nanopi News - Page 5 of 7 - CNX Software

April 26, 2017April 26, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

NanoPi NEO Boards Get a New Arduino UNO Compatible Dock to Play with Arduino Shields

FriendlyELEC has launched a new accessory board for their NanoPi NEO / NEO 2 / NEO Air boards with UNO Dock V2.0 board compatible with Arduino UNO board thanks to its Microchip ATMeaga328P MCU and compatible headers, and also equipped with headers to plug a NanoPi NEO board. Key features for UNO Dock v2.0 for NanoPi NEO: MCU – Microchip ATmega328 8-bit AVR MCU @ 16 MHz with 2KB SRAM, 32KB flash, 1024 bytes EEPROM USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports connected to NEO board Expansion Arduino UNO headers for shields Female headers to insert the NanoPi NEO board Male headers to access NanoPi NEO boards’ IOs Debugging & Programming – 1x micro USB port (USB to UART), ICSP header, NEO debug UART header Misc – Power on/off, reset button, UART select jumper Power Supply – 12V DC via 2.1mm power barrel The system would be great if NanoPi […]

April 3, 2017May 11, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 34 Comments

FriendlyELEC Introduces $12.99 1-bay NAS Dock Kit for NanoPi NEO & NEO 2 Boards

NanoPi NEO is a tiny board with Fast Ethernet and USB 2.0 interface, so in theory it could make a nice low-end NAS as long as you don’t need the best performance. As always the problem is that there was no case for it, but FriendlyELEC changes that as they just launched a 1-bay NAS Dock Kit for NanoPi NEO / NEO 2 board selling for just $12.99 (promotional price at launch). The kit comes with the following: 1-bay NAS Dock expansion board with JMicron JM20329 USB to SATA bridge SATA connector for 2.5″ HDD drive Extra USB host port On/off switch, and dual color status LED Header to connect NanoPi NEO board 12V DC power input Dimensions – 151 x 89.7 mm NS-120 aluminum enclosure (154 x 100 x 47.5 mm, 4141 grams) Heatsink set for NanoPI NEO M3 6mm screws, M2.5 6 mm screws Four rubber pads Front […]

March 26, 2017September 5, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments

NanoPi NEO2 Board, NanoHats, and BakeBit Starter Kit Review – Part 1: Hardware Overview & Assembly

NanoPi NEO 2 development board is an update of NanoPi NEO with a quad core 64-bit Allwinner H5 processor + 512 MB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, and an extra audio header, which can be a great little board for headless application since there’s no video output. FriendlyELEC ask me whether I wanted to review to board with some of their NanoHATs add-on boards, and while I asked for NanoHat PCM5102A audio board and NEO Hub which I intended to use with Grove modules from my Wio Link Started Kit, I get a bit more than expected, as the company included sets of NEO 2 boards and accessories, NanoHATs, two serial debug board, and their BakeBit Starter Kit with several Grove modules to play with. Since I have so many things to look at in this first post, I’ll just describe the hardware, assemble it, quickly check the paper documentation, and give […]

February 20, 2017May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Linux 4.10 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.10: So there it is, the final 4.10 release. It’s been quiet since rc8, but we did end up fixing several small issues, so the extra week was all good. On the whole, 4.10 didn’t end up as small as it initially looked. After the huge release that was 4.9, I expected things to be pretty quiet, but it ended up very much a fairly average release by modern kernel standards. So we have about 13,000 commits (not counting merges – that would be another 1200+ commits if you count those). The work is all over, obviously – the shortlog below is just the changes in the last week, since rc8. Go out and verify that it’s all good, and I’ll obviously start pulling stuff for 4.11 on Monday. Linus Linux 4.9 added Greybus staging support, improved security thanks to virtually mapped kernel stacks, […]

January 21, 2017January 21, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

How to use Sonoff POW with ESPurna Firmware and Domoticz Home Automation System

Sonoff POW is an ESP8266 based wireless switch with a power meter that comes pre-loaded with a closed-source firmware that works with eWelink app for Android or iOS by default. But we’ve also seen Sonoff POW, and other Sonoff wireless switches from the same family, can be flash with open source firmware supporting MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport) lightweight messaging protocol such as ESPurna, and I initially sent data from Sonoff POW to ThingSpeak via an MQTT broker (mosquitto) to draw some pretty charts. I did that with the switch connected to a lightbulb, but I’ve since installed Sonoff POW in my office to measure the room’s power consumption minus the ceiling light and aircon as shown below. Sonoff cable mechanism is really a pain for hard copper wires, as they are hard to push inside the mechanism, and something come out. I finally managed by it took longer than […]

January 19, 2017January 19, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

How to Install Domoticz Home Automation System in NanoPi NEO and Other ARM Linux Boards

I’ve recently started experimenting with IoT projects, and the first hurdle is to select the hardware and software for your projects are there are simply so many options. For the hardware your first have to choose the communication protocols for your sensors and actuators, and if you are going to go with WiFi, ESP8266 is the obvious solution, used together with your favorite low cost Linux development board such as Raspberry Pi or Orange Pi to run some IoT server software locally or leveraging the cloud. But the most difficult & confusing part for me was to select the server software / cloud services as there are just so many options. I prefer having a local server than something running only in the cloud, as my Internet goes a few hours a month, so I started with a solution combining ThingSpeak with MQTT gathering data from Sonoff power switches running […]

December 28, 2016December 29, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

RetrOrangePi 3.0 Retro Gaming & Media Center Firmware Released for Orange Pi H3 Boards and Beelink X2 TV Box

RetrOrangePi is a Linux distribution based on armbian transforming Allwinner H3 boards – mostly Orange Pi boards, but also Banana Pi M2+ and NanoPi boards – into entertainment centers to play retro games, and watch/listen media files (videos/music) using Kodi. If you don’t have a development board, or would prefer a complete solution with casing and power supply, Beelink X2 TV box is also supported. The developers had been recently working on rectifying some GPL issues, and they have released RetrOrangePi 3.0 images right before Christmas. RetrOrangePi 3.0 changelog and key features: Full Armbian 5.23 Jessie Desktop version with kernel 3.4.113 (backdoors fixed) Slim version 1st release (less than 2 GB) coming soon OpenELEC (Kodi Jarvis 16.1) with CEC support by Jernej Škrabec RetroPie-Setup version 4.1 New Kodi Krypton beta6 version New emulationstation-ROPI branch forked from jacobfk20 with gridview, on screen keyboard with easy wifi config and storage check with […]

December 23, 2016May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

$25 NanoPi A64 is a Compact Yet Features Packed Allwinner A64 Development Board

FriendlyARM has had a very busy year with their NanoPi boards, and they are completing the year by launching NanoPi A64 development board based on Allwinner A64 quad core Cortex A53 processor with 1GB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, USB ports and more. NanoPi A64 board specifications: SoC – Allwinner A64 quad-core Cortex-A53 @ 648MHz to 1.152GHz with an ARM Mali400 MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM Storage – 1x micro SD slot Video Output / Display IF – HDMI 1.4 port, 30-pin MIPI DSI connector Audio – HDMI, 3.5mm audio jack Connectivity – 1x Gigabit Ethernet port (RTL8211E), 802.11 b/g/n WiFi USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports, 1x micro USB port for power only Camera – 24-pin DVP camera interface Debugging – 4-pin debug UART header Expansion 40-pin mostly Raspberry Pi compatible header with UART, SPI, I2C, PWM, GPIOs, etc… 7-pin I2S header Misc – IR Receiver, 1x […]