Khadas Edge RK3399/RK3399Pro Board Crowdfunding Campaign Launched

Khadas Edge is another upcoming Rockchip RK3399 board that we initially covered this summer, and comes with a particular design in the sense it is both a single board computer with USB and Ethernet port, and a system-on-module through its edge connector. Later on we found out, the company was working on a variant called Khadas Edge-V with the edge connector being replaced by a more standard 40-pin header, as well as Khadas Edge1S powered by Rockchip RK3399Pro for AI applications. The company has now launched the three boards and accessories through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. I’ve already covered the two RK3399 boards in previous post, and  the RK3399Pro based Khadas Edge-1S (2GB RAM, 2x MIPI-CSI, …) will be similar to Edge board but with , so instead I’ll have a closer look at the specifications for Khadas Captain carrier board for Khadas Edge / Edge-1S: Edge connector – 314-pin […]

Arduino Support for Quectel BC66 NB-IoT Module

Quectel has several LTE IoT modules such as BG96 with NB-IoT + eMTC connectivity, but the company has also a smaller, cheaper NB-IoT only module called Quectel BC66, and Georgi Angelov (Wiz-IO) informed me he implemented Arduino support for the module with BC66-DVK board. Let’s first have a look at BC66 specifications: Frequency Bands Available now – B1/B3/B5/B8/B20 Under development – B2/B12/B13/B17/B18/B19/B25/B26/B28/B66 Output Power – 23dBm ±2dB Sensitivity – -129dBm Data Data Rate Single-Tone: 25.5kbps (DL)/16.7kbps (UL) Multi-Tone: 25.5kbps (DL)/62.5kbps (UL) Protocol Stacks – UDP/TCP/CoAP/LwM2M/SNTP/MQTT/PPP/TLS/DTLS/HTTP/HTTPS/FTP SMS – Text/PDU Mode Interfaces – 1x USIM, 1x  PSM _EINT, 3x UARTm 1x ADC, 1x RESET, 1x PWRKEY, 1x NETLIGHT, 1x antenna, 1x SPI, “OpenCPU” version only: 1x I2C, 1x I2S, and configurable GPIO Supply Voltage – 2.1 to 3.63V (3.3 typ.); I/O: 1.8V Power Consumption (Typ.) 3.5μA @PSM 0.29mA @Idle Mode (eDRX=81.92s) 0.43mA @Idle Mode (DRX=2.56s) 110mA @LTE Cat NB1, 23dBm Dimensions – […]

Nubia X Dual Screen Smartphone Drops the Selfie Camera

Smartphone without front-facing camera

Consumers don’t seem to be fans of bezels, so manufacturers try to keep them as small as possible, and many phones are now launched with a notch for the front-facing camera, and some with a front-facing camera that pops up during use. The former is not eye-pleasing to some users, and the latter may not feel robust. Nubia X smartphone does away with either simply because the company dropped the front-facing camera, instead relying on the rear camera plus a second screen on the back for selfies. This setup enables an utra-slim bezel on all four sides. Nubia X specifications: SoC – Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor with 4x Kryo 385 Gold cores @ up to 2.65 GHz, 4x Kryo 385 Silver cores @ up to 1.80 GHz, Adreno 630 GPU System Memory + Storage –  6GB LPDDR4X + 64GB storage, or 8GB LPDDR4X + 128 GB storage Displays 6.26″ main […]

96Boards IoT Edition IVY5661 Board Features UniSoC UWP5661 WiFi 5 + Bluetooth 5 SoC

If you ever wanted to start a new IoT project with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, you’d like think about using Espressif ESP32 WiSoC that supports single band 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (WiFi 4) and Bluetooth 4.2 LE thanks to great community and software support on top of the ultra low cost of the solution. But in case your require 802.11ac (WiFI 5) – yes, I’m trying hard to get used to the new WiFi naming scheme for consumers -, or Bluetooth 5, Espressif Systems does not offer such solution yet. Instead you may consider UniSoC UWP5661 Arm Cortex-M4 WiSoC with WiFi 5 & Bluetooth 5 connectivity that will be found in the soon-to-be-launched UcRobotics IVY5661 96Boards IoT Edition board. I could not find lots of information about UWP5661 chip tself, so let’s jump directly to IVY5661 board specifications: SoC – UniSoC UWP5661 dual core Arm Cortex-M4 microcontroller @ 416 MHz manufactured […]

Sigfox Introduces Access Station Micro Sigfox Gateway

Sigfox Gateway

There are plenty of long range LPWAN standards for the Internet of Things, but the most common ones include LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, and Sigfox. LoRaWAN lead the way in terms of deployments, while NB-IoT and eMTC leverage existing cellular infrastructure but cost a bit more to operate. Sigfox works with $2 modules, but AFAIK so far you had to subscribe to the company network, and if your area was not covered you were out of luck. Sigfox Access Station Micro gateway promises to change the situation, as companies can now add their own Sigfox gateway(s) where coverage is not available, and this could make Sigfox more popular, especially if one or more communities similar to The Things Networks form(s) around it. Sigfox Access Station Micro SMBS-T4 specifications: Radio characteristics: Standard – Sigfox Ultra Narrow Band Protocol for M2M and IoT Max range of operating frequencies – 865 to 928 MHz Max […]

$94 MAKERphone DIY Mobile Phone Supports MicroPython, Arduino IDE, and Scratch (Crowdfunding)

MAKERphone

If you ever wanted to buy a mobile phone that you can assemble yourself, RePhone Kit Ctreate going for $59 is a nice option, but in truth it does not exactly look like your typical phone with its almost square shape. It’s also good to have more option, that’s exactly what MAKERphone is offering with a DIY mobile phone targeting the educational market. Beside the educational value of the assembly also involving some soldering skills depending on the selected kit, kids will be able to learn to program the phone with MicroPython, the Arduino IDE (C language), and/or Scratch visual programming. MAKERphone kit content and specifications: MAKERphone circuit board with 8x user LEDs for backlight (and special effects), 4-way mechanical joystick, 12-button numeric keypad, A, B, C, D, E, and F buttons, DS3231 RTC chip, vibrator… Main microcomputer module based on Espressif Systems ESP32 WiSoC with 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth […]

Embedded Recipes 2018 Videos and Slides Released

Upstream Multimedia Amlogic-SoC-Embedded Recipes 2018 Videos

Embedded Recipes 2018 happened in Mozilla building in Paris, France on September 24 & 25, where developers talked about “open source solutions in the embedded world: developer, contributor, tools, platforms…” We previously mentioned the event in a post about an open source video decoder driver for Amlogic S905, S905X and S912 processors with BayLibre scheduled to talk about their work there. There’s now released slides and videos for the event for all sessions including: SoC+FPGA support in 2018 by Marek Vasut Shared memory and telemetry by Yves-Marie Morgan Updating an embedded system with swupdate by Charles-Antoine Couret Finding sources of latency in your system by Steven Rostedt Io(M)T Security: A year in review by Rayna Stamboliyska Using yocto to generate container images for yocto by Jérémy Rosen linuxboot by Jean-Marie Verdun and  Trammell Hudson End-to-end software production for embedded by Guy Lunardi WooKey: the USB Battlefront Warrior by Mathieu Renard, […]

Sipeed M1 RISC-V Computer Vision Module Features Kendryte K210 Processor

Sipeed-M1 Development Board

Just a few days ago, I wrote about Kendryte KD233 board featuring Kendryte K210 dual core RISC-V processor, with some fairly detailed documentation, public links to toolchains and other tools. and going for $50. But the team behind LicheePi boards informed me that they also made their own K210 module called Sipeed M1 and selling on Taobao for the Chinese market, as well as on Yoycart for $10.89 plus shipping for the oversea market, and you’ll find a devkit with a dock board for about $24 and up depending on options. Sipeed M1 module specifications: SoC – Kendryte K210 dual core 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 400 MHz with KPU CNN hardware accelerator, APU audio hardware accelerator, 6 MB general purpose SRAM, 2MB AI SRAM memory, and AXI ROM to load user program from SPI flash Package – 72-pin (25.4 x 25.4mm) But you’ll probably want to get start with M1 […]

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