Category: Broadcom BCMxxxx

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 43 Comments on Raspberry Pi 5 review – Part 2: Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, benchmarks, power consumption, and more

Raspberry Pi 5 review – Part 2: Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, benchmarks, power consumption, and more

Raspberry Pi 5 Review Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm

A few days ago I finally went through the Raspberry Pi 5 kit I received last September going through all the items and booting it with Raspberry Pi OS bookworm. I’ve now had time to perform more tests to check out the performance with benchmarks and test various features on the Raspberry Pi 5. So I’ll report my experience in the second part of the review and compare the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC to the Raspberry Pi 4 and some other Arm Linux SBCs.

System information in Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm

Last time around, I installed the Raspberry Pi 5 in its official case, but for most of the testing, I decided to go back to the bare board fitted with its active cooler since it’s the best cooling option as we’ll see further in the review.

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on Raspberry Pi 5 Kit Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Assembly and First Boot

Raspberry Pi 5 Kit Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Assembly and First Boot

Raspberry Pi 5 Kit Review Raspberry Pi OS boot

I’m quite late on that one, but after an extended holiday, I’m now ready to review the Raspberry Pi 5 the company sent me last month. I’ll do so with the latest Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm based on Debian 12 and CNX Software’s “tropical reviews” are usually more demanding than most others due to the higher ambient temperature (usually around 28°C in my room) in Thailand. But since Raspberry Pi did not just send the Raspberry Pi 5, but a full kit with keyboard, mouse, enclosure, and more, I’ll start with a post mostly looking at the hardware with an unboxing, assembly, plus a quick try at Debian 12 on the new SBC. Raspberry Pi 5 Kit Unboxing Besides the Raspberry Pi 5 itself, the package included the active cooler (heatsink + fan), a microSD card preloaded with a pre-release Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm image, a USB-PD power supply, a […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Raspberry Pi CM4-based industrial panel PC adds 4G LTE, RS232 and RS485, M.2 NVMe SSD

Raspberry Pi CM4-based industrial panel PC adds 4G LTE, RS232 and RS485, M.2 NVMe SSD

10.1-inch Raspberry Pi CM4 panel PC

EDATEC ED-HMI2120-101C is a Raspberry Pi CM4-based industrial panel PC with a 10.1-inch capacitive touchscreen display with plenty of interfaces to cater to a wide range of use cases from robotics to energy management and industrial automation. The panel PC builds upon the ED-HMI2020-101C introduced just a few months ago, but adds a range of features with dual Ethernet, RS485 and RS232 interfaces, and optional supports for an M.2 NVMe SSD and 4G LTE cellular connectivity. The device now supports an even wider DC input range from 9V to 36V and provides three 12V DC outputs to power external hardware such as an additional LCD. ED-HMI2120-101C specifications (with highlights in bold and strikethrough showing the differences against the earlier ED-HMI2020-101C model): System-on-Module (SoM) – Raspberry Pi CM4 SoC – Broadcom BCM2711 CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A72 processor @ 1.5GHz GPU – VideoCore VI conformant with OpenGL ES 3.1 & Vulkan 1.2 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Raspberry Pi Zero W-based Weather Orbs shows weather data on three round displays (Crowdfunding)

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 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments on Raspberry Pi OS upgraded to Debian 12 “Bookworm”

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 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 97 Comments on Raspberry Pi 5 SBC launched with 2.4 GHz Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 SoC

Raspberry Pi 5 SBC launched with 2.4 GHz Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 SoC

Raspberry Pi 5

The long-awaited Raspberry Pi 5 SBC is finally here with a powerful Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor clocked at 2.4 GHz, 4GB or 8GB memory, and the usual Raspberry Pi Model B form factor. The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B was introduced in June 2019, so it took over four years to get a new model, and the Raspberry Pi 5 should deliver 2 to 4 times the performance, compete directly with Raspberry Pi-shaped Rockchip RK3588S SBCs such as the Radxa Rock 5A or Cool Pi 4 Model B and benefit from a larger community and better software support. Raspberry Pi 5 specifications: SoC – Broadcom BCM2712 CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor @ 2.4 GHz with crypto extensions, 512KB per-core L2 caches, 2MB shared L3 cache GPU – VideoCore VII GPU @ 800 MHz with support for OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.2, 4Kp60 HEVC decoder System Memory – 4GB […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on EDATEC ED-IPC2100 industrial computer offers 4x RS485/RS232 ports

EDATEC ED-IPC2100 industrial computer offers 4x RS485/RS232 ports

EDATEC ED-IPC2100 industrial computer with RS485 and RS232 ports

EDATEC has launched four more Raspberry Pi CM4-powered industrial computers with the ED-IPC2100 Series that mostly differ from the earlier ED-IPC2010 model with an extra M.2 Key-B socket for an SSD, an extra 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, and four COM ports with RS232 or RS485 interfaces depending on the exact model. The new ED-IPC2100 series industrial computer family ships with a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 with up to 8GB RAM, 32GB flash, optional WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0, and offers a full-size HDMI video output, two Ethernet ports, and a few USB ports. The ED-IPC2120 model looks to offer some extra features such as an HDMI Touch FPC connector, MIPI CSI camera and DSI display connectors, and audio interfaces. ED-IPC2100-series specifications: SoM – Raspberry Pi CM4 SoC – Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 processor @ 1.5GHz with VideoCore VI GPU System Memory – 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB LPDRR4-3200 RAM Storage […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on Review of CM4 XGO Lite – A Raspberry Pi CM4 based smart robot dog with a robotic arm

Review of CM4 XGO Lite – A Raspberry Pi CM4 based smart robot dog with a robotic arm

XGO CM4 Lite Review Raspberry Pi Robot

The CM4 XGO Lite is a smart robot dog based on Raspberry Pi CM4 system-on-module and designed to learn to program using Blockly, Python, and ROS. This four-legged robot also happens to feature a 3-joint robot arm and a robot gripper installed on the back that can pick up light objects. The Raspberry Pi CM4 module drives the LCD screen and camera and performs AI and computer vision processing, while each joint is controlled with a servo motor, and a 6-axis tilt sensor ensures stable walking and movement. We’ve already discussed the capabilities of the CM4 XGO Lite, aka XGO Lite 2, when it was announced earlier this year, so we’re not going to go into details here, but some of the highlights include support for faster AI edge computing applications such as face detection and object classification, omnidirectional movement, six-dimensional posture control, posture stability, and multiple motion gaits. Robot […]

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