Linux Torvalds has announced the release of Linux 6.10 on LKML: So the final week was perhaps not quote as quiet as the preceding ones, which I don’t love – but it also wasn’t noisy enough to warrant an extra rc. And much of the noise this last week was bcachefs again (with netfs a close second), so it was all pretty compartmentalized. In fact, about a third of the patch for the last week was filesystem-related (there were also some btrfs latency fixes and other noise), which is unusual, but none of it looks particularly scary. Another third was drivers, and the rest is “random”. Anyway, this obviously means that the merge window for 6.11 opens up tomorrow. Let’s see how that goes, with much of Europe probably making ready for summer vacation. And the shortlog below is – as always – just the last week, not some kind […]
Waveshare PoE HAT (G) is a compact 25W PoE HAT+ for the Raspberry Pi 5
Waveshare PoE HAT (G) is a compact, easy-to-assemble “mini HAT” designed especially for the Raspberry Pi 5. The most unique thing about this PoE HAT+ is that Waveshare designed it so compact that it could fit in the stock Raspberry Pi case with the cooling fan attached. It supports the IEEE 802.3af/at network standard, delivering up to 5V/5A power output. Other features of the HAT+ include a 40-pin GPIO header, a non-isolated switched-mode power supply, and compatibility with 803.3af/at PoE routers or switches. This makes it ideal for remote monitoring, IoT applications, and networked devices. After the Raspberry Pi 5 was released in the last quarter of 2023, we saw Waveshare launch the PoE HAT (F), which also doubled as a cooling solution and followed the official Raspberry Pi PoE+ HAT introduced in 2021. Both modules are compatible with 802.3at (aka PoE+) and 802.3af standards and support up to 25.5 […]
SunFounder PiPower 3 kit is a UPS solution for the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC
SunFounder PiPower 3 kit is a UPS solution designed to work with the Raspberry Pi 5, other Arm SBCs, or even MCU boards like Arduino UNO and Raspberry Pi Pico. The board delivers a stable 5V/5A output, and a 32-bit CH32V003 RISC-V microcontroller takes care of power management and battery level reporting to make sure the Raspberry Pi 5 keeps running when a power failure occurs and shutdowns gracefully when the battery level is low. The kit comes with two 18650 2,000mAh batteries that connect through a 2-pin connector, and all accessories – standoffs, acrylic case, and fan – for assembly with the Raspberry Pi 5, or other compatible boards like the Pi 4, Banana Pi BPI-M5, Radxa Rock Pi E, Orange Pi 3B, and others. PiPower 3 kit specifications: 32-bit CH32V003 RISC-V microcontroller supporting I2C communication Input – 5V/5A via USB Type-C with PD support Output – 5V/5A […]
N-Fuse PoE HAT for the Raspberry Pi 5 also includes mini PCIe or M.2 Key-M/E/B sockets
N-Fuse has designed a PoE HAT for the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC that also serves as a PCIe expansion board thanks to either a mini PCIe socket or an M.2 Key-M, Key-B, or Key-E socket supporting 2230, 2242, or 3042 modules such as SSDs, AI accelerators, or wireless modules. The SBCPoE RPi5 HAT complies with the latest 802.3bt standard delivering up to 25W with active cooling or 15W with passive cooling. The HAT board still allows users to make use of the 40-pin Raspberry Pi 5 header thanks to a 40-pin Raspberry Pi interposition header. SBCPoE RPi5 HAT specifications: Power Supply IEEE 802.3af/at/bt compliant Overload protection 25W power delivery with active cooling, 15W without active cooling Output current up to 5A 5V output via optional 2.54mm pin header High efficiency (> 85%) enabled by active MOSFET bridge rectifier Short-Circuit Duration – infinity PCIe expansion (one or the other) Mini PCIe […]
RAUC open-source OTA update solution for embedded Linux ported to Rock Pi 4 SBC
RAUC open-source OTA update solution enabling A/B updates for embedded Linux images has recently been ported to the Radxa Rock Pi 4 Model B SBC powered by a Rockchip OP1 SoC by the project’s maintainer, Leon Anavi working for Konsulto Group. If you run a Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Debian, or Fedora, packages and OS images are taken care of automatically or by running a few commands. However, software engineers who build custom embedded Linux images with the Yocto Project or Buildroot must handle this themselves. Luckily, there are already open-source OTA firmware update solutions such as Mender, Balena, Torizon, OSTree, Snap, or RAUC, and we’ll look at the latter today. RAUC (Robust Auto-Update Controller) was started by Pengutronix in 2015 and eventually adopted by the community. It’s a lightweight update client that runs on an Embedded Linux device and controls the A/B update procedure when a new firmware revision […]
NUMA emulation patch boosts Geekbench 6 benchmark results by up to 18% on Raspberry Pi 5
Igalia Engineer, Tvrtko Ursulin has recently submitted a patch to the Linux kernel adding a NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Access) emulation implementation for arm64 platforms that boosts the performance of 64-bit Arm targets by “splitting the physical RAM into chunks and utilizing an allocation policy to better utilize parallelism in physical memory chip organization”.
The NUMA emulation implementation was tested on a Raspberry Pi 5 SBC and the Geekbench 6 single-core score improved by 6%, while the multi-core score boosted by 18% after splitting into four emulated NUMA nodes. In other words, that’s like having a Broadcom BCM2712 CPU overclocked from 2.4 GHz up to 2.83 GHz.
PCIe to 5G HAT+ for Raspberry Pi 5 takes SIMCom and Quectel 5G modules
Waveshare PCIe to 5G/4G/3G HAT+ for Raspberry Pi 5 is a PCIe Gen 2 x1 to M.2 HAT+ designed to take 5G modules from SIMCom and Quectel and a Nano SIM card. The kit ships with a 4-in-1 PCB antenna, associated cables, a heatsink, a 4cm 16-pin PCIe FPC cable, a 40-pin female header, and a fixture set for mounting. We had previously written about the SixFab 5G HAT for the Raspberry Pi 5 with a Quectel RM502Q-AE M.2 module, but this specific kit still relies on the USB 3.0 interface. The Waveshare kit is the first 5G kit using the PCIe interface from the Raspberry Pi 5 interface and it is offered with Quectel RM502Q-AE, RM530N-GL, RM520N-GL, or SIMCom SIM8262E-M2, SIM8262A-M2 M.2 3042/3052 modules. Waveshare PCIe to 5G HAT+ specifications: M.2 Key B socket for 3042/3052 5G modules with PCIe interface 16-pin PCIe FPC connector directly connected to the […]
SBC software news – Armbian 24.5.1, DietPi 9.4, and Otii server for the Raspberry Pi 4/5
There’s been some notable software news for single board computers (SBCs) in the last few weeks with the release of Armbian 24.5.1 Havier with a focus on stability and UX improvement, the release of DietPi 9.4 lightweight Debian distritions for SBCs, and Otii server, the software for Qoitech Arc power supply, meter, and DAQ, has been finally released for the Raspberry Pi 4/5. Armbian 24.5.1 Havier Armbian announced 24.5.1 Havier on May 25 with bug fixes and improvements as a point release, but also some new boards. Here are some of the highlights. New boards Orange Pi 5 Pro FriendlyElec CM3588 NAS board Radxa ROCK 5 ITX Radxa Zero 3E/3W Avaota A1 SBC SK-AM68 board tqma8mpxl board CSC Hinlink H6xk boards RK3588-based Cool Pi CM5 EVB Improve Khadas support Resolve Rockchip patch maintenance nightmare Add functionality to freeze git resources Improve support for Radxa Rock S 0 and test USB […]