giveaway News - Page 5 of 15 - CNX Software

November 1, 2021November 3, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 295 Comments

Giveaway Week – NanoPi R2S gateway

Here’s the 8th edition of CNX Software giveaway week! I’ll have seven items to give away to readers in the 2021 event with some help from two companies as I was short on available samples this year. We’ll start with NanoPi R2S gateway based on Rockchip RK3328 SoC, and equipped with 1 GB DDR4 RAM as well as two Gigabit Ethernet ports. I reviewed NanoPi R2S gateway at the end of last year with Armbian built Ubuntu 20.04 Focal, and it performed well under load thanks to the metal enclosure and optimized OS. The main downside is having a USB 2.0 port, especially if you intend to use it as external storage, but that’s the cost of having two Gigabit Ethernet ports on Rockchip RK3328 SoC, with one of those using the USB 3.0 interface. The giveaway includes the board and metal enclosure. It is already fully assembled. So you’ll […]

May 3, 2021May 4, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

RISC-V International to give away 1,000 RISC-V development boards

The best way for a new platform to get good software support is to bring hardware into the hands of developers. That’s exactly what RISC-V International is doing by inviting developers to sign up for a RISC-V developer board sponsored by RISC-V and contributing members. There are 1,000 boards on offer with 1GB to 16GB RAM depending on the target project from five companies and organizations namely Allwinner, Beagleboard.org, SiFive, Microchip Technology (previously Microsemi), and RIOS. Here are the stated goals of the giveaway: Spur innovation Enable new opportunities for the next generation of developers to work with the RISC-V ISA Provide a platform For testing To write programs that run on RISC-V Develop software Integrate existing software stacks Optimize ecosystem software Share feedback on the product such as ease to integrate software stacks, develop and test extensions, etc. The company did not provide an exact list of development board […]

January 4, 2021January 6, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 393 Comments

MINIX NEO J50C-4 Max mini PC international giveaway

Right before Christmas, I posted a review of MINIX NEO J50C-4 Max mini PC powered by an Intel Pentium J5005 Gemini Lake processor coupled with 8GB RAM and a 240GB SSD. It’s basically the same as the previously reviewed MINIX NEO J50C-4 except for the extra memory and faster & higher capacity SSD storage. MINIX asked me if I could do a giveaway of three units on CNX Software after the review, and I thought it would be a good idea so here we are. I wanted to complete the review before launching the giveaway and tested MINIX NEO J50C-4 Max with the pre-installed Windows 10 Pro. I worked just as well as the previous model with no CPU throttling and the performance one should expect from a Gemini Lake processor, but you may want to add an extra 8GB memory stick to take advantage of the higher bandwidth provided […]

November 11, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Giveaway Week 2020 winners announced

CNX Software’s “Giveaway week 2020” took place last week with 7 different prizes including three MINIX accessories (USB-C hubs and USD PD charger), M5Stack Atom Echo ESP32 based programmable speaker, Miniware DT71 smart tweezers, and two SBC’s namely RockPi 4C and Ryzen Embedded based DFI GHF51. All people had to enter was to leave a comment with the country to which the parcel would have to be sent. With the help of random.org, we now have selected and confirmed winners which all happen to come from the US or Europe this time around: MINIX NEO Storage Plus USB-C Hub with 480GB SSD – Marc, USA Miniware DT71 Smart Tweezers – xdcc_master, GERMANY MINIX NEO C-G USB-C Multiport Adapter – Barnaby, UK RockPi 4C SBC – Garrett, USA M5Stack Atom Echo ESP32 Speaker – Venet, ITALY MINIX NEO P2 100W USB-C Charger – Michal, SLOVAKIA DFI GHF51 Ryzen Embedded SBC – […]

November 8, 2020November 10, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 348 Comments

Giveaway Week – DFI GHF51 Ryzen Embedded SBC

Let’s end this year’s Giveaway Week with a bang courtesy of DFI GHF51 single board computer, that’s about the size of the Raspberry Pi, but is powered by an AMD Ryzen Embedded R1606G dual-core processor coupled with 4GB RAM and 32GB storage. With Gigabit Ethernet, dual micro HDMI output, and a single USB-C port, the board is clearly designed for industrial machines, digital signage, and robotics, but it can also be used as a standard computer via a USB-C hub. I tested the SBC with WIndows 10 Enterprise LTSC and Ubuntu 20.04, and it worked well in Windows, except for some issue with one of my USB hard drives where transfers would just stall from time to time. I had the same issue in Ubuntu plus some artifacts while running the UNIGINE 3D benchmark. For testing, I set up dual-boot for Windows 10 and Ubuntu 20.04, so considering there’s just […]

November 7, 2020November 9, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 138 Comments

Giveaway Week – MINIX NEO P2 100W USB-C Charger

MINIX NEO P2 is a 100W Turbo 4-Port GaN Charger with two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports with support for USB PD 3.0, and Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0. I’ve been using for recent reviews of NanoPI R2S & NEO3, as well as Raspberry Pi 400, and I really like it as it saves me a lot of space, I don’t have to worry about undervoltage, and I can power up to four boards from a single power supply. MINIX sent me two samples. I’ll keep one for me, and sent the unopened one to one of CNX Software readers. To enter the draw simply leave a comment with your country and whatever else you’d like to say. If the country is missing, I’ll consider the entry void. Other rules are as follows: Only one entry per contest. I will filter out entries with the same IP and/or email address. Contests […]

November 6, 2020November 8, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 72 Comments

Giveaway Week – M5Stack Atom Echo ESP32 Speaker

I reviewed M5Stack Atom Echo Bluetooth speaker powered by ESP32 earlier this year, and that will be the fifth prize of Giveaway Week 2020. It’s very much like a (low-quality) Bluetooth speaker, but you can program it with the Arduino IDE to do whatever you want. There’s also a Grove connector and I/O headers to control external modules. There’s no battery, so a USB-C cable is needed for power. To enter the draw simply leave a comment with your country and whatever else you’d like to say. If the country is missing, I’ll consider the entry void. Other rules are as follows: Only one entry per contest. I will filter out entries with the same IP and/or email address. Contests are open for 48 hours starting at 11 am (Bangkok time) every day. Comments will be closed after 48 hours. If comments are open, the contest is still going on. […]

November 5, 2020November 7, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 321 Comments

Giveaway Week – RockPi 4C SBC

The first, but not last, SBC of Giveaway Week 2020 is RockPi 4C single board computer equipped with a Rockchip RK3399 processor coupled with 4GB RAM, and featuring HDMI and DisplayPort for dual 4K monitor setups, as well as Gigabit Ethernet, WiFI 5, Bluetooth, USB 3.0/2.0 ports, etc… The board closely follows Raspberry Pi 4 form factor, so without thinking too much about it I thought I could just use it with CrowPi2 Raspberry Pi 4 laptop. However due to small mechanical differences, and a different position of the processor impacting cooling, I quickly realized this would not work. Since I did not have time to review yet another RK3399 SBC, I thought I might as well as give it away, as I’m sure somebody will find a good use for it. Note the board does not come with any accessories, so you’ll have to get a MicroSD card, USB-C […]