CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 Laptop Doubles as Electronics Learning Kit (Crowdfunding)

CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 Laptop with Detachable Keyboard

CrowPi portable learning kit for Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and Pi Zero boards was launched in 2018. It comes with a 7″ display, several sensors, buttons, a breadboard, and more all packed in a small suitcase. Elecrow has now started a new crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to fund the second generation portable electronics learning kit: CrowPi2 which looks much more like a laptop than a suitcase found in the first model thanks to a large display, and a detachable keyboard placed on top of the electronic prototyping/learning area. It’s also more powerful thanks to the latest Raspberry Pi 4 SBC. CrowPi2 specifications: Compatible Raspberry Pi boards – Raspberry Pi 3B/B+, Raspberry Pi 4 Display – 11.6-inch 1920×1080 IPS screen Camera – 2MP camera Audio – Built-in microphone and stereo speaker; 3.5mm audio jack Keyboard – 2.4GHz detachable wireless keyboard (QWERTY only) with touchpad Sensors and Modules under the keyboard: Displays […]

GNU Health Embedded Open Source Health Platform Works on Raspberry Pi 3/4, and soon Olimex SBC’s

GNU Health Embedded

GNU Health (GH) is a free and open-source Health and Hospital Information System (HIS) that can manage the internal processes of a health institution, such as financial management, electronic medical records (EMR), stock & pharmacies or laboratories (LIMS). It is already used in various hospitals, health centers, and medical research facilities in various countries, most developing countries, across the world. The program would normally be installed on x86 servers running Linux or FreeBSD, but there’s also a version for Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 based on openSUSE called GNU Health Embedded, and work is being done to port the solution to Olimex OlinuXino SBC’s. Contrary to what the photo above implies, GNU Solidario does not sell the hardware pre-loaded with GNU Health Embedded, but you can download it for free from their servers, and if you want to support the project you could always make a donation. As I understand […]

Dune HD RealBox 4K TV Box Runs Android and Linux on Realtek RTD1395 SoC

Dune HD Realbox 4K

Realtek RTD1395 processor is designed for 4K HDR TV boxes and set-top boxes. Equipped with a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor and Mali-470 GPU it offers a lower-cost alternative to Realtek RTD1295 and RTD1296 with the same 4K video processing and playback capabilities. So far, we had seen it in TV boxes designed for operators and Banana Pi BPI-M4 single board computer, but Dune HD RealBox 4K TV box is the first RTD1395 consumer device sold directly to end-users. Dune HD RealBox 4K  specifications: SoC – Realtek RTD1395 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-470MP4 GPU System Memory – 2 GB RAM Storage – 16 GB flash, MicroSD card slot Video Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4Kp60 HDR and AV port (composite) Audio – Optional S/PDIF, analog stereo audio via AV port, digital audio via HDMI port; HDMI audio pass-through to AV receiver Video Playback 4Kp60 HDR/HDR10+ with 10-bit H.265 and VP9 profile-2, […]

Qualcomm IPQ8074 Embedded Board Offers 802.11ax WiFI 6 12×12 MIMO DBDC Connectivity

Qualcomm IPQ8074 Reference Board

Qualcomm IPQ8074 802.11ax WiFi 6 SoC was first unveiled in 2017 and designed for high-end routers, gateways, and access points supporting up 12×12 MIMO configuration (8×8 5GHz + 4×4 2.4 GHz) using Dual-Band Dual Concurrency (DBDC). I was just informed about a Qualcomm IPQ8074 embedded board going under the names DR8074A or HK01 depending on the company promoting it, respectively Wallys Communication and Compex. Qualcomm IPQ8074 embedded board (AP.HK01) specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Atheros IPQ8074A quad-core Arm Cortex A53 processor 2.2GHz CPU System Memory – 1GB (2x 512MB) DDR3L RAM (Option for up to 4GB) Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, 32MB NOR Flash, 256MB NAND flash, 1x micro SD Card socket Connectivity Wired 5x Gigabit Ethernet (1GbE) RJ45 ports 1x 10Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) RJ45 port 1x SFP+ Port WiFi On-board 4×4 2.4GHz MU-MIMO 802.11b/g/n/ax WiFi 6 up to 1147Mbps On-board 2x(4×4) or 8×8 5GHz MU-MIMO 802.11a/n/ac/ax WiFI 6 up to […]

Orange Pi 4 SBC Gets a $16 4G LTE mini PCIe Card based on Rockchip RM310

Orange Pi 4 4G LTE Mini PCIe Card

Orange Pi 4 SBC is one of the most cost-effective Rockchip RK3399 SBC’s, as it sells for as low as $50 with 4GB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, and Bluetooth, HDMI 2.0 output, etc.. The board also comes with a 24-pin PCIe connector that’s not of much use on its own, so the company introduced a $4 PCIe adapter board providing access to a standard mPCIe socket and a SIM card slot so you could install your own. 4G mini PCIe cards can easily cost around $50 or more, but Shenzhen Xunlong Software has now launched its own 4G LTE mini PCIe card based on Rockchip RM310 module and sold for $16 on Aliexpress, excluding shipping. mPCIe card and RM310 module specifications: Frequency bands LTE-FDD – B1, B3, B5, B8 LTE-TDD – B38, B39, B40, B41 WCDMA – B1, B5, B8 GSM – 850, 900, 1800, and 1900 MHz Data rates […]

PineTab 10.1″ Linux tablet Launched for $99.99 with UBPorts OS

As expected, Pine64 PineTab Linux tablet with Allwinner A64 processor, 2GB RAM, and a 10.1″ touchscreen display has just launched for $99.99 or $119.98 with a detachable backlit keyboard on Pine64 Store. Note those are pre-orders with shipping scheduled for the end of July. PineTab won’t shatter performance records with a quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-400MP GPU, 2GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash, but it’s one of the rare Linux tablets on the market, and certainly the most affordable. The tablet offers a decent set of features too with a 10.1″ 720p capacitive display support for M.2 SATA SSD, Mini HDMI output, front-facing, and rear cameras, built-in WiFi and optional 4G LTE via the M.2 socket. It also comes with a 6,000 mAh battery that should be good for many hours. PineTab also leverages all the software work done since the launch of Pine A64 board in 2016 including mainline U-boot […]

Exor GigaSOM GS01 SoM and Devkit Combine Intel Atom E39xx CPU and Cyclone 10 GX FPGA

EXOR Intel Atom + Cyclone FPGA Smart Factory / Industrie 4.0 Development Kit

EXOR International has worked in collaboration with Arrow Electronics to design and manufacture GigaSOM GS01 system-on-module combining an Intel Atom E39xx Apollo Lake processor and Cyclone 10 GX FPGA. The module and corresponding development kit are specifically designed for smart factory & “Industrie 4.0” applications with the processor running Intel’s time-coordinated computing plus a real-time “IoT stack”, and the FPGA supporting IEEE 802.1 time-sensitive networking (TSN) and 10Gbps connectivity. GigaSOM GS01 module specifications: Apollo Lake SoC (one or the other) Intel Atom x5-E3930 dual-core processor @ 1.3 GHz / 1.8 GHz (Turbo) with 12EU Intel HD Graphics 500; 6.5W TDP Intel Atom x5-E3940 quad-core processor @ 1.6 GHz / 1.8 GHz with 12EU Intel HD Graphics 500; 9.5W TDP Intel Atom x7-E3950 quad-core processor @ 1.6 GHz / 2.0 GHz with 18EU Intel HD Graphics 505; 12W TDP FPGA – Intel Cyclone 10 GX up to 220 KLE System Memory […]

GNOME Renders on Arm Mali-G31 Bifrost GPU with Fully Open Source Code

Panfrost ODROID Go Advance Black Edition

We first wrote about Panfrost open-source Arm Mali GPU driver getting initial support for Mali-G31 Bifrost GPU in late April, when engineers at Collabora managed to run some basic demos. Progress has been fast-paced as the company has now implemented support for all major features of OpenGL ES 2.0 and some features of OpenGL 2.1. That means hardware-based on Arm Mali-G31 GPU such as ODROID Go Advance (used for testing) can run Wayland compositors with zero-copy graphics, including GNOME 3, every scene in glmark2-es2 benchmarks, and some 3D games such as Neverball. All without any binary blobs. The company also claims to support hardware-accelerated video players mpv and Kodi. The way it should work is that while Panfrost driver renders the user interface, Amlogic open-source video decoder developed by BayLibre handles hardware video decoding. All changes are already included in upstream Mesa with no out-of-tree patches required, and Bifrost support […]

Youyeetoo X1 x86 SBC