FreeRTOS Category - Page 7 of 23 - CNX Software

September 4, 2021May 4, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

NXP i.MX RT500 Cortex-M33 Crossover MCU integrates DSP, 2D GPU for wearables and IoT devices

NXP i.MX RT500 is the second Cortex-M33 Crossover MCU following the NXP i.MX RT600 Series announced in 2018, and optimized for low-power HMI applications such as wearables and Smart Home & IoT devices. NXP Crossover MCUs are typically clocked at 600 MHz or more, but NXP i.MX RT500 Cortex-M33 is limited to 200 MHz, and combined with 200 MHz Tensilica Fusion F1 DSP as well as a 2D GPU, and power optimizations that enable long battery life of up to 40 days on a charge for wearables like smartwatches. NXP i.MX RT500 key features and specifications: MCU Core – Cortex-M33 @ up to 200 MHz with Arm TrustZone, M33 built-in Memory Protection Unit (MPU), PowerQuad hardware accelerator for DSP functions, CASPER crypto coprocessor for asymmetric cryptographic algorithms DSP Core – Cadence Tensilica Fusion F1 DSP @ up to 200 MHz On-Chip Memory Up to 5 MB of system SRAM accessible […]

September 3, 2021September 3, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Geniatech XPI-iMX8MM SBC offers NXP i.MX 8M Mini processor in Raspberry Pi form factor

Geniatech XPI-iMX8MM is a new member of the company’s XPI SBC family following Raspberry Pi 3 form factor and equipped with the 14nm NXP i.MX 8M Mini quad-core Cortex-A53 processor. The new board follows XPI-S905X (Amlogic S905X), XPI-3128 (Rockchip RK3128), and XPI-3288 (Rockchip RK3288) single board computer introduced over the last three years with many of the same features including HDMI output, four USB ports, Ethernet, and so on. Geniatech XPI-IMX8MM specifications: SoC –NXP i.MX 8M Mini quad-core Arm Cortex A53 processor @ up to 1.8 GHz with Cortex-M4 real-time core, 2D and 3D Vivante GPUs, 1080p60 H.265/H.264 video decoder, 1080p60 H.264 video encoder System Memory – 1GB (default) to 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 8GB (default) to 128GB eMMC 5.x flash, MicroSD card slot Video & Audio Output HDMI 1.4 up to 4Kp30 3.5mm AV jack with composite video and stereo audio 2-lane MIPI DSI connector Camera – 2-lane MIPI […]

July 8, 2021October 8, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Reverse engineering the SDK for BL602 RISC-V WiFi & BLE microcontroller

Bouffalo Lab BL602, and its big brother BL604 with extra GPIOs, are RISC-V microcontrollers with WiFi and Bluetooth LE that offer an alternative to Espressif Systems ESP32 Xtensa based WiSoC, although Espressif has also designed its own RISC-V solution: ESP32-C3. Soon after the “announcement” in October 2020, we found out the SDK and a relatively cheap BL602 board, but the SDK has many closed-source binaries. Soon after Sipeed and Pine64 expressed their interest in developing an open-source toolchain and even an open-source WiFi (and BLE) stack. Time has passed and even got a Pinecone board in January, but did not do anything with it, especially seeing the status of the software. The same cannot be said for Lup Yuen Lee (aka MrTechBlog) who spent a lot of time doing interesting with Pine64 BL602 module and board including playing and thoroughly documenting his work with Tensorflow Lite, connecting the board to […]

April 27, 2021May 31, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

SGET OSM (Open Standard Module) compliant SoM features NXP i.MX 8M Mini SoC

The SGET (Standardization Group for Embedded Technologies) non-profit organization ratified another system-on-module standard last November, with the “Open Standard Module” (OSM) standard that instead of relying on edge or board-to-board connectors is meant to be soldered on the carrier board as a solder-on module LGA package. F&S Elektronik has unveiled one of the first SGET OSM compliant SoM with “FS 8MM OSM-SF” equipped with an NXP i.MX 8M Mini processor, up to 8GB DDR4, 32GB eMMC flash or 512MB NAND flash on a 30x30mm “Size-S OSM” form factor. FS 8MM OSM-SF system-on-module FS 8MM OSM-SF module specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Mini single, dual, or quad-core Arm Cortex-53 processor @ 1.8 GHz with real-time Cortex-M4 core @ 400 MHz, Vivante 2D & 3D GPU, 1080p60 H.265, VP9, H.264, VP8 video decoder System Memory – Up to 8GB LPDDR4 Storage – Up to max. 512MB SLC NAND flash or up […]

April 24, 2021April 24, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

AI-Thinker introduces 5 ESP32-C3 modules pin compatible with ESP8266 & ESP32 modules

ESP32-C3 is the first RISC-V wireless SoC from Espressif Systems, and at the time of the initial announcement promised to cost about the same as ESP8266 but adds support for Bluetooth 5.0 LE besides 2.4 GHz WiFi, and retain software compatibility through the ESP-IDF framework. We were also told the goal was to provide ESP8266 compatible modules, and AI-Thinker has just announced five new ESP32-C3 modules compatible with earlier ESP8266 & ESP32 modules as shown in the table below. The table above is quite low resolution but that’s the best I could obtain from the company… It’s also a complete mess, not showing all alternative ESP8266 or mistaken in board sizes. So I’ll try to give a short summary of differentiating features and equivalent ESP8266/ESP32 modules: ESP32-C3F is meant to replace ESP-12F with a 24 x 16 mm form factor. It does add an IPEX connector, besides the PCB antenna. […]

April 22, 2021April 22, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

InfiniTime 1.0 firmware released for PineTime smartwatch

The PineTime smartwatch was unveiled and first launched in 2019, as a low-cost, open-source wearables development kit/platform for developers wanting to work on firmware development for the Nordic nRF52 powered device. Progress was made on various solutions such as ATCwatch Arduino firmware, and as time passed, the PineTime slowly became more like an “enthusiast-grade” end-user product. This is basically what it has become with the first stable release of InfiniTime firmware, which was selected as the default firmware in September 2020. The main features of InfiniTime 1.0 firmware include: Two clock faces – digital and analog Apps – Stopwatch, music control, navigation, heart rate, as well as Paddle and 2048 games User settings – Display timeout, time format, wake up conditions OTA upgrades via an open-source bootloader based on MCUBoot Heart rate monitoring and step counting Between 3 and 5 days of battery life depending on usage Firmware based on […]

March 16, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Sparkfun Thing Plus – Quicklogic EOS S3 Arm eFPGA board launched in Crowd Supply

SparkFun Electronics is a well-known electronics retailer that usually sells its in-house developed or third-party boards through its own online store. But this time around, the company decided to launch “Sparkfun Thing Plus – Quicklogic EOS S3” through Crowd Supply crowdfunding platform. The board is based on QuickFeather board designed with the same Quicklogic EOS S3 Arm Cortex-M4 plus embedded FPGA SoC, but follows Sparkfun’s Thing Plus form factor with a Qwiic connector and a different mix of sensors. Sparkfun Thing Plus – Quicklogic EOS S3 (QTPLUS-1.0) board specifications: SoC – QuickLogic EOS S3 MCU + eFPGA SoC with Arm Cortex-M4F Microcontroller up to 80 MHz, up to 512 Kb SRAM, and an embedded FPGA (eFPGA) with 2400 effective logic cells, 64 Kb RAM Storage – 16 Mbit SPI NOR flash (GigaDevice GD25Q16CEIGR) Sensors STMicro LIS2DH12TR accelerometer Digital pulse density modulation (PDM) microphone with Wake-on-Sound (WoS) feature: Vesper VM3011-U1 Expansion […]

March 3, 2021March 3, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

It’s raining i.MX 8M Plus systems-on-module at Embedded World 2021

NXP introduced i.MX 8M Plus AI SoC with a built-in 2.3 TOPS neural processing unit (NPU) last year, and we’ve already covered several early announcements about i.MX 8M Plus systems-on-module (SoM) with Variscite VAR-SOM-MX8M-PLUS and DART-MX8M-PLUS, TechNexion EDM-G-IMX8M-PLUS and AXON-E-IMX8M-PLUS respectively using SO-DIMM edge connectors and board-to-board connectors, as well as SolidRun i.MX 8M Plus SoM that was announced together with the HummindBoard Mate carrier board with dual Gigabit Ethernet. But as Embedded World 2021 Digital is taking place virtually until Friday, other companies have now made their own announcements of i.MX 8M Plus SoMs as the processor enters mass production this month, and since as far as I know, it’s pin-to-pin and software compatible with earlier i.MX 8M Nano/Mini SoCs, the update must have been easy. That means we’ve got a longish list of modules, and I have probably missed some. Supported operating systems are basically the same across […]