giveaway News - Page 8 of 15 - CNX Software

November 8, 2018November 10, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 258 Comments

Giveaway Week – Libre Computer ROC-RK3328-CC Board

What will be the prize on the fourth day of this year’s giveaway week? Libre Computer ROC-RK3328-CC, a development board based on Rockchip RK3328 processor and mostly following Raspberry Pi 3 form factor. When I reviewed the board with Debian 9 last summer, I was mostly reminded how important fast storage and proper power supply were important. I had some kernel panic when using slow storage (micro SD card), but when I switch to the eMMC flash stability improved a lot. I also had some troubles with my USB 3.0 hard drive, but switching from a 5V/2A power supply to a 5V/2.5A power adapter solved most of my problems. Once I had “solved” those two issues the board worked fairly well, and Libre Computer always aims for mainline Linux support on their board, so that’s an advantage to take into consideration. The kit offered includes the board and heatsink, so […]

November 7, 2018November 9, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 108 Comments

Giveaway Week – ESP32-LyRaTD-MSC Audio Misc HDK

ESP32-LyraTD-MSC is a smart audio hard development kit based on ESP32 WiSoC that I plan to send to one of my readers as part of Giveaway week. I had the chance to test ESP32-LyraTD-MSC with Baidu DuerOS voice assistant back in February which requires you to speak Mandarin, but now the board has become more useful outside of China with the release of Espressif ESP-ADF audio development framework and support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. To enter the draw simply leave a comment below. 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 10am (Bangkok time) every day. Comments will be closed after 48 hours. If comments are open, the contest is still going on. Winners will be selected with random.org, and announced in the comments section of […]

November 6, 2018November 8, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 117 Comments

Giveaway Week – CHOETECH 24W Foldable Solar Charger

The second item for this giveaway week won’t really be a maker product, although you could probably integrate it in your solar powered project, but it should be useful mostly for hiking or other outdoor activities: CHOETECH 24W foldable solar charger. That’s a battery-less foldable system with four solar panels delivering up to 24 watts that can be used to charge your phone or tablet through up to two USB ports. I found it to be easy to fit to my backpack, be rainproof, and I could charge my phone at about 5 Watts (5V/1A) under decent sunlight, so it’s mostly doing the job you’d expect it to do. To enter the draw simply leave a comment below. 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 10am (Bangkok […]

November 5, 2018November 7, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 239 Comments

Giveaway Week – Videostrong VS-RD-RK3399 Development Board

That’s the time of the year for another Giveway Week on CNX Software. They will be some development boards, add-on boards, and one gadget. You’ll have to keep reading this blog everyday to find out, but I’ll start with VideoStrong VS-RD-RK3399 development board and accessories. Also know as Mecool VS-RK3399, it is one of the many Rockchip RK3399 development board on the market. The board I have comes with 4GB LPDDR3, and 32GB eMMC flash, as well as all accessories above, minus the USB type-C cable which I can’t find anymore… A 12V/2A will also be provided in the kit given away. I reviewed the board with Debian, tested the SDK, and ran a few benchmarks in Linux about a year ago, and I found that while the board mostly worked as expected, software support and documentation needed some improvements. The SDK page is still there,but they have not really […]

November 9, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Giveaway Week Winners – November 2017

Like every year, I’ve organized a giveaway week to send some of the items I’ve reviewed in the past year or so. There was a good mix of devices this year starting with a mini Linux NAS kit, following by some ESP32 boards, and Amlogic development boards among others. The results are in, and instead of 10 winners, I actually have 11 winners due a “timing issue”, and to make for one missing ESP32 board, a LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo board was also given away. While it started strongly for Eastern Europe, We have winners from 3 continents this year: NanoPi NEO2 NAS Kit – Hap Hapablap, Serbia Muses Beta DVB Encoder and Modulator Board – Luka, Slovenia ESP32 PICO Kit v3 boards (5 Winners): Andrius Kurtinaitis, Lithuania (2x ESP32 boards) Kebab, Turkey (2x ESP32 boards) Zoobab, Belgium (2x ESP32 boards) Sollie, Germany (2x ESP32 boards) BobR, USA (1x ESP32 […]

November 5, 2017November 7, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 330 Comments

Giveaway Week – Khadas Vim Pro Development Board

For the final day of this giveaway week, I’ll send Khadas Vim Pro development board to a new home. The board is powered by an Amlogic S905X processor coupled with 2GB RAM and 16GB storage, features 10/100M Ethernet and 802.11ac WiFi, and support 4K video playback and output via its HDMI 2.0a port. The board supports various operating systems such as Android, LibreELEC, dual boot Android/Ubuntu, etc.. and I wrote a Ubuntu review / getting started guide for the board in February. At the time, the image was still “raw” with many steps to perform by the users, and part of the documentation needing to be worked on. But the company (Szwesion) and members of the community are usually active in resolving user issues on the forums. I’ll give away the kit I’ve received with the board in an acrylic case, a USB to USB type C cable for power, […]

November 4, 2017November 6, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 146 Comments

Giveaway Week – Nextion Enhanced 7″ Capacitive Display

My Nextion Enhanced NX8048K070 display will soon find a new home. The 7″ display comes with a capacitive touchscreen, an enclosure, and can work in standalone mode thanks to a built-in processor and a 8-pin FPC connector for I/Os, or connected to a micro-controller through a UART interface. I did a mini review of the display, mostly showing a teardown, and how to use Nextion Display Editor Windows-only tool to design your own user interface. The GPIOs are not really convenient to use with the required flat cable, and the company did not send me their $5 IO board, which would have made things easier. Learning curve may be a little sharper than needed as I’ve not found the Windows software to be very user-friendly, and documentation could be improved too. I’ll give the display with enclosure, micro USB power board, and UART cable as shown on the first photo. […]

November 3, 2017November 5, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 106 Comments

Giveaway Week – Wio GPS Tracker Board

It’s Friday, and the fifth day of giveaway week on CNX Software. Today, I’ll be giving away Wio Tracker, an Arduino compatible board based on Microchip / Atmel SAMD21 ARM Cortex M0 MCU with GPS, Bluetooth, 2G GSM/GPRS connectivity. My review of the board was rather negative, as I only managed to make Bluetooth 3.0 work while following the documentation as it was back in May. Since then the documentation seems to have improved, and other people have been more successful than me, and made the blink LED, and GPS samples to work. This version of the board only support 2G, so make sure it is still supported in your region/country. To enter the draw simply leave a comment below. 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 […]