giveaway News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 14, 2024November 14, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Giveaway Week 2024 winners announced!

We’re now ready to announce the winners of CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2024. We offered some of the review samples we tested (and some we did not test) in the last year, and for the fourth year running, RAKwireless also gave away two IoT development kits shipped directly to winners. This year’s prizes also included a RISC-V motherboard, a 3D depth camera, a few Arm development boards, two touchscreen displays, and an Alder Lake-N mini PC/router. All those products can be seen in the photo, minus some accessories. You’ll find more than seven devices because we organized the third Giveaway Week on CNX Software Thailand simultaneously with four prizes. We had seven winners on CNX Software: Jupiter RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard – François-Denis, Canada Orbbec Femto mega 3D depth and 4K RGB camera – Reifu, Japan RAKwireless Blues.ONE LoRaWAN, LTE-M, and NB-IoT devkit – OldCrow, Portugal Mixtile Core 3588E development kit […]

November 10, 2024November 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 369 Comments

Giveaway Week 2024 – iKOOLCORE R2 Core i3-N300 mini PC and quad 2.5GbE router

Let’s end CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2024 with a bang! The last prize is an iKOOLCORE R2 mini PC and router powered by an Intel Core i3-N300 Alder Lake-N CPU, equipped with 8GB RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD, and featuring four 2.5GbE ports. The tiny PC also comes with HDMI and USB-C ports for dual 4K video output, an M.2 E-Key socket to install a wireless module for WiFi and Bluetooth, two USB 3.1 Gen 2 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-C port with DisplayPort Alt. mode, and a not-so-useful USB-C audio port using Realtek ALC987 codec. My review of the iKOOLCORE R2 last year was a learning experience as it was the first time I used Proxmox VE and pfSense, and since I wanted to use the system both as a mini PC running Ubuntu 22.04 desktop and a router/firewall running pfSense […]

November 9, 2024November 11, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 222 Comments

Giveaway Week 2024 – Elecrow 7-inch CrowVision touchscreen display for Raspberry Pi and other SBCs

It’s already day 6 of CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2024, and the prize is the Elecrow 7-inch CrowVision touchscreen display designed for Raspberry Pi boards and other single board computers (SBC). Elecrow sent us a sample of the touchscreen display last year to review “whenever we have time”. But it turns out that finding time is tricky, so instead of getting it to waste, I decided to give it away to one lucky reader of CNX Software. Elecrow CrowVision 7-inch display specifications: Type – 7-inch IPS display Resolution – 1024×600 Multitouch – 5-point capacitive touchscreen Viewing angle – 178° Video Input – Mini HDMI connector USB – Micro USB port for touchscreen function Audio 3.5mm audio jack for headphones Speaker connector User input – Touchscreen and keypad interface for provided 5-key board Power Supply 12V/2A DC input via power barrel jack 5V DC output via USB Type-A port Dimensions – […]

November 8, 2024November 10, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 119 Comments

Giveaway Week 2024 – RT-Thread Vision board with Renesas RA8D1 Arm Cortex-M85 MCU

It’s already Friday, and the fifty prize of CNX Software’s Giveaway Week 2024 will be the RT-Thread Vision board equipped with a Renesas RA8D1 Arm Cortex-M85 microcontroller, a camera, an optional LCD display, and a 40-pin GPIO header. The board is used as an evaluation platform for the Renesas RA8D1 MCU and RT-Thread real-time operating system. As its name implies, it’s mainly designed for computer vision applications leveraging the Helium MVE (M-Profile Vector Extension) for digital signal processing (DSP) and machine learning (ML) applications. I haven’t reviewed it myself and instead, received two samples from RT-Thread who sent them to me by mistake, so I’ll give them away here and on the Thai website. But it was reviewed by Supachai who tested the RT-Thread Vision board with OpenMV and ran a few benchmarks last June. The Helium MVE did not seem to be utilized in OpenMV at that time (June […]

November 7, 2024November 9, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 238 Comments

Giveaway Week 2024 – Mixtile Core 3588E development kit with RK3588 SoM

Day 4 of Giveaway Week 2024 will be for a development kit comprised of the Mixtile Core 3588E SoM based on Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 SoC and a Leetop A206 carrier board compatible with NVIDIA Jetson SO-DIMM modules. This development kit is mostly useful to evaluate the Mixtile Core 3588E system-on-module, but it can be used just like any Rockchip RK3588 SBC with the company providing a Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop image for the board. Since it relies on the same edge connector as the NVIDIA Jetson TX2 NX module, the Core 3588E module can also be connected to other compatible carrier boards. I reviewed the Mixtile Core 3588E development kit last December running Ubuntu 22.04. At the time, I found the Mixtile Core 3588E system-on-module performs well with the pre-loaded Ubuntu 22.04 image with a similar performance as on other Rockchip RK3588 hardware platforms. 3D graphics acceleration was working with […]

November 6, 2024November 8, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 181 Comments

Giveaway Week 2024 – RAKwireless Blues.ONE LoRaWAN, LTE-M, and NB-IoT devkit

For the fourth year in a row, RAKwireless is participating in CNX Software’s Giveaway Week, and this year, the company is offering the Blues.ONE IoT development kit with LoRaWAN, LTE-M, and NB-IoT connectivity and 500MB of cellular data through the Blues NoteCard. The devkit can be used to prototype or develop IoT devices for industrial automation and asset-tracking applications and relies on the WisBlock modular IoT prototyping system with the RAK13102 WisBlock Blues Notecarrier, the Blues NoteCard, a WisBlock Base Board, and a WisBlock Core module. Blues.ONE kit content: RAK4631 WisBlock Core Module based on Nordic Semi nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 64 MHz with 1 MB Flash, 256 KB RAM, Bluetooth Low Energy 5.0 protocol stack Semtech SX1262 LoRa Transceiver with LoRaWAN 1.0.2 protocol stack RAK19007 WisBlock Base Board with 4x sensor slots, 1x IO slot, a USB Type-C port, a rechargeable battery connector, and a solar panel connector […]

November 5, 2024November 7, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 148 Comments

Giveaway Week 2024 – Orbbec Femto mega 3D depth and 4K RGB camera

The second prize of Giveaway Week 2024 is the Orbbec Femto Mega 3D depth and 4K RGB camera powered by an NVIDIA Jetson Nano module and featuring Microsoft ToF technology found in Hololens and Azure Kinect DevKit. The camera connects to Windows or Linux host computers through USB or Ethernet and is supported by the Orbbec SDK with the NVIDIA Jetson Nano running depth vision algorithms to convert raw data to precise depth images. I first reviewed the Orbbec Femto Mega using the Orbbec Viewer for a quick test connected to an Ubuntu laptop (as shown above) before switching to a more complex demo using the Orbbec SDK for body tracking in Windows 11. Although it was satisfying once it worked, I struggled quite a lot to run the body tracking demo in Windows 11, so there’s a learning curve, and after you have this working, you’d still need to […]

November 4, 2024November 6, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 293 Comments

Giveaway Week 2024 – Jupiter RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard

The 11th edition of CNX Software giveaway week is underway! We have seven items to give away this time around: six review samples I will send myself and one from a company offering one of its cellular IoT development kits… The contest is open worldwide, and CNX Software Thailand is also joining the fun with four additional items available to people with an address in Thailand. The first prize of this year’s giveaway is Shenzhen MILK-V Technology’s Jupiter RISC-V mini-ITX motherboard powered by a 1.8 GHz SpacemiT K1/M1 octa-core processor, equipped with 16GB LPDDR4x, and various interfaces and features such as M.2 PCIe 2.0 x2 socket for an NVMe SSD, a 4K-capable HDMI video output, two gigabit Ethernet ports, WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5 module, and more. I reviewed the Jupiter mini-ITX motherboard with Ubuntu-based Bianbu OS and an Auriga 6-Bay NAS mini-ITX chassis last August and the results were […]