If I remember correctly, Elecrow sent me an end-of-year gift with a notebook (paper style), a pen, and a 3.5-inch ESP32 terminal. I had completely forgotten about it, and while wondering what I would give for Giveaway Week 2023, and looking around in drawers and on shelves, I found an “ESP32 Terminal” package, and I was like “What the F is that and where is it coming from?”. Long story short, the 6th prize of this year’s giveaway week is Elecrow’s ESP32 Terminal with a 3.5-inch touchscreen display that also comes with a front-facing OV2640 camera and six Crowtail connectors for expansion plus a LiPo battery connector. Elecrow ESP32 terminal specifications: Wireless module – ESP32-S3 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 (LE) module with 16MB flash and 8MB PSRAM Storage – MicroSD card slot Display – 3.5-inch TFT LCD display with 480×320 resolution (ILI9488 driver), capacitive touchscreen Camera – 2MP […]
Giveaway Week 2023 – TBS7901 mini PCIe DVB-S2X/S2 module
The second prize of Giveaway Week 2023 is a TBS7901 mini PCIe DVB-S2X/S2 module designed to be connected to a PC or board with a mini PCIe socket in order to watch, record, or broadcast free-to-air video received from a satellite dish. I received both M.2 and mPCIe DVB-S2X modules last August, but I haven’t had time to test any of those yet. So I’m keeping the M.2 module for my own testing once time permits and will be giving away the mini PCIe module to one of CNX Software readers. The module comes with a coaxial antenna cable, as well as a TBS-7901PW power board and SATA power cable since DVB-S/S2/S2X satellite TV requires 13V and 18V DC as well which will be outputted won’t the power board using the 12V from a PSU. You’ll probably need a Windows machine too since TBS provides Windows drivers for the TBS7901 […]
$150 BeagleV-Fire SBC features Microchip PolarFire RISC-V SoC FPGA, supports BeagleBone capes
BeagleV-Fire is a new single board computer powered by Microchip PolarFire MPFS025T penta-core RISC-V SoC FPGA that follows the BeagleBone Black form factor for compatibility with BeagleBone capes expansion boards. Microchip PolarFire RISC-V SoC FPGA was one of the first Linux-compatible RISC-V SoCs and was found in pricey boards such as the Icicle and TySOM-M-MPFS250 development boards. I also got an Icicle board for review, and while getting started with the Yocto Linux BSP was OK, I really struggled with the FPGA part including just installing Libero SoC in Ubuntu and going through the license, and even I gave up trying to run a bitstream sample on the board due to a lack of time. The BeagleV-Fire makes it much cheaper to try out the PolarFire and hopefully makes it easier to get started with both Linux and the FPGA fabric through easier-to-understand documentation and code samples. BeagleFire-V specifications: SoC […]
The Portenta Hat Carrier board adds Raspberry Pi HAT support to the Portenta X8 SBC
The Arduino Portenta Hat Carrier board aims to interface the Linux-capable Portenta X8 board with the vast ecosystem of Raspberry Pi HAT (Hardware on Top) expansion boards. Introduced last year, the Arduino Portenta X8 is the first Arduino Pro hardware that can run Linux thanks to its NXP i.MX 8M Mini Arm Cortex-A53 quad-core processor. But it comes in a tiny 66.04 x 25.4 mm form factor which may be great for integration into products, but for prototyping or design of products such as IoT gateways, the company has now launched the Portenta Hat Carrier that enables the board to easily connect with the Raspberry Pi HATs available today. Portenta Hat Carrier specifications: Compatible with the Portenta X8 board and future Portenta with the same high-density connectors Storage – MicroSD card slot Camera I/F – MIPI CSI camera connector (CNXSoft: Arduino does not explicitly say whether it’s compatible with the […]
Review of MaTouch ESP32-S3 Rotary IPS Display with a 2.1-inch round touchscreen display
The product we are reviewing today is the “MaTouch ESP32-S3 Rotary IPS Display with Touch 2.1” ST7701″ from Makerfabs which offers an alternative to the MaTouch_ESP32-S3 4-inch Display Demo Kit that we reviewed a few months ago. Just like the earlier model, the new kit is equipped with an ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8, featuring 16MB of flash memory and 8MB of PSRAM. This device supports both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 wireless communication and offers connectivity options through I2C and UART ports for interfacing with external devices. The display features a round IPS panel with a resolution of 480×480 pixels, capacitive touch capability, and LVGL library support. Additionally, it includes a mechanical rotary encoder and supports press operations. MaTouch ESP32-S3 Rotary IPS Display specifications Controller: ESP32-S3-WROOM-1, PCB Antenna, 16MB Flash, 8MB PSRAM, ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 Wireless: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 LCD: 2.1-inch High Lightness IPS,65K color LCD Driver: ST7701S FPS: > 70 Resolution: 480×480 LCD interface: […]
Generative AI on NVIDIA Jetson Orin, Jetpack 6 SDK to support multiple OSes
NVIDIA has had several announcements at ROSCon 2023 related to robotics & embedded with highlights including generative AI on the NVIDIA Jetson Orin module and the Jetpack 6 SDK will be released next month (November 2023) with supports for Ubuntu as usual, but also other operating systems and platforms such as Debian, Yocto, Wind River, Redhawk RTOS, and Balena. Generative AI on NVIDIA Jetson Orin There’s been a lot of hype in the last year about generative AI thanks to services such as ChatGPT, Google Bard, or Microsoft Bing Chat. But those rely on closed-source software that runs on powerful servers in the cloud. As we noted in our article about the “AI in a box” offline LLM solution there are some open-source projects such as Whisper speech-to-text model and Llama2 language models that could be run on embedded hardware at the edge, but as noted by some readers platforms […]
Hummingboard 8P Edge AI SBC combines NXP i.MX 8M Plus SoC with Hailo-8 AI accelerator
Hummingboard 8P Edge AI Pico-ITX SBC combines an NXP i.MX 8M Plus processor – itself with a 2.3 TOPS NPU – with the 26 TOPS Hailo-8 AI accelerator for edge AI applications such as smart cameras and automated optical inspection. The compact board comes with up to 8GB RAM, up to 128GB eMMC flash, two gigabit Ethernet ports including one with PoE, WiFi 5, a MIPI camera interface, HDMI and micro HDMI ports, two USB 3.0 ports, and more. Hummingboard 8P Edge AI specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Plus quad-core Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.8 GHz with Arm Cortex-M7 @ up to 800 MHz, Vivante GC7000UL 3D GPU, Vivante GC520L 2D GPU, 2.3 TOPS NPU System Memory – Up to 8GB LPDDR4 Storage – Up to 128GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot AI accelerator – M.2 Hailo-8 module delivering up to 26 TOPS Video Output – HDMI and Micro […]
Nordic nRF54L15 Cortex-M33 wireless MCU halves Rx power consumption over nRF52 chips
Nordic Semiconductor has recently unveiled the 128 MHz nRF54L15 Cortex-M33 multi-protocol wireless microcontroller, the first from the nRF54L Series, and the second from the wider nRF54 family after the more powerful 320 MHz nRF54H20 dual-core Cortex-M33 MCU was introduced last Spring. While the nRF54H20 was designed to enable new types of IoT devices with a leap in performance and lots of resources with up to 2 MB flash and 1MB SRAM, the new nRF54L15 aims to be an upgrade to the nRF52 series with twice the performance and much better power efficiency, with for instance, half the Rx power consumption over its predecessor. Nordic Semi nRF54L15 key features and specifications: CPU Arm Cortex-M33 @ up to 128 MHz with up to 1.5 MB Flash + 256 KB SRAM RISC-V coprocessor for “software-defined peripheral” Wireless Bluetooth 5.4 LE with direction-finding, Bluetooth mesh, etc… Ready for future Bluetooth releases 802.15.4 radio for […]