RISC-V core @ up to 20 MHz Memory – 512KB SRAM, 16KB low power SRAM Storage – 320KB ROM, and 4MB flash Wireless – 2.4 GHz […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments on Geekworm X1011 board adds up to four NVMe SSDs to the Raspberry Pi 5

Geekworm X1011 board adds up to four NVMe SSDs to the Raspberry Pi 5

Raspberry Pi 5 four NVMe SSD NAS

Geekworm X1011 is a new expansion board for the Raspberry Pi 5 with four M.2 sockets enabling the insertion of up to four M.2 NVMe SSDs with data pushed through the PCIe Gen2 interface of the popular SBC. We were already wondering why most people would want to connect two NVMe SSDs to the Raspberry Pi 5 when the Geekworm X1004 HAT+ was launched considering the 5GT/s limitation from the board and the PCIe switch, but the company decided to double the number of drives with the X1011 meaning each drive can achieve up to around 100 MB/s (or 400MB/s) when used simultaneously. It does look nice and fairly compact though. Geekworm X1011 specifications: Supported SBC – Raspberry Pi 5 and other SBCs with a compatible 16-pin PCIe FPC connector and mounting holes Chipset – ASMedia ASM1184e PCI express packet switch with 1x PCIe Gen2 x1 upstream port and 4x […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Enabling Zigbee in Bluetooth LE temperature and humidity monitors from Xiaomi and Qingping using Telink TLSR8258 WiSoC

Enabling Zigbee in Bluetooth LE temperature and humidity monitors from Xiaomi and Qingping using Telink TLSR8258 WiSoC

XIaomi temperature humidity monitors Zigbee

Qingping CGDK2 and Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC Bluetooth LE (BLE) temperature and humidity monitors based on Telink TLSR8258 can be switched to Zigbee thanks to a custom firmware flashed over-the-air. Telink TLS8258 is a multi-protocol wireless microcontroller supporting Bluetooth LE 5, Bluetooth Mesh, Zigbee, RF4CE, Thread, 6LoWPAN, HomeKit, ANT, and 2.4GHz proprietary and found in boards such as the LILYGO T-Zigbee and various products. Some products only enable one wireless protocol, for example, Bluetooth LE as in the just-mentioned Qingping and Xiaomi monitors, but “SmartHomeScene” has found out that it was possible to switch from BLE to Zigbee on those by simply updating the firmware. The Telink TLS8258 devices mentioned above will publish data over BLE every 10 minutes (unless humidity or temperature changes, in which case data is transmitted immediately) with the default firmware, but Zigbee can be enabled by using the pvvx custom firmware for the following models: Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on NXP i.MX 8M Plus powered DIN-Rail IoT gateway takes DIO, RS232, RS485, and ADC expansion modules

NXP i.MX 8M Plus powered DIN-Rail IoT gateway takes DIO, RS232, RS485, and ADC expansion modules

Compulab IOT-DIN-IMX8PLUS IoT gateway with IO modules

Compulab IOT-DIN-IMX8PLUS is a DIN Rail IoT gateway powered by an NXP i.MX 8M Plus AI SoC that takes various expansion modules with digital inputs and outputs (DIO), RS232, RS485, or ADC. The new model looks to be an evolution of the Compulab IOT-GATE-IMX8PLUS Arm Linux IoT gateway introduced in 2022 with many of the same features, except the IOT-DIN-IMX8PLUS is designed to be installed in a cabinet or other installation with a DIN Rail, and can easily be connected to additional I/O modules. Compulab IOT-DIN-IMX8PLUS specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Plus Quad or Quad-lite CPU Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.8 GHz Arm Cortex-M7 real-time core @ 800 MHz GPU – Vivante GC7000UL 3D GPU, Vivante GC520L 2D GPU VPU – 1080p H.265/H.264 video decoder & encoder DSP HiFi 4 DSP AI accelerator – 2.3 TOPS Neural Processing Unit (NPU) on i.MX 8M Plus Quad only […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Yocto Project 5.0 “Scarthgap” released with Linux 6.6 and plenty of changes

Yocto Project 5.0 “Scarthgap” released with Linux 6.6 and plenty of changes

Yocto Project 5.0

The Yocto Project 5.0 codenamed “Scarthgap” has just been released with Linux 6.6, glibc 2.39, LLVM 18.1, and over 300 other recipe upgrades. As a result of the release, the developers have made it available for download (bz2 tarball). The Yocto Project, or Yocto for shorts, is a popular framework used to create custom embedded Linux distributions, and we’ve played with it over the year showing how to create a minimal image for the Raspberry Pi, and last year, we used it again when reviewing two industrial development boards, namely the VOIPAC IMX8M and ADLINK i-Pi SMARC 1200. Yocto is quite a powerful framework/build system with plenty of options that make it highly customizable, but the learning curve is fairly steep. Some other changes in Yocto Project 5.0 include: New variables: CVE_DB_INCR_UPDATE_AGE_THRES: Configure the maximum age of the internal CVE database for incremental update (instead of a full redownload). RPMBUILD_EXTRA_PARAMS: […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on UP Squared Pro 710H Edge mini PC combines Processor N97 or Core i3-N305 CPU with 26 TOPS Hailo-8 AI accelerator

UP Squared Pro 710H Edge mini PC combines Processor N97 or Core i3-N305 CPU with 26 TOPS Hailo-8 AI accelerator

UP Squared Pro 710H Edge mini PC

AAEON UP Squared Pro 710H Edge is a mini PC with an onboard Hailo-8 edge 26 TOPS AI accelerator and an Intel Processor N97 or Core i3-N305 Alder Lake-N CPU designed for edge AI applications. The fanless Edge AI mini PC comes up to 16GB LPDDR5 soldered-on RAM, up to 128GB eMMC flash, and offers dual 4K video output through HDMI and DisplayPort connector, dual 2.5GbE, optional WiFi and cellular connectivity, two USB 3.2 ports, an RS232/RS422/RS485 COM port, a 40-pin female GPIO header, and a wide 12 to 36V DC input. UP Squared Pro 710H Edge specifications: Alder Lake N-series SoC (one or the other) Intel Processor N97 quad-core processor up to 3.6 GHz with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel UHD Graphics Gen 12 @ 1.2 GHz; TDP: 12W Intel Core i3-N305 octa-core processor up to 3.8 GHz with 6MB cache, 32EU Intel UHD Graphics Gen 12 @ 1.25 GHz; […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments on GEEKOM XT12 Pro review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.04 on an Intel Core i9-12900H mini PC

GEEKOM XT12 Pro review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.04 on an Intel Core i9-12900H mini PC

GEEKOM XT12 Pro Ubuntu 24.04 review

We’ve already looked at GEEKOM XT12 Pro specifications and hardware design in the first part of the review and followed up by reviewing the Intel Core i9-12900 mini PC with Windows 11 Pro in the second part. We’ve now had time to review the GEEKOM XT12 Pro mini PC with the just-released Ubuntu 24.04 operating system to evaluate the compatibility and performance in Linux. In this third and final part of the review, we’ll test features in detail, evaluate performance with benchmarks, test storage and network capabilities, check YouTube video playback at 4K and 8K resolution, perform a stress test to check the cooling solution and provide numbers for fan noise and power consumption of the GEEKOM XT12 Pro mini PC. Ubuntu 24.04 installation and system information We’ve resized the Windows 11 by half in order to install Ubuntu 24.04 in dual boot configuration. After that, we inserted a USB […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design