Hardware Category - Page 724 of 1131 - CNX Software

April 4, 2017May 6, 2017 by Karl Johnson - 13 Comments

Creality CR-10 3D Printer Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Setup, and First Prints

Today we are going to take a first look at the Creality CR-10 3D printer. This is a multipart series with the first part being unboxing and initial setup. I have no experience with 3D printing, and when I found out I would be doing this review I was ecstatic. It took a while to get shipped because of the wild popularity at Gearbest. I believe supply has caught up with demand. While waiting I read as much as I could about 3D printing. and I am glad I did. Creality CR-10 3D Printer Specifications 300 x 300 x 400mm build volume Nozzle diameter: 0.4mm Memory card offline print: SD card Prints up to 80mm/s (but slower is better) File format: G-code, JPG, OBJ, STL (I have only done g-code) 1.75mm Software – Cura; octoprint compatible CR-10 3D Printer Unboxing and Setup I had the CR-10 assembled and printing in […]

April 3, 2017May 11, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 34 Comments

FriendlyELEC Introduces $12.99 1-bay NAS Dock Kit for NanoPi NEO & NEO 2 Boards

NanoPi NEO is a tiny board with Fast Ethernet and USB 2.0 interface, so in theory it could make a nice low-end NAS as long as you don’t need the best performance. As always the problem is that there was no case for it, but FriendlyELEC changes that as they just launched a 1-bay NAS Dock Kit for NanoPi NEO / NEO 2 board selling for just $12.99 (promotional price at launch). The kit comes with the following: 1-bay NAS Dock expansion board with JMicron JM20329 USB to SATA bridge SATA connector for 2.5″ HDD drive Extra USB host port On/off switch, and dual color status LED Header to connect NanoPi NEO board 12V DC power input Dimensions – 151 x 89.7 mm NS-120 aluminum enclosure (154 x 100 x 47.5 mm, 4141 grams) Heatsink set for NanoPI NEO M3 6mm screws, M2.5 6 mm screws Four rubber pads Front […]

April 3, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Sen5 Dual Tuner Android Set-top Box Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Teardown

There are only a few companies manufacturing Android TV boxes with tuners with names like VideoStrong and WeTek coming to mind. Shenzhen Sen5 Technology is another one, and the company sent me one of their DVB combo Android TV boxes for review without providing that many details. So let’s have a look at what I received. Sen5 Android Combo STB Unboxing The product might be not ready for retail just yet, as I received it in an old carton box. Once I remove all the bubble wraps, I ended up with the device, an IR remote control, and a 12V/1.5A power supply. Once the product is actually launched I’d expect you’d receive a retail package and a user’s manual too. The box itself is made of plastic with plenty of randomly arranged (ventilation) holes on the top. The front panel comes with an IR window and a “Standby button”, one […]

April 3, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Clarity Android Speaker with Touchscreen Display Supports Both Alexa and Google Assistant (Crowdfunding)

Android speakers with a touchscreen display has been around for a while, but Clarify speaker adds support for both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant’s “OK Google”. The 5W stereo speaker also comes with a quad core processor coupled with 16GB storage and 1GB RAM, a 7″ touchscreen display, and a battery. Clarity specifications: SoC – Unnamed Quad core processor System Memory – You wish you knew Storage – 16GB flash + micro SD slot Display – 7″ touchscreen display with 1280×800 resolution Video Output – HDMI output (added with $250,000 stretch goal) Audio – 2x 5W speaker, built-in microphone, AUX port Connectivity – Dual band WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 Camera – 2MP front-facing camera USB – 1x mini USB port Misc – Control buttons Power Supply 12V/1.5A via power barrel 1.600 mAh / 7.4V LiPo battery good for 6 hours of music playback or 2.5 hours of video playback. Dimensions – […]

April 2, 2017September 5, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

NanoPi NEO2 Board Benchmarks with Ubuntu 16.04.2 using Linux 3.10 and Linux 4.10

I’ve received NanoPi NEO 2 boards, add-boards and sensor modules last week, where we could see how small the boards were, and how it could be suitable for IoT projects or “hardware hacking” education. Before testing the board with the add-ons, I have to select the image to run on the board, and currently we have two choices: Ubuntu 16.04.2 FriendlyELEC image with Linux 3.10 “legacy” kernel, or Armbian Ubuntu 16.04.2 Xenial nightly build with Linux 4.10 “mainline” kernel. So I decided to try both: dfssf nanopi-neo2-ubuntu-core-qte-sd4g-20170329.img.zip (296 MB) is the image from FriendlyELEC (previously FriendlyARM) Armbian_5.27.170401_Nanopineo2_Ubuntu_xenial_dev_4.10.0.7z (222 Mb) is the image from Armbian, which I downloaded on March 31st despite the filename including “170401” string You can flash the image with Win32DiskImager (Windows) or dd (linux) to a micro SD card the usual way, and while I’ve never personally had troubles with dd, I’ve been told Etcher was better, […]

April 1, 2017April 1, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 45 Comments

Allwinner H6 Processor for 4K HDR Set-Top Boxes Supports USB 3.0, PCIe, and Smart Card Interfaces

Allwinner H6 is a new quad core Cortex A53 processor designed for 4K set-top boxes. It will support “6K” video decoding for 10-bit HEVC, VP9, and H.264, integrate HDR10 and HLG video processing, support high speed interfaces like USB 3.0 and PCIe, as well as security features like two ISO7816 smart card interfaces and DRM solutions. Allwinner H6 specifications: CPU – Quad-core ARM Cortex A53 with NEON, hardware Java acceleration, and FPU 3D GPU – Dual shader ARM Mali-T720 with support for OpenGL ES3.1/3.0/2.0/1.1, OpenCL 1.1/RenderScript, Microsoft DirectX 11 FL9_3 Memory I/F – DDR4/DDR3/DDR3L interface Storage I/F – 1x eMMC 5.0 flash interface, 1x NAND Flash interface for SLC/MLC/TLC flash memory with up to 80-bit error-correcting code (ECC), 1x SPI NOR Flash interface, 1x SD Card 2.0 Multimedia via Allwinner Phoenix 3.0 VE Engine Video Decoder H265/HEVC Main/Main10 [email protected] High-tier ;4K@60fps, up to 6Kx4K@30fps H264/AVC BP/MP/[email protected], MVC, 4K@30fps VP9,Profile 0/2, […]

March 31, 2017April 3, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Is NodeMCU ESP-32S Board Now Selling for $8.50 Shipped?

ESP32 SoC with WiFi and Bluetooth launched last September for around $3, followed soon after by ESP32 modules for $7, and a few weeks later, easier to use ESP32 development boards were introduced, but sold for around $20 likely due a mismatch between supply and demand. That’s not overly expensive, but in a world of $4 ESP8266 boards and $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W with Linux, WiFi and Bluetooth, it may feel that way. But today, I noticed DealExtreme sold GeekWorm ESP32 board with ESP-WROOM-32 module for just $11.64 shipped. That’s good progress, but surely Aliexpress must now have cheaper options, and sure enough, I could find NodeMCU ESP-32S board (now confirmed NOT to be an official NodeMCU devkit) sold for $6.95 + shipping, which brought the price up to about $8.50. NodeMCU ESP-32S specifications: Wireless Module – ESP-WROOM-32 with Espressig ESP32 dual core processor with 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and […]

March 31, 2017March 31, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

MQMaker Koala is a Features-Packed Development Board Powered by Rockchip RK3288 Processor

MQMaker launched MiQi board based on Rockchip RK3288 quad core Cortex A17 processor last year with the hardware aimed at hobbyists and makers, but the company has been developing a higher-end board – named Koala – based on the same processor, featuring many more ports and features, and geared towards the enterprise market. Koala board preliminary specifications: SoC – Rockchip 3288 quad core ARM Cortex A17 up to 1.8 GHz with Mali-T764 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0 /3.0, and OpenCL 1.1 System Memory – 2GB DDR3 (default) Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash (default) + micro SD slot Video Output / Display Interface – HDMI 2.0, header for eDP, MIPI, LVDS, LCD backlight header, touch panel header Audio – HDMI out, optical S/PDIF, 3.5mm analog stereo audio jack, microphone header, audio L/R header Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi or WiFi + Bluetooth module, mini PCIe slot for 3G/4G card + SIM card slot USB – 4x […]