Arduino Core for Zephyr beta released – Let’s give it a try!

Arduino Zephyr Boards llext

Last July, Arduino announced plans to switch from the soon-to-be deprecated Arm Mbed to Zephyr RTOS, and the company has now outed the first beta release of “Arduino Core for Zephyr OS” for a range of boards. From the user’s perspective, this should not change anything. However, there are massive changes under the hood and Arduino sketches are built and executed differently with the Arduino Core for Zephyr.  Some highlights of the new Zephyr-based Arduino core implementation include: Dynamic sketch loading – Sketches are compiled as ELF files and dynamically loaded by a precompiled Zephyr-based firmware. Zephyr subsystems support threading, inter-process communication, and real-time scheduling. Fast compiling and smaller binaries since a thin layer of user code and libraries are compiled, while the rest of the ZephyrOS is already binary. You can get started straightaway with the code and instructions on GitHub. You’ll need Arduino 2.x.x for this to work. […]

Raspberry Pi 500 review with Raspberry Pi Monitor and teardown

Raspberry Pi 500 review with Monitor Speaker

The Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC is just out along with the 15.6-inch Raspberry Pi Monitor and received samples from Raspberry Pi for review a few days ago.  I’ve had time to play with both, so in this review, I’ll go through an unboxing of the kit I received and report my experience with both the keyboard PC and monitor. Unboxing I received two packages. The first one with the Raspberry Pi Monitor, and the second with a Raspberry Pi 500 (UK layout), a 27W USB-C power adapter, and a micro HDMI to HDMI cable. So not quite a full Raspberry Pi 500 Desktop Kit since there’s no mouse and beginner’s manual but close to it. Let’s start with the keyboard PC. The bottom side of the package has some specs and a logo for the keyboard layout, in this case “UK”. There’s only the keyboard PC in the package. […]

Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC launched together with 15.6-inch Raspberry Pi Monitor

Raspberry Pi 500 and Monitor

The Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC is now available with the guts of a Raspberry Pi 5 including a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 SoC, 8GB LPDDR4x and a 32GB microSD pre-loaded with Raspberry Pi OS. But the company also took the opportunity to launch the 15.6-inch Raspberry Pi Monitor that was first showcased at Embedded World 2024. That means Raspberry Pi launched 22 products this year including kits, and we’re promised that would be the last launch for 2024! But Pi fans can expect a small surprise in the first half of January… Raspberry Pi 500 keyboard PC Raspberry Pi 500 specifications: SoC – Broadcom BCM2712 CPU – Quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 processor @ 2.4GHz GPU – VideoCore VII GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.1 graphics, Vulkan 1.2 VPU – 4Kp60 HEVC decoder System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM Storage – 32GB microSD card preloaded with Raspberry Pi OS […]

UP Xtreme i14 Edge – An Ubuntu 24.04 Pro industrial mini PC powered by Intel Core Ultra “Meteor Lake” SoC

UP Xtreme i14 Edge

UP Xtreme i14 Edge is an industrial fanless mini PC preloaded with an Ubuntu Pro-validated Ubuntu 24.04 Linux distribution and powered by an Intel Core Ultra 5/7 “Meteor Lake” SoC with up to 64GB LPDDR5. The device is based on the UP Xtreme i14 SBC we covered last June, and comes with M.2 PCIe sockets for NVMe SSD, a SATA port, 2.5GbE and GbE interfaces, support for WiFi and 4G LTE/5G wireless modules, four 8K capable video output ports (HDMI, DP, and USB-C), and three USB Type-A ports, but is housed in a fanless metal enclosure with two RS232/RS485 DB9 connectors and an externally-accessible terminal block for GPIO signals.   UP Xtreme i14 Edge specifications: Meteor Lake-H/U SoC (one of the other) Intel Core Ultra 7 165H 16-core (6P+8E+2LPE) processor @ 1.4 / 5.0 GHz with 24MB cache, Intel 8Xe LPG graphics @ 2.3 GHz, Intel AI Boost NPU; TDP: […]

Mekotronics R58-HD-1U digital signage player supports 12 HDMI outputs, video walls using three Rockchip RK3588 SoCs

Rockchip RK3588 digital signage player 12 HDMI output

Mekotronics R58-HD-1U is a digital signage player with 12 independent HDMI outputs implemented through three Rockchip RK3588 SoCs, housed in a 1U standard chassis, and mostly designed for video walls and other applications where multiple displays are close to each other. Each Rockchip RK3588 processor is coupled with up to 16GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash, and the system also offers two HDMI inputs, five Ethernet ports, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth, and seven USB ports for expansion. Mekotronics R58-HD-1U specifications: SoCs – 3x Rockchip RK3588 each with CPU – Octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G610 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2,  OpenCL 2.2, and Vulkan 1.2 support VPU 8Kp60 video decoder for H.265/VP9 codecs 8Kp30 video decoder for H.264 codec 4Kp60 video decoder for AV1 codec Multi-channel decoder in parallel AI accelerator – 6 […]

XIAO Powerbread is a breadboard power supply and meter based on XIAO RP2040 or ESP32 USB-C board

XIAO Powerbread power meter for breadboard

The XIAO Powerbread is a breadboard power supply and meter compatible with XIAO RP2040 or ESP32 USB-C boards and equipped with a color LCD display showing real-time voltage, current, and power consumption for 5V and/or 3.3V power rails. Breadboard power supplies are nothing new. We’ve written about several over the years including the Toaster board with adjustable voltage from 5 to 16V, the SwitchTrick switching power supply board, and the MEGO portable breadboard power supply with a built-in battery. The XIAO Powerbread only supports 5V and 3.3V power rails, but its main selling point is its integrated breadboard power meter function.   XIAO Powerbread specifications: Supported USB-C modules General purpose MCU – XIAO RP2040, XIAO RP2350 WiFi / Bluetooth MCU – XIAO ESP32S3, XIAO ESP32C3,  XIAO ESP32C6 Display – 0.96-inch color TFT LCD with 160×80 resolution and ST7735S SPI controller Power monitoring – 2x TI INA3221 sensors connected over I2C […]

Allwinner A733 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 AI SoC supports up to 16GB RAM for Android 15 tablets and laptops

Allwinner A733

Allwinner A733 is an octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor with an optional 3 TOPS NPU and support for up to 16GB RAM designed for Android 15 tablets and laptops such as the Teclast P50Ai with a 10.92-inch touchscreen display. With two Cortex-A76 cores, six Cortex-A75 cores, an Imagination BXM-4-64 MC1 GPU, and an NPU, the Allwinner A733 looks very similar to the Allwinner A736 we noted in a roadmap last year. But there’s no news about the A736, so maybe the name was dropped and the Allwinner A733 was launched instead. Allwinner A733 specifications: CPU Dual-core Arm Cortex-A76 @ up to 2.00 GHz Hexa-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ up to 1.79 GHz Single-core RISC-V E902 real-time core GPU – Imagination Technologies BXM-4-64 MC1 VPU 8Kp24 H.265/VP9/AVS2 decoding (no mention of AV1) 4Kp30 H.265/H.264 encoding AI accelerator – Optional 3 TOPS NPU Memory 192 KB SRAM + 512 KB shared SRAM 32-bit LPDDR4/LPDDR4x/LPDDR5 interface […]

GEEKOM GT1 Mega review with Ubuntu 24.10 – Part 3: Linux on an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H “Meteor Lake” mini PC

GEEKOM GT1 Mega Ubuntu 24.10 Linux review

We’ve already had a look at GEEKOM GT1 Mega’s hardware with an unboxing and a teardown before following up with a thorough review of the Intel Core 9 Ultra 185H mini PC with Windows 11 Pro. After being interrupted by some Raspberry Pi reviews, I finally had the time to test the GEEKOM GT1 Mega with Ubuntu 24.10 to check out how well (or not) it works with a recent Linux distribution. I’ve tested the features of the Meteor Lake mini PC in Linux, ran some benchmarks, evaluated storage and network performance, played 4K and 8K videos on YouTube at various frame rates, went through a stress test to check its thermal design, and finally measured the mini PC’s fan noise and power consumption. Ubuntu 24.10 installation I would usually review mini PCs with the latest Ubuntu LTS version which would currently be Ubuntu 24.04.1. However, since the Intel Core […]

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