Testing Category - Page 60 of 169 - CNX Software

September 28, 2019December 14, 2019 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 23 Comments

Beelink J45 Mini PC Review – Windows 10 Works as Expected, but Linux is Unstable

[Update December 14, 2019: We’ve now found out that Ubuntu 18.04 can work fine on Beelink J45, but the Realtek Ethernet driver needs to be manually installed] Beelink has added a new mini PC to their ‘Gemini’ range (X45 and X55) namely the Beelink J45 (aka Beelink Gemini J45). What is rather unusual about the naming of this mini PC is that it uses the slightly older Intel Apollo Lake Pentium J4205 CPU which is a quad-core 4-thread 1.50 GHz processor boosting to 2.60 GHz with Intel’s HD Graphics 505. The J45 is another ‘NUC’ style mini PC and physically consists of a 115 x 102 x 43 mm (4.53 x 4.02 x 1.69 inches) box case with a front panel that includes the power button, a headphone jack and a couple of USB 3.0 ports and then on the rear, two more USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI (1.4)ports up […]

September 25, 2019 by Karl Johnson - 6 Comments

Sovol SV01 Review – A 3D Printer that Prints like a Boss

Howdy, Karl here. Let’s do this backward today and give final thoughts first …I like the SV01 3D printer. With a print volume of 280x240x300mm, it’s a good size printer. I think I could get several more centimeters in height if I relocated the filament sensor. I have had it for several months and have printed with it quite a bit and had a really good experience. It is a keeper. By that I mean I have reviewed quite a few printers and I don’t have enough space to keep them all. I find the less desirable ones good homes with friends and family. BTW I plan on doing a follow up soon for all the past articles. Just a few highlights per past article. I think it would be interesting. It is hard to truly review some products in a short amount of time. Back to the SV01…IMO, likes […]

September 13, 2019September 12, 2019 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 3 Comments

CHUWI GBOX Pro Review – Intel Atom x7-E3950 mini PC Tested with Windows 10 & Ubuntu 18.04

CHUWI has released a new mini PC called the GBox Pro. This is a passively cooled mini PC that uses the slightly older Apollo Lake Intel Atom x7-E3950 CPU which is a quad core 4-thread 1.60 GHz processor boosting to 2.00 GHz with Intel’s HD Graphics 505. The GBox Pro is somewhat physically larger than typical recent mini PCs and consists of a 189 x 139 x 39 mm (7.44 x 5.47 x 1.54 inches) rectangular case with a front panel that includes the power button, micro SD slot, a couple of USB 3.0 ports and a Type-C USB port and then on the rear, a headphone jack, two USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit ethernet port, an HDMI (2.0) port and a VGA interface. The full specifications include: The GBox Pro comes with 64GB of eMMC with pre-installed Windows 10 Home (version 1809 OS build 17763.316) together with 4GB of […]

September 5, 2019July 8, 2020 by Karl Johnson - 57 Comments

How to Easily Calibrate Retraction in 3D Printers

[Update July 2020: It is now recommended to use Calibration Generator program instead of the Google Doc Spreadsheet in this article] Hey, Karl here with a short article on retraction tuning. I really enjoy reviewing 3D printers and all things 3D printing with one exception…. when I have to calibrate retraction (aka retraction tuning). It takes so much time. What is Retraction? While 3D printing on a standard FDM printer, the filament is pushed with an extruder motor that has a gear attached. It pushes the filament, either directly into the hotend assembly or through a Bowden tube to the hotend. Molten plastic is then layered to produce a model. When it is printing nearly all prints require non-extruding movements. During the extruding moves pressure builds up and in order to stop stringing and blobbing during non-printing moves, a retraction happens. There are 2 main variables that affect this: the […]

September 2, 2019April 26, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 26 Comments

Khadas VIM3 Linux Benchmarks and Comparison to Raspberry Pi 4

I received Khadas VIM3 Amlogic A311D SBC in early July and started testing it with Android running some benchmarks and playing games last month. I was impressed by graphics performance and overall benchmark results in Android, especially the results I got with a heatsink matched Khadas own results with heatsink + fan. So I installed the latest Ubuntu 18.04 available at the time (July 19) in order to repeat benchmarks in Linux and see how it goes. System info in Ubuntu 18.04:

khadas@Khadas:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release 
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=18.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=bionic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS"
khadas@Khadas:~$ uname -a
Linux Khadas 4.9.179 #73 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jul 19 09:56:46 CST 2019 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux
khadas@Khadas:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev            305M     0  305M   0% /dev
tmpfs           187M  9.5M  177M   6% /run
/dev/rootfs      15G  2.6G   12G  19% /
tmpfs           931M     0  931M   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           931M     0  931M   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs           187M   12K  187M   1% /run/user/1000
khadas@Khadas:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           1861         358        1100          10         402        1479
Swap:           930           0         930

khadas@Khadas:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu

DISTRIB_RELEASE=18.04

DISTRIB_CODENAME=bionic

DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS"

khadas@Khadas:~$ uname -a

Linux Khadas 4.9.179 #73 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jul 19 09:56:46 CST 2019 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

khadas@Khadas:~$ df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on

udev 305M 0 305M 0% /dev

tmpfs 187M 9.5M 177M 6% /run

/dev/rootfs 15G 2.6G 12G 19% /

tmpfs 931M 0 931M 0% /dev/shm

tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock

tmpfs 931M 0 931M 0% /sys/fs/cgroup

tmpfs 187M 12K 187M 1% /run/user/1000

khadas@Khadas:~$ free -m

total used free shared buff/cache available

Mem: 1861 358 1100 10 402 1479

Swap: 930 0 930

I decided to install armbianmonitor to draw some nice temperature charts as I did with Raspberry Pi 4:

wget https://github.com/armbian/build/raw/master/packages/bsp/common/usr/bin/armbianmonitor
sudo cp armbianmonitor /usr/bin/
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/armbianmonitor
sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2C0D3C0F
sudo wget http://goo.gl/vewCLL -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rpimonitor.list
sudo armbianmonitor -r

wget https://github.com/armbian/build/raw/master/packages/bsp/common/usr/bin/armbianmonitor

sudo cp armbianmonitor /usr/bin/

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/armbianmonitor

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2C0D3C0F

sudo wget http://goo.gl/vewCLL -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rpimonitor.list

sudo armbianmonitor -r

But I had some error during installation:

sudo armbianmonitor -r
Installing RPi-Monitor. This can take up to 5 minutes. Be patient please/usr/bin/armbianmonitor: line 189: /etc/armbian-release: No such file or directory

Now you're able to enjoy RPi-Monitor at http://192.168.1.8:8888

sudo armbianmonitor -r

Installing RPi-Monitor. This can take up to 5 minutes. Be patient please/usr/bin/armbianmonitor: line 189: /etc/armbian-release: No such file or directory

Now you're able to enjoy RPi-Monitor at http://192.168.1.8:8888

And while I can load the webpage with top menu appearing, it won’t show any data, as its name implies it may only work in Armbian. SBC Bench on Khadas VIM3 Let’s download SBC bench:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThomasKaiser/sbc-bench/master/sbc-bench.sh

1	wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ThomasKaiser/sbc-bench/master/sbc-bench.sh

Note that I had […]

August 26, 2019 by Karl Johnson - 10 Comments

Beelink GT-King (Amlogic S922X) TV Box Review

Rant Karl here. I have been playing around with Android boxes for several years. Unfortunately, some fundamental issues from when I first started playing around with these boxes are still there. They have come a long way since the MK808 with Rockchip RK3066 processor. The MK808 was my first endeavor into Android on the TV in 2013. I can’t believe it’s been nearly 6 years. In 2014 Google introduced Android TV and the Nexus Player. It was designed for a TV and controller. The first boxes/sticks adapted the stock Android experience to run on a TV, but without a touch interface the experience was/is not optimal. Sure you get thousands and thousands of apps but a lot of them don’t work. Unfortunately, this hasn’t changed much. If these boxes came with Linux and Android I don’t think I would complain as much. I would consider it a tinkering box. But […]

August 26, 2019August 25, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Getting Started with ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit and Home Assistant

ANAVI Gas Detector is an ESP8266 based board designed for MQ gas sensors supported by Arduino. This allows you to easily monitor air quality, or more accurately air conductivity using MQ-135 sensor as part of the starter kit either visually on the OLED display, or through your smartphone or computer using MQTT via automation platform such as Home Assistant. Leon Anavi sent me an ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit to have a look, and I’ll report my experience with the kit using it standalone, and through Home Assistant. Starter Kit Unboxing The kit contains the open-source hardware, ESP8266 based ANAVI Gas Detector board, a plastic stand, an OLED display, a USB to serial adapter, a gas sensor, and a few KiCad and ANAVI stickers. The board itself comes with an ESP8266MOD module, features a micro USB port for power, a reset button, four LEDs, a UART console, a 4-pin GPIO […]

August 21, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Getting Started with Sipeed M1 based Maixduino Board & Grove AI HAT for Raspberry Pi

Last year we discovered Kendryte K210 processor with a RISC-V core and featuring AI accelerators for machine vision and machine hearing. Soon after, Sipeed M1 module was launched with the processor for aroud $10. Then this year we started to get more convenient development board featuring Sipeed M1 module such as Maixduino or Grove AI Hat. Seeed Studio sent me the last two boards for review. So I’ll start by showing the items I received, before showing how to get started with MicroPython and Arduino code. Note that I’ll be using Ubuntu 18.04, but development in Windows is also possible. Unboxing I received two packages with a Maixduino kit, and the other “Grove AI HAT for Edge Computing”. Grove AI HAT for Edge Computing Let’s start with the second. The board is a Raspberry Pi HAT with Sipeed M1 module, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi header, 6 grove connectors, as well […]