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

April 1, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Sparkfun’s Pulsed Coherent Radar Sensor features Acconeer XM125 60 GHz module, works through walls, offers up to 20-meter range

SparkFun Pulsed Coherent Radar Sensor Acconeer XM125 Qwiic

SparkFun has launched a new Qwiic breakout board for the Acconeer XM125 60 GHz pulsed coherent radar sensor that can measure distance to humans even through walls and works at a distance of up to 20 meters. We’ve seen tiny 24GHz or 60GHz radar modules for several years now, and Supachai even reviewed the Seeed Studio mmWave sensor using ESPHome and Home Assistant late last year with the solution relying on Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) technology. The Acconneer XM125 is a Pulse-radar module that emits electromagnetic waves in short bursts instead of continuously like FMCW radars and allows longer measurement ranges potentially at the cost of lower accuracy. Sparkfun Pulse Coherent Radar Sensor specifications: Acconeer XM125 Module A121 60GHz Pulsed Coherent Radar (PCR) Integrated baseband, RF front-end, and antenna in package Detects distance, speed, motion, and objects up to 20 meters away Millimeter precise readings Low power consumption STMicro STM32L431CBY6 […]

March 30, 2024March 30, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

INCTEL N100 fanless mini PC and micro firewall appliance comes with four 2.5GbE ports using Intel i226V controllers

INCTEL N100, also sold under the Partaker brand, is a fanless mini PC and “micro firewall appliance” powered by an Intel Processor N100 CPU and equipped with four 2.5GbE ports all using Intel i226V. It has features similar to the tiny, actively cooled iKOOLCORE R2 Alder Lake-N mini PC that combines Intel and RealTek controllers, but the INCTEL model has a larger yet thinner design. The device supports up to 16GB DDR5 memory, can take an M.2 NVMe SSD and/or a 2.5-inch SATA drive for storage, and also provides two video outputs through HDMI and DisplayPort, as well as a few USB ports, an RJ45 console port, and optional support for WiFi and 4G LTE connectivity. INCTEL N100 specifications: SoC- Intel Processor N100 quad-core Alder Lake N-series processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel UHD graphics @ up to 750 MHz; TDP: 6W System Memory […]

March 29, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Fanless Raspberry Pi CM4 panel PC features 15.6-inch touchscreen display, supports 9V-36V wide input voltage

EDATEC ED-HMI2320-156C is a fanless panel PC powered by a Raspberry Pi CM4 module with 15.6-inch capacitive touchscreen display and a metal enclosure ensuring cooling that’s built upon the previous Compute Module 4 smart displays from the company such as the 10.1-inch EDATEC ED-HMI2020-101C industrial panel PC and the ED-HMI2120-101C adding features such as 4G LTE, RS232 and RS485, M.2 NVMe SSD. The company’s latest HMI solution comes with two mSATA sockets, a 4K-capable HDMI 2.1 output port, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, optional WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5, and 4G LTE connectivity, as well as a few USB ports and DB9 serial ports. It can operate in the -25°C to +60°C temperature range and takes 9V to 36V DC input. EDATEC ED-HMI2320-156C specifications: System-on-Module (SoM) – Raspberry Pi CM4 SoC – Broadcom BCM2711 CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A72 processor @ 1.5GHz GPU – VideoCore VI conformant with OpenGL ES 3.1 & Vulkan […]

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 […]