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

May 14, 2024May 14, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Arduino Alvik is a 3-wheel robot designed for STEAM education

Arduino Education’s Arduino Alvik is a 3-wheel educational robot that was initially unveiled at the Bett 2024 show in London and designed to teach robotics, programming, and other STEAM subjects. The robot is based on an Arduino Nano ESP32 board and comes with a set of nineteen lessons designed by Arduino Education’s team in collaboration with teachers so that students can learn the basics of IoT, get started with MicroPython, and get themselves familiar with various physics and engineering concepts. The company has yet to provide the full specifications for the Alvik robot, but here’s what we know at this stage: Mainboard – Arduino Nano ESP32 2x wheels plus 1x ball wheel Sensors – “High-quality sensors” that include a ToF ranging sensor, line-following sensors, a 6-axis accelerometer & gyroscope, a proximity sensor, and color sensors. Expansion 2x Grove I2C connectors 2x Qwiic connectors 6-pin servo motor header for up to […]

May 14, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Official Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ launched for $12

The official Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ is finally out for $12. The add-on board allows users to connect M.2 M-key peripherals, mainly NVMe SSDs, but also AI accelerators, to their Raspberry Pi 5 leveraging the PCIe connector on the(relatively) new SBC. We have to stress “official” because it’s been possible to do the exact same thing with third-party boards from PineBerry (now PineBoards), Waveshare, Pimoroni, and Geekworm for about half a year. I also had the opportunity to review the GEEKWORM X1001 and Waveshare M.2 PCIe HAT+ with Cytron MAKERDISK SSDs last month. But let’s have a look at what the official Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ has to offer. Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ M Key specifications: M.2 M-key socket for 2230 or 2242 modules Single-lane PCIe 2.0 interface (500 MB/s peak transfer rate) routed via Raspberry Pi PCIe FFC connector. (Note: PCIe 3.0 should also work fine on most Raspberry […]

May 14, 2024May 14, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Rockchip RK2118G/RK2118M dual-core Star-SE Armv8-M microcontrollers target smart audio applications

Rockchip RK2118G microcontroller block diagram

Rockchip RK2118G and RK2118M smart audio microcontrollers based on a dual-core Star-SE Armv8-M processor, an NPU for smart AI audio processor, three DSPs, 1024KB SRAM, optional DDR memory in package, and a range of peripherals. I first noticed the RK2118M in slides from the Rockchip Developer Conference 2024 last March, but I did not have enough information for an article at the time. Things have now changed since I’ve just received a bunch of datasheets including the one for the RK2118G and RK2118G microcontrollers, which look identical except for the DDR interface and optional built-in 64MB RAM for the RK2118G. The datasheets have only one reference to Arm with the string “Arm-V8M” and nothing else, and Cortex is not mentioned at all. But the slide above reveals the STAR-SE core looks to be an Arm Cortex-M33 core. We also learn the top frequencies for the “STAR-M33″/”STAR-SE” core (300MHz) and the […]

May 14, 2024May 13, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Radxa Zero 3E SBC offers gigabit Ethernet and PoE in Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W form factor

Last December, we wrote about the Rockchip RK3566-powered Radxa Zero 3W WiFi 6 SBC and noted that the Radxa Zero 3E with gigabit Ethernet and optional PoE supports would be coming soon with about the same dimensions as the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. “Soon” is now as the Radxa Zero 3E is now available on Aliexpress or Amazon with RAM capacities from 1GB to 8GB LPDDR4. The small SBC also comes with optional eMMC flash up to 64GB, a microSD card slot for storage, a micro HDMI video output port, a MIPI CSI connector compatible with Raspberry Pi Camera V1 and V2, two USB-C ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header for expansion. Radxa Zero 3E specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ 1.6 GHz GPU – Arm Mali G52-2EE GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, Vulkan 1.1, OpenCL 2.0 NPU – 0.8 TOPS […]

May 13, 2024May 14, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Convert your tablet or smartphone into a touchscreen display for your PC, motherboard, etc… with the AURGA Viewer

The AURGA viewer is an HDMI and USB dongle with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity that plugs into any system with HDMI output and can convert any smartphone, tablet, or laptop with a touchscreen display into a KVM solution by sending video data, as well as keyboard and mouse events wirelessly. We’ve recently written about Openterface Mini-KVM KVM-over-USB device that allows users to use their laptop to control another device with HDMI output locally without any additional display, keyboard, and mouse. But I’ve just been informed the AURGA Viewer, launched in 2022 on Kickstarter, can do something similar wirelessly. AURGA Viewer specifications and features: SoC – Allwinner S3 Cortex-A7 processor with 128MB DDR3 HDMI input – Male HDMI port with Toshiba TC35874x HDMI to MIPI CSI-2 bridge internally (See comments section); Works with VGA, mini HDMI, micro HDMI, etc… using adapters Wireless – Broadcom BCM4345C5 SDIO 802.11AC WiFi 5 and Bluetooth […]

May 13, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linux 6.9 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 6.9 on LKML: So Thorsten is still reporting a few regression fixes that haven’t made it to me yet, but none of them look big or worrisome enough to delay the release for another week. We’ll have to backport them when they get resolved and hit upstream. So 6.9 is now out, and last week has looked quite stable (and the whole release has felt pretty normal). Below is the shortlog for the last week, with the changes mostly being dominated by some driver updates (gpu and networking being the big ones, but “big” is still pretty small, and there’s various other driver noise in there too). Outside of drivers, it’s some filesystem fixes (bcachefs still stands out, but ksmbd shows up too), some late selftest fixes, and some core networking fixes. And I now have a more powerful arm64 machine […]

May 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Maker Uno RP2040 review with Arduino IDE using micro servo, soil moisture sensor, ultrasonic sensor, and I2C OLED modules

Today, We will review the Cytron Maker Uno RP2040 development board combining the Arduino UNO form factor with the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller that makes it programmable with the Arduino IDE (C/C++), Micropython, or CircuitPython. The board is suitable for both beginners and advanced users with a convenient port layout that includes a “Maker” connector plus six Grove connectors for sensor modules and a header for four servos besides the Arduino UNO headers. The board offers two power options: USB (5V) via the USB-C connector or a single-cell LiPo/Li-Ion battery via the LiPo connector. Cytron Maker Uno RP2040 specifications SoC – Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ processor @ up to 133 MHz with 264 KB SRAM Storage – 2MB flash USB – USB-C port for power and programming Expansion Arduino UNO headers for shields 6x Grove Ports (Digital I/O, PWM Output, UART, I2C, Analog Input) 1x Maker port compatible […]

May 11, 2024May 26, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

ODROID-H4+ kit review – Part 1: Unboxing, H4 Type 3 case assembly, and first boot

I’ve just received a kit comprised of an ODROID-H4+ SBC along with a Type 3 enclosure taking up to four 2.5-inch SATA drives and related accessories for review. I’ll start with an unboxing, followed by an assembly guide, and a quick first boot in the first part of the review, before testing performance, features such as IBECC memory, power consumption, and more in the second part of the review. ODROID-H4+ kit unboxing The package I received included small packages for the “H4 Type 3” enclosure and the ODROID-H4 PLUS SBC, a 15V/4A (60W) power supply with US plug adapter, a large fan with screws, as well as four sets of SATA data and power cables. We’ve already provided the ODROID-H4, H4+, and H4 Ultra specifications in the announcement post, but let’s have another quick look at the Intel Processor N97 fanless SBC. The rear panel comes with a DC jack, […]