96-Core NanoPi Fire3 Boards Cluster is a DIY Portable Solution to Teach or Develop Distributed Software

96-Core NanoPi Fire3 Cluster

Nick Smith has been messing around with clusters made of Arm boards for several years starting with Raspberry Pi boards, including a 5-node RPI 3 cluster, before moving to other boards like Orange Pi 2E, Pine A64+, or NanoPC-T3. His latest design is based on twelve NanoPi Fire3 boards with 8 cores each, bringing the total number of cores to 96.  The platform may not be really useful for actual HPC applications due to limited power and memory, but can still be relied upon for education and development, especially it’s easily portable. Nick also made some interesting points and discoveries. It’s pretty with shiny blinking LEDs, and what looks like proper cooling, and the cluster can deliver 60,000 MFLOPS with Linpack which places it in the top 250 faster computers in the world! That’s provided we travel back in time to year 2000 through 🙂 By today’s standard, it would […]

TTGO Micro-32 is a Tiny ESP32-PICO-D4 Module

TTGO Micro-32 vs ESP32-WROOM-32

Unveiled almost a year ago, ESP32-PICO-D4 SiP (System-in-Package) combines ESP32 wireless processor, 4MB SPI Flash, a crystal oscillator, as well as some passive components, and allows more compact or thinner designs such as found in ESP32-PICO- Kit v4 development board. However, so far I had not seen any ESP32-PICO-D4 module, but TTGO Micro-32 fills the void as a compact module based on the SiP. TTGO Micro-32 module specifications: SiP – Espressif Systems ESP32-PICO-D4 based on ESP32 dual core processor + 4MB SPI flash Connectivity – Bluetooth 4.2 LE and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi up to 150 Mbps with chip antenna and u.FL (IPEX) connector Expansion – Castellated holes with GPIO, ADC, DAC, VP/VN, Touch, UART, I2C, and power signals Supply Voltage – 3.3V Dimensions – 19.2 x 13.3 mm (45% smaller than ESP32-WROOM-32) There’s no specific software for the module, since it should be software compatible with ESP-WROOM-32 (now called ESP32-WROOM-32). […]

Makerdiary nRF52840 Micro Development Kit Works with OpenThread, Arm Mbed OS, Zephyr OS, Mynewt, etc…

nRF52840 Micro Development Kit

If you want to play around with Bluetooth 5, Nordic nRF52840 is probably one of the best option, and among the development board, $9/$12 Particle Xenon is hard to beat when it comes to value. But if you need a bit more storage, I/Os and features, Makerdiary nRF52840 micro development kit looks like a good candidate to evaluate, especially it supports plenty of frameworks / operating systems such as Arm Mbed OS, Zephyr Project, OpenThread, Mynewt, and others. It’s also the first MCU class board I’ve seen with a USB type C port, although I’m not sure it brings any benefits to this type of hardware. Makerdiary nRF52840 micro development kit (nRF52840-MDK) hardware specifications: SoC – Nordic nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4F WiSoC with 1 MB FLASH and 256 kB RAM, Arm TrustZone Cryptocell 310 security subsystem External Storage – 64-Mbit QSPI flash Wireless Connectivity (on-chip) Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth Mesh Thread, IEEE […]

GIGABYTE Apollo Lake SBC Upgraded to a Quad Core Processor

GIGABYTE introduced  GA-SBCAP3350 Apollo Lake SBC powered by an Intel Celeron N3350 dual core processor las year. The board came without any soldered memory nor storage, instead relying on a SO-DIMM slot, two SATA connectors, and/or an mSATA socket. The company has now launched a second Apollo Lake single board computer  – GA-SBCAP3450 – with very similar specifications, except the processor has been upgraded to a Celeron N3450 quad core processor. GIGABYTE GA-SBCAP3450 SBC specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N3450 quad core processor @ 1.1 GHz/ 2.2 GHz with 12 EU Intel HD graphics 500 @ 200 MHz / 700 MHz (6W TDP) System Memory – 1x SO-DIMM socket for up to 8GB DDR3L 1333/1600/1866 MHz Storage –  2x SATA 6Gb/s connectors, 1x MSATA connector (MSATA_MPCIE2), 2x 64Mbit flash for AMI UEFI BIOS supporting PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.7, WfM 2.0, SM BIOS 2.7, ACPI 5.0 Video Output 1x HDMI 1.4 […]

Design ESP32 LoRa GPS Tracker Applications with TTGO T-Beam Board

TTGO-T-Beam

TTGO introduced a small ESP32 LoRa board with OLED display last year that is still selling  for around $14 shipped. But the company is now back with a similar board called TTGO T-Beam that does without the display, but adds GPS support, and a 18650 battery holder, so it should be ideally suited for all sorts of LoRa GPS tracking applications. TTGO T-Beam board specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP32 dual core Xtensa LX6 processor with WiFi and Bluetooth Memory – PSRAM Storage – 4MB SPI flash Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi up to 150 Mbps +  Bluetooth 4.2 Classic and LE with “3D antenna” soldered on PCB LoRa 433, 868, and 915 MHz versions with SMA antenna Transmit current – 120 mA @ +20dBm; 90 mA @ +17dBm; 29mA @ +13dBm Receive sensitivity -139dBm with LoRa & 62.5Khz & SF=12 & 146bps -136dBm with LoRa & 125Khz & SF=12 & 293bps […]

$43 Mecool M8S Plus DVB is an Entry Level Android Set-Top Box with DVB-T2/T/C Tuner

Android set-top boxes with tuner usually costs $70 and up depending on hardware specifications, and number of tuners, but if you want something cheap that runs Android and supports DVB-T2, “Mecool M8S Plus DVB” may be worth looking at, since it’s sold for just $55.99 shipped. [Update: Mecool M8S Plus DVB can now be found on Banggood for $42.99 including shipping] In order to achieve such low price, the company had to make some compromises, and the TV box only comes with 1GB RAM, and 8GB storage.  Amlogic however recently published a press release about their “new Amlogic S905X chipset” supporting Netflix and 1GB RAM. S905X is clearly not new, but it’s possible the company made some Android optimizations for their S9XX SoC family that provides a decent user experience even with just 1GB RAM. Mecool M8S Plus DVB set-top-box specifications: SoC –  Amlogic S905D quad core ARM Cortex-A53 processor […]

Sapphire FS-FP5V Embedded Board Features AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 Processor, Four DisplayPort Outputs

We’ve previously covered UDOO Bolt AMD Ryzen Embedded V1000 development board that’s offered for $229 and up on Kickstarter, and targets the maker community. Another board with Ryzen Embedded processor is SAPPHIRE FS-FP5V 5″ board with support for up to four independent displays, and suitable solution for digital signage, POS terminal, electronic gaming machines, medical imaging, thin clients, and so on. Sapphire FS-FP5V specifications: SoC AMD Ryzen Embedded V1202B 2 cores / 4 threads @  2 GHz / 3.6 GHz (Turbo) with Radeon Vega 3 @ 1100 MHz; 12-25W TDP AMD Ryzen Embedded V1605B 4 cores / 8 threads @ 2.06 GHz / 3.6 GHz (Turbo) with Radeon Vega 8 GPU @ 1100 MHz; 12-25W AMD Ryzen Embedded V1756B 4 cores / 8 threads @ 3.25 GHz / 3.6 GHz with Radeon Vega 8 GPU @ 1100 MHz; 35-54W TDP AMD Ryzen Embedded V1807B 4 cores / 8 threads @  3.35 […]

ESP32-SOLO-1 is a Single Core ESP32 WiFi and Bluetooth Module

ESP32-SOLO-1 Module

Espressif ESP32 is popular dual core processor with built-in WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, except as we’ve seen last year, the company also developed a single core version with ESP32-S0WD chip, whose price is only slightly more expensive than ESP8266. But so far, I had not seen many hardware platforms announced with the single core version, with the exception of Particle Argon board. But I believe we should soon see more ESP32-S0WD boards brought to market, since Espressif Systems has now announced ESP32-SOLO-1 single core module. ESP32-SOLO-1 wireless module specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP32-S0WD single core Tensilica Xtensa LX6 processor @ up to 160 MHz with 448 KB ROM, 520KB on-chip SRAM, and 16KB SRAM in RTC Storage – 4MB SPI flash Connectivity 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n WiFi up to 150 Mbps Bluetooth 4.2 LE + EDR I/Os – SD card, UART, SPI, SDIO, I2C, LED PWM, motor PWM, I2S, IR, […]

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