TTGO T-Camera ESP32 Camera Board Comes with OLED Display, Sensors

TTGO T-Camera ESP32 OLED Display

ESP32 is now being used for AI workloads such as face detection with camera boards like ESP32-CAM, or the upcoming ESP-EYE board from Espressif Systems themselves, combined with ESP-WHO face detection and recognition framework. The two aforementioned board require you to use a phone to vizualize the results, unless you blink some LEDs or connect your own display. But the just released TTGO T-Camera board includes a 128×64 OLED display which should allow you to display face detection and/or recognition results, as well as a BME280 environmental sensor, a PIR sensor, and an optional fisheye lens. TTGO T-Camera board specifications: ESP32-WROVER-B Wireless Module SoC –  ESP32 dual core Tensilica LX6 processor Memory – 8MB PSRAM Storage – 4MB SPI flash Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11n WiFi 4, Bluetooth 4.2 LE Camera – 2MP OV2640 camera with normal or fisheye lens Display – 0.96″ 128×64 OLED display connected via SSD1306 I2C […]

Cosmo Communicator 2-in-1 Smartphone & Pocket Computer Runs Android 9, Linux

Cosmo Communicator

In recent years, we’ve started to see Windows 10 mini laptops with 6″ to 8″ display and a foldable keyboard coming to market thanks to products such as GPD Pocket 2 or One Mix 2 Yoga. They offer a full Windows 10 experience in an ultra-small form factor, but you’d still need to carry your phone around with you for things like calls or SMS. Cosmo Communicator offers a similar experience, but instead of relying on Intel processor and Windows, the device comes with a Mediatek P70 mobile processor capable of running Android 9 Pie or Linux distributions merging phone and mini laptop functionalities into a single device. Cosmo Communicator preliminary specifications: SoC – Mediatek P70 octa-core processor with four Arm  Cortex A73 cores @ up to 2.0GHz, four Cortex A53 cores @ up to 2.0GHz, Arm Mali G72 MP3 GPU  @ 800MHz, and a  Dual-core mobile AI processor (APU) […]

V-Raptor is a 24-Core Arm Server based on SocioNext SC2A11 SoC

SocioNext SC2A11 Module

Socionext SC2A11  24-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor has gotten into more hardware recently. We recently showcased a demo of an upcoming Banana Pi 24-core Arm server, but they’ll be joined by South Korea based XSLAB which prepare to launch their own V-Raptor 24-core microserver in February 2019. The server is based on SC2A11 processor coupled with their own BMC (Baseboard Management Controller). A 24-core micro server node is shown below with SC2A11 processor covered by a black heatsink, as well as a RAM stick. As I understand it, one or several V-Raptor microserver can then be inserted into a PCIe slot of the mainboard which supports up to 32 nodes on 2U rack size, so that would be a total of 24 x 32 = 768 Arm Cortex A53 cores. The detailed specifications of the server are not shown yet on the almost empty company website. The company may also have made […]

Zotac Pico PI470 Amber Lake Mini PC is Powered by Intel Core i7-8500Y Processor

Zotac Pico PI470

Intel announced Core-Y series “Amber Lake” processors last August. The new 5W SoC are designed for laptops and 2-in-1 hybrids with built-in Gigabit WiFi, and optional LTE cellular connectivity. But that does not mean they cannot be used in other form factors, and Zotac is showcasing their tiny ZBOX Pico PI470 mini PC powered by Intel Core i7-8500Y dual core / quad thread processor at CES 2019. Zotac Pico PI470 specifications: SoC – Intel Core i7-8500Y dual core quad thread Amber Lake-Y processor  clocked at 1.5 GHz (base) / 4.2 GHz (turbo) with 4MB cache, Intel HD Graphics 615; 5W TDP System Memory – 4GB LPDDR3 memory Storage – 32GB eMMC storage, micro SD/SDHC/SDXC card reader Video Output – HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2 Audio – HDMI audio output, 3.5mm headphone jack Networking & Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5 USB – 3x USB 3.0 ports including 1x […]

Intel Project Athena Defines Guidelines for Always-On 5G Laptops

Intel Project Athena

Arm, Qualcomm and their partners first introduced always-on always-connected mobile PCs running Windows 10 in 2017 with over 20 hours of battery life and LTE connectivity. The first models delivered on their battery life promise, but they were expensive while delivering underwhelming performance, but the upcoming Snapdragon 8cx processor should address performance concerns. Those type of laptops are still a niche market, and so far Intel and their partners have not delivered similar type of laptops with long battery life, cellular connectivity, and always-on capabilities. That’s where Intel’s Project Athena innovation program comes in. The program that defines a new class of advanced laptops running either Windows or Chrome OS operating systems, offering long battery life, 5G connectivity, artificial intelligence, and consistently powered on. They may not target the 20 hours of battery life like on Arm platform, but the part of the infographic above reads “worry-free day of battery […]

A Look at a Small NanoPi NEO4 Build Farm

NANOPI NEO4 Build Farm

FriendlyElec NanoPi NEO4 is currently the cheapest and smallest SBC powered by Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor which packs two Cortex A72 “fast” 64-bit cores, and four Cortex-A53 “efficiency” cores, so it should be an obvious candidate if you plan on building an Arm build farm costs to its low cost, small form factor, and relatively good performance. As part of his work on HAProxy load balancer, Willy Tarreau often has to run time-consuming builds for Arm targets, and to speed up the builds he’s put together several Arm based build farms powered by low cost development boards / SBCs. Up to now he had a build farm powered by five MIQI boards featuring Rockchip RK3288 processor with four Cortex-A17 “fast” 32-bit processor, and controlled with a ClearFog Pro networking board. He’s now decided to build another similar build farm but with NanoPi NEO4 boards instead. Willy goes through the hardware […]

Huawei Kunpeng 920 is a 7nm 64-core Armv8 Server Processor

Huawei Kunpeng 920

We’ve seen several Armv8 processors for the datacenter launched in recent years from companies like Cavium – now part of Marvell – and Ampere. Another company now joins the fray with Huawei having just introduced their Kunpeng 920 64-core Armv8 processor manufactured with a 7nm process, and offering 8-channel DDR4 RAM, and fast interfaces such as 10GbE and PCIe 4.0. Kunpeng 920 features and specifications: CPU – 64x Armv8 cores clocked at up to 2.6 Ghz delivering a 930 SPECint score Memory I/F – 8x DDR4 @ 2933 MHz for 6 to 8 channels memory Storage – 16x SAS/SATA interfaces High Speed Interfaces – 40x PCIe 4.0 including 16 that can be used for CCIX (Cache Coherent Interconnect for Accelerators); 640 Gbps total bandwidth Networking – 2x 100G RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) Process – 7nm process The company customized their ARMv8 cores in order to improve performance by optimizing […]

Sony Spresense Board Review with NuttX based Spresense SDK

Sony Spresence Kit Assembled

Sony Spresense Arduino compatible board with audio and global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) support and its extension board launched in Japan this summer. The company has now expanded markets, and is offering the boards in the United States and Europe as well. They also tasked an agency to send samples to various reviewers, and I got selected to receive one as well. I’ll start the review by checking out the hardware, shortly discuss software development options, and report my experience with Spresense SDK. Sony Spresense Unboxing I received two packages… … one the main board, and the other for the extension board. The main board package only comes with CXD5602PWBMAIN1 board and an information sheet. The top of the board includes a reset button, four user LEDs, a power LED, a boot recovery button, the camera interface, Sony CXD5247 power management and audio analog interface chip (Black on the photo below, […]

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