Raspberry Pi Zero W-based Weather Orbs shows weather data on three round displays (Crowdfunding)

Weather Orbs

Peter Holderith’s Weather Orbs is a Raspberry Pi Zero W-powered desktop weather station that displays animated weather data from NOAA and NWS on three small round displays connected over SPI. Internally it’s an add-on board that connects to the 40-pin GPIO header of the Raspberry Pi Zero W and with three additional headers to connect the smartwatch round displays. The PCB also comes with 16 RGB LEDs to create some nice lighting effects. The Raspberry Pi Zero W and accompanying electronics are housed in a custom “high-quality” 3D printed enclosure with a cover made of brushed stainless steel, and thick glass magnifiers complete the design for a retro style. The default firmware fetches weather data, such as live satellite images from NOAA or radar from NWS, and displays those on the three round displays. It also starts a Wi-Fi hotspot called “weatherorbs” to which the user can connect and then […]

Hummingboard 8P Edge AI SBC combines NXP i.MX 8M Plus SoC with Hailo-8 AI accelerator

HummingBoard 8P Edge AI Kit

Hummingboard 8P Edge AI Pico-ITX SBC combines an NXP i.MX 8M Plus processor – itself with a 2.3 TOPS NPU – with the 26 TOPS Hailo-8 AI accelerator for edge AI applications such as smart cameras and automated optical inspection. The compact board comes with up to 8GB RAM, up to 128GB eMMC flash, two gigabit Ethernet ports including one with PoE, WiFi 5, a MIPI camera interface, HDMI and micro HDMI ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and more. Hummingboard 8P Edge AI specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Plus quad-core Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.8 GHz with Arm Cortex-M7 @ up to 800 MHz, Vivante GC7000UL 3D GPU, Vivante GC520L 2D GPU, 2.3 TOPS NPU System Memory – Up to 8GB LPDDR4 Storage – Up to 128GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot AI accelerator – M.2 Hailo-8 module delivering up to 26 TOPS Video Output – HDMI and Micro […]

OpenWrt 23.05 released with MbedTLS by default, Rust packages, over 1,790 supported devices

OpenWrt 23.05

OpenWrt 23.05 open-source Linux operating system for routers and resource-constrained headless embedded systems has just been released with over 4300 commits since the release of OpenWrt 22.03 a little over a year ago. The new release now supports over 1790 devices or about over 200 new devices compared to the OpenWrt 22.03 release with notable new targets including the ipq807x target for the Qualcomm IPQ807x WiFi 6 SoCs, the mediatek/filogic subtarget for the Mediatek Filogic 830 and 630 SoCs, and the sifiveu target for the HiFive Unleashed and Unmatched RISC-V development boards. OpenWrt 23.05 switches from wolfSSL to MbedTLS as default because the latter has a much smaller footprint and offers a more stable ABI (application binary interface) and LTS releases, but it does lack support for TLS 1.3, so users who need the latter may still switch to wolfSSL if needed. Another highlight of the new OpenWrt release is […]

SZBOX S100 pocket-sized Mini PC offers 2.5GbE & WiFi 6 networking, dual HDMI

SZBOX S100

SZBOX S100 is a pocket-sized mini PC powered by an Intel Processor N100 CPU, with 16GB LPDDR5 memory, and features such as 2.5GbE & WiFi 6 networking and support for dual 4K display setups through HDMI ports. The mini PC is either offered as a barebone model with 16GB RAM and no storage or with a 256GB to 1TB M.2 SATA SSD preloaded with Windows 11 Pro. Other highlights include three USB 3.2 ports and a  3.5mm audio jack. SZBOX S100 specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N quad-core/quad-thread processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel HD graphics @ up to 750 MHz; TDP: 6W System Memory – 16GB LPDDR5-4800 soldered on the motherboard Storage – Optional 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB M.2 SATA 2242 SSD Video Output 2x HDMI 2.0 ports up to 4Kp60 Dual independent display support Audio – 3.5mm headphone jack, digital […]

Raspberry Pi OS upgraded to Debian 12 “Bookworm”

Raspberry Pi OS Debian 12 Bookworm

Raspberry Pi has announced a new release of Raspberry Pi OS based on Debian 12 “Bookworm” upgrading from Debian 11 “Bullseye” which served as the base for the Raspberry Pi operating system since November 2021. As explained in the announcement, not much changes from the user perspective when switching between Debian 11 and Debian 12 with a lot of changes occurring under the hood plus they also worked on some extra features specific to Raspberry Pi OS. Wayland on Raspberry Pi OS The main change is the switch from the legacy X11 window manager to the more modern Wayland system with WayFire compositor that delivers better performance when drawing windows and improved security since it’s not using a server/client implementation. Note that Wayland is only enabled by default on Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 boards, and earlier and less powerful models still rely on X11 as work is going on […]

Microchip PIC32CZ CA 300 MHz Arm Cortex-M7 MCU features a Hardware Security Module (HSM)

Microchip PIC32CZ CA HSM module

Microchip PIC32CZ CA is a new family of Arm Cortex-M7 microcontrollers with the PIC32CZ CA90 integrating a Hardware Security Module (HSM), and the PIC32CZ CA80 doing without one. The HSM in the PIC32CZ CA90 provides advanced security for industrial and consumer applications and operates as a secure subsystem with a separate MCU on board that runs the firmware and security features including hardware secure boot, key storage, cryptographic acceleration, true random number generator, and more. Microchip PIC32CZ CA key features and specifications: MCU core – Arm Cortex-M7 clocked at up to 300 MHz with 16KB ECC-protected instruction and data L1 cache, up to 256Kb of Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM): 128 KB each of ECC-protected Instruction and Data TCM Memory 512KB or 1MB SRAM with ECC, 8KB SRAM for backup mode 2MB, 4MB, or 8MB flash 2x 80KB boot flash memory 16-bit external bus interface (EBI) – Static memory controller for […]

SECO Modular Vision HMI displays support Arm and x86 SMARC 2.1 modules

SECO Modular Vision SMARC HMI panel PC

SECO has unveiled a new HMI family of smart displays called the “Modular Vision” with NXP i.MX 93 (Arm), NXP i.MX 8M (Arm), or Intel Elkhart Lake (x86) powered SMARC 2.1-compliant system-on-modules and a display size ranging from 7-inch up to 15.6-inch. The goal is to offer a flexible platform to customers who can select various display sizes (7-inch, 10.1-inch, or 15.6-inch currently) and a SMARC module that closely matches the product’s requirements for example for a standalone panel PC. SECO Modular Vision key features and specifications: SoC 7-inch model – NXP i.MX93 single or dual-core Arm Cortex-A55 @ 1.7 GHz, Arm Cortex-M33 @ 250MHz, Arm Ethos U-65 microNPU 10.1-inch model – NXP i.MX 8M Plus dual or quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.8 GHz, Arm Cortex-M7 @ 800MHz, optional GPU/VPU/2.3 TOPS NPU 15.6-inch model – Intel Atom x6000E, Pentium, and Celeron N and J Series  “Elkhart Lake” CPUs with Intel […]

Barebone M4 fanless mini PC features Intel Processor N100 for $106 and up

TopTon M4 mini PC

I thought it would be hard to beat the price of the Processor N100 ZX05 mini PC, but the Topton M4 fanless mini PC does just that for just $106.53 plus shipping. The trick for that price is that the M4 is a barebone mini PC without any RAM, storage, or wireless module, but some may see it as an advantage preferring to purchase RAM, storage, and/or a WiFi module separately, or simply having the ability to replace or upgrade them when needed. M4 mini PC specifications: SoC – Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N quad-core/quad-thread processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel HD graphics @ up to 750 MHz; TDP: 6W System Memory – Up to 32GB (TBC) DDR4-3200 via SO-DIMM socket Storage 1x M.2 2280 socket for NVMe (PCIE3.0 x2) or SATA III SSD 1x mSATA socket SATA III port for up to 7mm […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC