There were talks about Hardkernel working on an ODROID x86 board since last year, as the CEO expected to launch such board later in 2017 in an interview published in ODROID magazine. Finally, it took them several iterations and processors considerations before being ready for launch, and ODROID-H2 should become available next month as the first ODROID x86 board. ODROID-H2 will feature an Intel Celeron J4105 Gemini Lake processor, two SO-DIMM slots for memory, two SATA ports and M.2 NVMe slot for storage, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a mix of USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, and more. ODROID-H2 board specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron J4105 quad core processor @ up to 2.3 GHz (real frequency) with 12EU Intel UHD Graphics 600 System Memory – Dual-channel Memory DDR4-PC19200 (2400MT/s) supporting up to 32GiB RAM in total Storage – M.2 PCIe 2.0 x4 slot for one NVMe storage, 2x SATA 3.0 ports, […]
Pi Supply IoT LoRa Boards are made for Raspberry Pi & BBC Micro:bit Boards (Crowdfunding)
We’ve already covered plenty of LoRa boards or solutions designed for nodes or gateways such as TTGO T-Beam ESP32 + LoRa board, RAK Wireless RAK811 GPS Lora tracker board, MatchX Matchbox LoRa gateway, and many others,, but Pi Supply offers yet more options with LoRa node and gateway add-on boards designed to work with Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and BBC Micro:bit boards. Pi Supply LoRa Gateway HAT for Raspberry Pi The IoT LoRa Gateway HAT is based on RAK Wireless RAK833 mPCIe LoRa gateway concentrator module and connects to Raspberry Pi 3 B/B+ board via the 40-pin header. There are two hardware version using 868 MHz or 915 MHz frequencies, but as we’ve seen in previous reviews those are configurable for other frequencies such as AS923 or IN865. Pi Supply IoT LoRa Node pHAT for Raspberry Pi LoRa Node pHAT is designed for node specifically, and with a smaller form factor […]
THEC64 Mini Small Commodore C64 Replica is Now for Sale for $80
Mini versions of retro computers and game consoles are now really a thing. After Nintendo NES Classic / SNES Classic, and Sony PlayStation Classic announcement, all of which are smaller versions of popular older consoles with modern interface like HDMI, Retro Games has now unveiled THEC64 Mini (apparently no typo) that is a small scale replica – half size to be exact – of Commodore C64 computer launched in 1982. THEC64 mini specifications based on Sunxi Wiki and official product page: SoC – Allwinner A20 dual core Cortex-A7 procesor System Memory – 512MB DDR3 Storage – TBD NAND flash Video Output – HDMI 1.4 output at 720p USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports Misc – Power button Power Supply – 5V/1A via micro USB port Dimensions – 205 x 105 x 35mm You may notice a keyboard on the photo, but that’s just for aesthetics, as the keys are […]
Beelink X55 Review – Part 2, Take 2: New Drivers and BIOS
When I reviewed the Beelink X55 earlier, I encountered poor graphics performance when testing the device with its ‘Out-Of-The-Box’ configuration. As a quick reminder the Beelink X55 is a NUC-style mini PC powered with an Intel Pentium Silver J5005 processor and comes with a 128GB mSATA SSD with pre-installed Windows 10 Home together with 8GB DDR4 RAM (soldered and is non-expandable) and space plus a connector for an SSD. In an attempt to address the poor graphics performance I reinstalled Windows using Microsoft’s ISO however I then found I had missing drivers: Having contacted Beelink through the support email enclosed with the device they replied with a link to a full driver pack. So having downloaded and unzipped the file I updated the first driver: followed by the second: resulting in additional entries to the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework (DPTF). Having fixed the driver issue I then reran […]
Google Launches Pixel 3 & Pixel 3 XL Smartphones for $799 and Up
Google just hosted a Made by Google hardware event, where they announced several products, and it’s always interesting to check out what they come up with. In this post, I’ll check out Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL premium smartphone from the company, and see if they implemented any significant “innovations”. Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL specifications: SoC – Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor with 4x Gold cores (Cortex A75 based) @ up to 2.50 GHz, 4x Silver cores (Cortex-A55 based) up to 1.60 GHz, Adreno 630 GPU, Pixel Visual Core, and Titan security chip System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4x Storage – 64GB or 128GB UFS storage Display Pixel 3 – 5.5″ FHD+ (2160×1080) flexible? always-on OLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 Pixel 3 XL – 6.3″ QHD+ (2960 x 1440) always-on OLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 Cameras Rear camera – 12.2MP dual-pixel camera with […]
wESP32 ESP32 Board Supports “Isolated” PoE (Crowdfunding)
Olimex introduced their ESP32-POE board a few months ago, and started selling it for 17.50 Euros last month, but it’s always good to have more options and Silicongnition has designed another ESP32 board with power over Ethernet named wESP32. wESP32 board specifications: Wireless Module – Espressif Systems ESP32-WROOM-32 module with WiFi 802.11n (WiFi 4) and Bluetooth 4.2 LE connectivity Connectivity 10/100M Ethernet (RJ45) with auto-MDIX allowing the use of both straight and cross-over Ethernet cables Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth v4.2 BR/EDR (via ESP32 module ) Expansion – Unpopulated 20-pin header with 3.3 V, V+ power, and 15 of the ESP32 GPIOs Power Supply Default 12 V output setting for V+ provides 12.95+ W of power Optional (bridge solder jumper) 5 V output setting for V+ provides 5 W of power IEEE 802.3at Type 1 Class 0 compliant PoE 3.3 V output with up to 6 W of power (taken […]
Beelink X55 Review – An Intel Gemini Lake mini PC Tested with Windows 10 and Linux
The Beelink X55 is very similar in style to Intel’s NUC7PJYH NUC reviewed earlier except that it is not a kit but a fully functional Windows mini PC. It is physically small consisting of an approximately 4.5″ by 4” case about 1¾” tall with a front panel that includes the power button and a couple of USB ports and a headphone jack with the rest of the ports including two HDMI (2.0) ones at the rear: The specifications include: The key highlights are that the Beelink X55 comes a 128GB mSATA SSD with pre-installed Windows 10 Home together with 8GB DDR4 RAM (soldered and is non-expandable) and space plus a connector for an SSD. Starting with a quick look at the hardware information shows it is mostly aligned to the specification but see the note below about the memory: As usual I ran my standard set of benchmarking tools to […]
Dav1d Open Source AV1 Decoder Aims to be Fast and Lightweight
Lots of efforts are being put into AV1 open source, royalty-free video codec with the AV1 specification published in March, and companies like YouTube and Netflix having recently uploaded AV1 video samples for testing and evaluation. We also reported FFmpeg 4.0 was released with AV1 supporting using libaom reference decoder. However, the library is not really optimized for code size and speed, but instead just to demonstrate AV1 decoding and encoding. So VideoLAN, VLC and FFmpeg communities have been working on another decoder called Dav1d – which stands for “Dav1d is an AV1 Decoder” – that aims to be lightweight, cross-platform, fast and open source. Some of the technical details about dAV1d include: written in C99 without VLAs (Variable Length Arrays) ASM in NASM/GAS syntax (no intrinsics), Meson/ninja buildsystem, Works on x86, x64, ARMv7, ARMv8 architectures for now Runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS operating systems Licensed under BSD […]