Trenz Electronic introduced ZynqBerry in 2017 as a Xilinx Zynq FPGA board following Raspberry Pi 2/3 Model B form factor, and the company has now just launched another Raspberry Pi inspired FPGA board with ZynqBerryZero following Raspberry Pi Zero form factor. ZynqberryZero is equipped with a Xilinx Zynq-7000 series FPGA & Arm Cortex-A9 SoC combined with 512 MB RAM and 16MB flash, and offers all Raspberry Pi Zero ports namely a 40-pin GPIO header, two micro USB ports, a mini HDMI connector, a CSI connector, and micro SD card slot. ZynqBerryZero specifications: SoC – Xilinx Zynq XC7Z010-1CLG225C with dual-core Cortex-A9 clocked up to 667 MHz, FPGA fabric with 28K logic cells, 2.1Mbit block RAM, and 80x DSP slices System Memory – 512 MB DDR3L SDRAM Storage – 16 MB Flash memory, MicroSD card slot Video Output – Mini HDMI connector, type C Camera – CSI-2 connector USB – 1x Micro […]
Puffin Cloud Learning Renders Web Pages Up to 14 Times Faster on Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi is a great little Arm Linux board designed for STEM education. But with many children now have to learn remotely, the board would be useful as a computer replacement, but users may find web browsing on the Raspberry Pi to be rather sluggish. Puffin Cloud Learning is designed just for that use case and promises to make the Raspberry Pi SBC much faster for web browsing, and they tested several websites, and for instance, CNN website loads almost 14 times faster with the Puffin Internet Terminal compared to using Chromium only. How is that possible? Simple: the Raspberry Pi is simply used as a thin client with complex web rendering performed on the company’s encrypted cloud servers where a JavaScript engine is used to pre-process and compress web pages sent to the Raspberry Pi. The company also claims Puffin Internet Terminal is 1200% faster than Chromium using […]
Review of FamiSafe Phone Tracking & Parental Control App (Sponsored)
CNXSoft here. I’ve been tasked with reviewing Famisafe parental control app for Android and iOS acting both as a parental control app and phone tracker app and designed for parents who want to track their kids’ location and better control when to use the phone and what content they may access. The first thing to get started is to download the free trial on either Android or iOS. I actually downloaded both versions for FamiSafe for this review, since I used Huawei Y9 Prime 2019 (Android 10) as the “parent” smartphone, and an iPhone 6 as the “kid” phone. Famisafe Initial Configuration We’ll have to start with the “parent” phone. After a welcome screen explaining some of the main features including offensive content detection, device & app usage rules, web filter, etc.. you’ll be asked to select whether it’s the parent or kid device. Once we select “Parent” we’ll be […]
PicoCore RT1 System-on-Module Runs FreeRTOS on NXP i.MX RT1050 Crossover Processor
F&S Elektronik Systeme PicoCore RT1 is a System-on-Module powered by NXP i.MX RT1050 crossover processor designed to offer the real-time capabilities of microcontrollers and the performance of application processors thanks to an Arm Cortex-M7 core clocked at up to 600 MHz. The 40×35 mm module is also equipped with 32MB SDRAM, 256MB “high-reliability QSPI NOR flash, and 16KB EEPROM, and offers various interfaces including Ethernet, RGB LCD, and USB via board-to-board connectors. PicoCore RT1 (V1) SoM specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX RT1050 Arm Cortex-M7 processor @ up to 600 MHz with 32KB L2 cache, 2D graphics accelerator System Memory – 32MB SDRAM Storage – 256MB QSPI Flash, 16KB EEPROM; optional NAND flash 2x 80-pin board-to-board connector with Storage – SD Card Display – 16-bit RG interface, analog resistive and PCAP touch via I2C Networking – 1x 10/100M Ethernet Audio – Line-In, Line-Out, microphone, headphone, I2S USB – 1x USB 2.0 […]
Whiskey Lake Thin Mini ITX SBC Features Eight USB Interfaces, Dual SATA, Dual GbE, and More
Advantech AIMB-233 thin mini-ITX SBC is equipped with a choice of 15W Intel Whiskey Lake processors, supporting up to 32GB RAM, and offering plenty of high speed I/Os include eight USB interfaces, two SATA III ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, several PCIe & M.2 expansion slots, as well as triple display support, six COM ports, and more. The motherboard complies with the “thin mini-ITX” requirement of not exceeding 2.5cm in height, and Advantech expects the thin Mini-ITX SBC to be found in nursing carts, patient care systems, Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI), and mobile devices. AIMB-233 thin mini-ITX SBC specifications: SoC (One or the other) Intel Core i7-8665UE quad-core/octa-thread processor @ up to 1.7 / 4.4 GHz with Intel UHD Graphics 620 – 15W TDP Intel Core i5-8365UE quad-core/octa-thread processor @ up to 1.6 / 4.1 GHz with Intel UHD Graphics 620 – 15W TDP Intel Core i3-8145UE dual-core/quad-thread processor @ up to […]
UPX-Edge BrainFrame Edge AI DevKit Targets Smart Video Analytics
AAEON UP Xtreme Edge (UPX-Edge) is a rugged embedded computer built around the company’s UP Xtreme SBC with a choice of 15W Whiskey Lake-U processors ranging from Celeron 4305UE to Core i7-8665UE, and optional Intel Movidius X AI accelerator cards. We previously noted the company had launched UP Xtreme Smart Surveillance kit integrating Milestone video management software (VMS) and SAIMOS video analytics software to the embedded computer. AAEON has now partnered with another company – AOTU.AI – to announce the launch of the BrainFrame Edge AI Developers Kit (DevKit) aiming to help developers and system integrators to rapidly create and deploy Smart Vision applications. The solution relies on UP Xtreme Edge mini PC fitted with an Intel Core i5-8365UE processor and 16GB RAM, 64GB eMMC flash, and two Intel Movidius Myriad X VPUs. We’ve also gone through Up Xtreme Edge specifications, so let’s instead focus on the software. This is […]
NanoPi NEO3 and NanoPi R2S Gateways Review – Part 1: Unboxing & Teardown
This morning I received a message from DHL informing me of an incoming package from Hong Kong and sent by a company (i.e. an agent) I had never heard of. My first reaction was “Ah” shortly followed by “Why?!”. But in any case, I’ve just received the package, and after tearing the plastic out, I found a FriendlyELEC branded package. So I thought to myself it must be a NanoPi board for review. Wrong! I actually got two NanoPi “boards” namely NanoPi NEO3 with 2GB RAM, and NanoPi R2S both of which are Rockchip RK3328 powered SBC’s designed for Linux headless applications. Unboxing After opening both packages, I realized I did not get the SBC versions, but instead the complete gateways with their respective enclosure. NEO3 is really light since the case is in plastic, while R2S is a bit heavier due to the metal case. NanoPi NEO3 gateway comes […]
OnLogic Introduces Fanless Apollo Lake Thin Clients Running IGEL Edge OS
OnLogic has launched its first two offerings as part of the new IGEL Ready program with IGL200 and IGL300 fanless thin clients powered by various Intel Apollo Lake processors. IGEL Edge OS enables the devices to be used for distributed computing, virtualization, and thin clients, and OnLogic thin clients target users in the manufacturing, energy, automation, and industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) sectors. OnLogic IGL200 Specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core Apollo Lake processor @ 1.1 GHz / 2.4 Ghz (Burst freq.) with Intel HD Graphics 500 System Memory – Up to 4GB LPDDR4-2133 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash, MicroSD Card slot, mSATA slot Video Output – 2x Mini DisplayPort outputs with dual independent display support Audio – 1x audio Jack with Line-out and Mic-in Networking 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports via Realtek RTL8111G controller 4x antenna holes for optional cellular modem or/and WiFi USB – 1x USB 2.0 port, […]