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

January 26, 2024January 25, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

52Pi water cooling kit keeps the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC cool at 3.0 GHz

If you like fancy, but somewhat expensive and useless things, 52Pi’s water cooling kit for Raspberry Pi 5 SBC may be right up your alley and the over-engineered cooling solution sells for $120 on Seeed Studio where we discovered the kit. We’ve already seen the active cooler and official case do a decent job at cooling the Raspberry Pi 5, but several companies have also launched fanless cases for the latest Pi single board computer. Water cooling may only make sense when attempting to overclock the Raspberry Pi 5, and 52Pi claims the Broadcom BCM2712 processor can run a 3.0 GHz at a relatively cool temperature of 55°C. 52Pi water cooling kit content: Main water cooling unit with RGB LED fan, water tank, and base Water cooling radiator (that’s the orange thing on top of the Raspberry Pi) Black heatsink 2x Silicone hoses 12V/2A power adapter (US) 4x M2.5*10 hexagonal screws […]

January 25, 2024January 26, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Vivante NPU (found in Amlogic A311D) gets its open-source driver upstreamed to Mesa

The Teflon project is an open-source TensorFlow Lite delegate that currently supports VeriSilicon Vivante NPU and aims to support several other AI accelerators over time. The project has recently been upstreamed to Mesa meaning AI inference with open-source software will work out of the box in supported hardware once Mesa 24.1 is released in May 2024. Teflon relies on the Etnaviv open-source driver better known for working with Vivante GPUs found, for instance, in NXP i.MX processors, but Tomeu Vizoso also worked on implementing Vivante NPU support since May 2022 thanks to a sponsorship from Libre Computer and documented the development progress on this blog. The VeriSilicon Vivante “VIPNano-QI.7120” 5 TOPS NPU is found in the Amlogic A311D processor, and Tomeu tested Teflon with the Etnaviv NPU drive on both the Libre Computer AML-A311D-CC Alta and Khadas VIM3 single board computers with decent performance although still slower than with the […]

January 25, 2024January 24, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

GEEKOM Mini IT12 Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 22.04 Linux on an Intel Core i7-12650H mini computer

GEEKOM Mini IT12 mini PC Review Ubuntu 22.04 Linux

We first checked out the hardware of GEEKOM Mini IT12 with an unboxing and teardown, before testing the Intel Core i7-12650H mini PC with Windows 11 Pro in the second part of the review, and we’ve now had time to test the device with Ubuntu 22.04 to see how well (or not) it works with a Linux distribution. In the third part of the review, we will report our experience with installing Ubuntu 22.04 on the GEEKOM Mini IT12, checking all main features, and benchmarking the system to evaluate its performance. This includes some networking and storage performance tests, a stress test to check CPU temperature and cooling performance, and the measurement of the fan noise and power consumption. Ubuntu 22.04 installation on GEEKOM Mini IT12 Since we wanted to install Ubuntu 22.04 alongside Windows 11 Pro, we shrunk the Windows 11 partition by about half in the Disk Management […]

January 24, 2024January 23, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

FOSDEM 2024 schedule – Open-source embedded, mobile, IoT, robotics, RISC-V, etc..

FOSDEM – which stands for Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting – is a free-to-participate event where thousands of developers meet in Brussels on the first week-end of February to discuss open-source software & hardware projects. FOSDEM 2024 will take place on February 3-4 with 880 speakers, 818 events, and 66 tracks. Although I won’t attend, I’ve created a virtual schedule like every year with sessions most relevant to the topics covered on CNX Software from the “Embedded, Mobile and Automotive” and “Open Hardware and CAD/CAM” devrooms, but also other devrooms including “FOSS Mobile Devices”, “ Energy: Reimagining this Ecosystem through Open Source”, “RISC-V”, and others. FOSDEM Day 1 – Saturday, February 3, 2024 10:30 – 10:55 – Screen Sharing on Raspberry Pi 5 Using VNC in Weston and Wayland with the Yocto Project and OpenEmbedded by Leon Anavi In 2023, embedded Linux developers received eagerly awaited news: […]

January 23, 2024January 23, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

LILYGO T-Panel – A 4-inch HMI display and WiFi, BLE, and 802.15.4 gateway based on ESP32-S3 and ESP32-H2

T-Panel 4-inch ESP32-S3 and ESP32-H2 gateway

LILYGO T-Panel is both a 4-inch HMI display and IoT gateway based on ESP32-S3 WiFi 4 and Bluetooth LE 5 microcontroller and an ESP32-H2 module with Bluetooth LE 5 and an 802.15.4 radio for Zigbee, Thread, and Matter connectivity. Last year, Espressif introduced the ESP-Thread Board Router/Zigbee gateway board with ESP32-S3 and ESP32-H2 to show how both chips could be combined to create IoT gateways. But I don’t think I had seen a company design a product based on both ESP32-S3 and ESP32-H2 until I saw the T-Panel which also includes an RS485 interface and Qwiic expansion connectors for good measure. T-Panel specifications: Wireless chips/modules Wireless SoC – ESP32-S3R8 dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller @ 240 MHz 2.4 GHz 802.11n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE connectivity Memory – 8MB PSRAM Wireless module – ESP32-H2-MINI-1 module MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-H2 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller at up to 96 MHz with 320 […]

January 23, 2024January 22, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Cologne Chip releases an open-source integrated logic analyser (ILA) for GateMate FPGA chips

Integrated logic analyser ILA Cologne GateMate FPGA

Cologne Chip’s “Integrated logic analyzer” (ILA) project is an open-source Verilog implementation of a logic analyzer running on the company’s GameMate A1 FPGA and designed to capture internal signals. When we first covered the GameMate A1 FPGA we noted Cologne relies on the open-source Yosys framework coupled with a proprietary, but free-of-charge, place & route tool contrary to most other FPGA vendors that only offer closed-source proprietary development tools. The German company has now released the GateMate integrated logic analyzer project to help customers debug their FPGA designs. The project includes the digital circuit of the ILA designed in the hardware description language Verilog and a Python program (ILA Control Program) used to configure the configuration of the ILA from the design under test (DUT) and provide an interface with the user during the debugging process. The user will also need a GateMate FPGA toolchain and GTKWave open-source program to […]

January 23, 2024January 22, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

SAPPHIRE EDGE IPC-FP6 mini-ITX motherboard supports 10GbE networking

SAPPHIRE IPC-FP6 mini ITX motherboard 10GbE

SAPPHIRE EDGE IPC-FP6 is a mini-ITX motherboard powered by an AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 SoC with support for 10GbE networking and designed for gaming machines, medical imaging equipment, digital signage, thin clients, or POS terminals. The motherboard also comes with four 4K-capable DisplayPort video outputs, M.2 sockets for storage and wireless, two SATA ports for mass storage, up to eight USB interfaces, a PCIe x8 slot for expansion, and a combo audio jack. SAPPHIRE EDGE IPC-FP6 specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 AMD Ryzen Embedded V2516 hexa-core/12-thread processor @ 2.1 GHz / 3.95 GHz (Turbo) with 3MB L2 cache, 6 CUs Radeon RX Vega 6 GPU @ 1.5 GHz; TDP: 10-25W TDP (15W default) AMD Ryzen Embedded V2546 hexa-core/12-thread processor @ 3.0 GHz / 3.95 GHz (turbo) with 3 MB L2 cache, 6 CUs Radeon RX Vega 6 GPU @ 1.5 GHz; TDP: 35-54W TDP (45W default) AMD Ryzen […]

January 22, 2024January 22, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Zigbee Home is an ESPHome-like firmware project for Zigbee devices

Zigbee Home firmware project aims to provide similar functionality to ESPHome open-source firmware, but for Zigbee devices based on Nordic Semi nRF52 wireless microcontrollers, and later on the newer nRF53 MCUs.

The firmware relies on Nordic Semi ZBOSS for Zigbee 3.0 stack and should eventually enable a range of Zigbee devices to be flashed with open-source firmware and facilitate integration with Home Assistant open-source home automation framework through ZHA integration, and support for Zigbee2MQTT is also being worked on.