ASUS Tinker Board 3 is a credit card-sized SBC based on Rockchip RK3566 SoC with an HDMI port, a 3.5mm audio jack, gigabit Ethernet, an M.2 socket for WiFi and Bluetooth, four USB ports, and a 40-pin GPIO header with a layout similar to the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. When I first wrote about the Tinker Board 3 in 2023, it was a larger (100 x 100 mm) SBC based on Rockchip RK3568 SoC that was later renamed to Tinker Board 3N, now also available as a complete rugged system (more about that in a subsequent post). The new Tinker Board 3 (2024) is a completely different design that competes against Radxa ROCK 3C and Orange Pi 3B boards also based on RK3566 and offered in a business card/credit card form factor similar to the Raspberry Pi 3B. Tinker Board 3 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 CPU – Quad-core […]
Turing Pi 2.5 mini-ITX cluster board for system-on-modules launched along with a mini-ITX enclosure
The Turing Pi 2.5 is a mini-ITX motherboard designed for clusters of system-on-modules such as Raspberry Pi CM4, NVIDIA Jetson modules, or the company’s own RK1 SoM powered by a Rockchip RK3588 AI SoC. A mini-ITX case compatible with both the Turing Pi 2 and 2.5 boards is also available. The Turing Pi 2.5 is an upgrade to the earlier Turing Pi 2 with the main key features, but some updates related to USB, HDMI output, new 8-pin connectors for I2C, audio, and GPIO pins, and BMC upgrades. While the company has just announced the start of Turing Pi 2.5 and the mini-ITX case pre-order, documentation and photos on the store and documentation website have not been updated. Everything is still about the Turing Pi 2 except for the information in the announcement. I won’t go through the specs since they are not available for the latest version, but the […]
Linux 6.11 Release – Notable changes, Arm, RISC-V and MIPS architectures
Linux 6.11 is out with Linus Torvalds’ announcement on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML): I’m once again on the road and not in my normal timezone, but it’s Sunday afternoon here in Vienna, and 6.11 is out. The last week was actually pretty quiet and calm, which is nice to see. The shortlog is below for anybody who wants to look at the details, but it really isn’t very many patches, and the patches are all pretty small. Nothing in particular stands out – the biggest patch in here is for Hyper-V Confidential Computing documentation. Anyway, with this, the merge window will obviously open tomorrow, and I already have 40+ pull requests pending. That said, exactly _because_ I’m on the road, it will probably be a fairly slow start to the merge window, since not only am I on my laptop, there’s OSS Europe starting tomorrow and then the […]
NanoPi Zero2 is a tiny headless Arm Linux computer with Gigabit Ethernet, a USB port, and an M.2 Key-E socket for WiFi
FriendlyELEC NanoPi Zero2 is one of the world’s smallest Arm Linux computers with the 45x45mm board featuring a Rockchip RK3528A quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, up to 2GB RAM, microSD and eMMC flash module sockets for storage, a Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 jack, an M.2 socket for WiFi, a USB Type-A port, and a 30-pin GPIO FPC connector for expansion. When I went to find more information about the earlier NanoPi Zero, I quickly realized… it did not exist, and the closest thing we have is the ZeroPi released in 2019 with an Allwinner H3 Cortex-A7 processor and an even smaller 40x40mm form factor. The NanoPi Zero2 comes with a 64-bit processor, more memory, and optional support for an M.2 WiFi module among other improvements. It’s designed for headless applications since there’s no video output/display interface. NanoPi Zero2 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3528A CPU – Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 @ 2.0 GHz GPU – […]
Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro – A Rockchip RK3576-powered Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with up to 16GB RAM, 128GB flash, a 6 TOPS NPU
Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro, also called ArmSoM-CM5, is a Rockchip RK3576 system-on-module electrically and mechanically compatible with the Raspberry Pi CM4 while offering up to 16GB LPDDR5 memory, 128GB eMMC flash, and a 6 TOPS AI accelerator embedded into the RK3576 SoC. It comes with a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless module, a PMIC for power management, and two 100-pin connectors mostly compatible with the pinout of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. ArmSoM also provides a CM5-IO carrier board to make use of the extra USB 3.0 and PCIe interfaces, and the company told CNX Software they tested the module successfully with the official Raspberry Pi CM4 IO board. Banana Pi BPI-CM5 Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3576 CPU – 4x Cortex-A72 cores at 2.2GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores at 1.8GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MC3 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL up to 2.0, […]
DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8 released with improved support for Rockchip, Amlogic, and Allwinner SBCs
Armbian and DietPi are two separate projects that provide Linux-based OS images optimized for Arm-based single board computers. The last time we had a look at both projects was in June with the release of Armbian 24.5.1 and DietPi 9.4, but there have been several updates since then including the releases of the latest DietPi 9.7 and Armbian 24.8 Yelt just a few days ago. So let’s check out the latest changes. DietPi 9.7 DietPi is a lightweight Debian-based Linux distribution for SBCs and server systems that ships as a minimal image but users can install any packages they want, including the ones required for desktop environment, to match the requirements of the applications. It’s notably used by the Linamp project – a Raspberry Pi 4-based project that brings WinAMP to real life – that we covered a few weeks ago. DietPi 9.7 was released on August 25, 2024 with […]
Dusun DSGK-061 – A RK3568-powered VNC Edge AI box for industrial automation and remote management
Dusun has recently launched the DSGK-061 Smart VNC Edge Computing AI Box or DSGK-061 Edge AI Box for short. This new Edge AI gateway is powered by a Rockchip RK3568 quad-core processor with a 1 TOPS NPU for edge computing. It has a built-in VNC (Virtual Network Computing) application for remote management and supports various interfaces and communication protocols such as HDMI, USB 3.0, TTL serial, LAN/WAN, and WiFi, making it suitable for applications like industrial automation, smart manufacturing, and more. Previously we have written about similar Edge AI boxes like the Mixtile Edge AI box or Techbase iModGATE-AI, and some very powerful AI boxes with more than 30 TOPS NPU power like the Radxa Fogwise Airbox, the Firefly AIBOX-1684X, the Sipeed MaixBox M4N and more. Feel free to check those out if you are interested in similar products. Dusun DSGK-061 specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3568 CPU – Quad-core Cortex A55 processor […]
NanoPi R3S – A low-cost Rockchip RK3566 SBC and dual gigabit Ethernet router
FriendlyELEC NanoPi R3S is a low-cost Rockchip RK3566 SBC and router with two gigabit Ethernet ports, a USB 3.0 host ports, a USB-C port for power and data, a microSD card slot, Reset and Mask buttons, and a few LEDs. It also features a MIPI DSI connector for people wanting to connect a display. Its design and size are similar to the NanoPi R5C dual 2.5GbE SBC and router, so it could be viewed as a low-cost alternative with dual GbE, no M.2 socket for WiFi & Bluetooth, only one USB 3.0 port, and no HDMI video output. The company promotes it as an inexpensive platform for IoT applications, basic NAS solutions, and so on. NanoPi R3S specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 CPU – Quad-core Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MP2 GPU NPU – 0.8 TOPS AI accelerator VPU 4Kp60 H.265/H.264/VP9 video decoder 1080p60 […]