$200 Omega2 WiFi LIDAR Kit Comes with a 360˚ 2D LIDAR Scanner

Omega2 Wireless LiDAR kit

Onion Omega2 is a tiny WiFi board running OpenWrt that launched for as low as $5 via a crowdfunding campaign around 2 years ago, and at the time I reviewed Onion Omega2+ board – which comes with more memory and storage – together with its dock, and I found it was fairly easy to get started with the solution. You can now buy the board for a little over $10, but the company also offers kits, and their latest product is Omega2 wireless LIDAR kit with an indoor 360˚ 2D LiDAR scanner that uses rotating laser ranging to measure and map exact distances to indoor surroundings. The kit is comprised of the following items: Onion Omega2+ board with MediaTek MT7688 MIPS processor, 128MB RAM, 32MB flash Power Dock 2 with 30-pin expansion header and USB host port Delta2B 360˚ LiDAR Scanner Up to 5000 samples/second Range – 0.2 to 8 […]

GL-USB150 OpenWrt Microrouter Looks Like a USB Flash Drive

GL-USB150 Microrouter

There are plenty of small low cost routers capable of running OpenWrt, including the TP-Link WR703N or Marstek MPR-N9 model which we covered several year ago. GL.inet also made several tiny routers that ended up being supported by OpenWrt, including their GL-USB150 microrouter that looks like a USB flash drive, but is really an Atheros AR9331 router that can be powered by any USB ports. GL-USB150 microrouter specifications: CPU – Qualcomm QCA9331 (Atheros AR9331) MIPS processor @ 400MHz System Memory – 64MB DDRII Storage – 16MB NOR Flash Connectivity – 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi up up 150Mbps transmission rate Power input – 5V/1A via USB port Power consumption – <1W Dimension – 82x24x11mm Weight – 10 grams There’s no Ethernet port, no extra USB port to add 3G/4G connectivity, and the microrouter can either be accessed wirelessly when connected to a power bank, or via Ethernet over USB when connected to […]

Xunison X-Brain Android Smart Home Hub Supports Z-Wave and Bluetooth Controllers

Xunison-X-Brain-1200

Xunison X-Brain is an All-in-One smart home hub that integrates a high-performance secure router, a home server, a WiFi, Z-Wave & Bluetooth gateway. X-Brain runs Android TV operating system, so you can watch live television, stream videos from Netflix, Hulu or IPTV services with EPG, as well as install apps from Google Play. The home automation part of the system allows you to control Z-Wave & Bluetooth Smart Home devices, monitor your home security system, control your home energy consumption, and so on. Xunison X-Brain V1 preliminary hardware specifications: Multimedia subsystem SoC – Unnamed quad-core processor @ 1.5 GHz with penta-core Arm Mali-450 3G GPU, likely Amlogic S905X System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash + micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI + AV port (composite) Audio – HDMI output, AV (stereo audio), and S/PDIF Router subsystem SoC – Mediatek MT7628 580MHz MIPS 24KEc […]

Onion Omega2 Pro OpenWrt Linux IoT Board Comes with 8GB Storage (Crowdfunding)

Omega2 Pro

Onion Omega2 and Omega2 Plus are MediaTek MT7688 MIPS based WiFi boards for IoT applications that were launched in 2016 for as low as $5. Both boards run OpenWrt (LEDE at the time), and Omega2 Plus included more memory and storage with respectively 128MB RAM, 32MB flash and a micro SD card. But Onion team found out that many users needed more storage space, and they’ve now come up with Omega2 Pro model with the same processor, 128MB RAM, and large 8GB flash considering we’re talking about a board running OpenWrt 18.06 here. Onion Omega2 Pro specifications: Wireless Module – Onion Omega2S+ with SoC – MediaTek MT7688 MIPS processor @ 580 MHz System Memory – 128MB DDR2 RAM Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi 4 Antenna – 2 dBi directional chip antenna (on mainboard) & u.FL connector for external antenna (on-module) Storage – 8 GB eMMC flash USB – […]

ZIDOO Z9S / Z10 RTD1296 Android + OpenWrt Media Boxes Coming in October

Zidoo Z10

Zidoo introduced their first Realtek RTD1296 media players earlier this year with Zidoo X20 / X20 Pro models, but with prices starting at almost $500 those are not for everyone. The company will soon  launch cheaper and more compact models with ZIDOO Z9S and Z10, which are updated of RTD1295 models Zidoo X9S and X10 launched in previous years. Zidoo Z9S / Z10 specifications: SoC – Realtek RTD1296DD quad core Cortex A53 processor with ARM Mali-T820 MP3 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage 16GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot up to 32GB Zidoo Z9S only – 2x SATA 3.0 external interfaces Zidoo Z10 only – 1x SATA 3.0 bay for 3.5″ drives Video I/O HDMI 2.0a output up to 4K @ 60 Hz, HDR10 support HDMI 2.0 input with HDCP 2.2 input (recording and streaming up to 1080p @ 60 Hz) Zidoo Z9S only – 3.5mm AV output […]

OpenWrt 18.06 is the First Release Since OpenWrt and LEDE Projects Merger

OpenWrt 18.06

LEDE (Linux Embedded Development Environment) was forked from OpenWrt project in 2016 due to disagreements among developers, and this lead to LEDE 17.01.0 “Reboot” release the following year. But eventually, developers must have realized that running two separate and similar projects in parallel was not the best way to go, and OpentWrt and LEDE projects were re-merged right at the beginning of this year. So I’m pleased to announced the developers have now introduced the first release out of the new partnership with OpenWrt 18.06. OpenWrt 18.06 is actually the first major release since LEDE 17.01, as the previous OpenWrt release was version 15.05. It focuses on support for network flow offloading and modernizing Atheros AR71xx target, brings updates to kernel and package, as well as other improvements and fixes. You’ll find the binary packages for your hardware on the rtargets page, and the source code is hosted on Github. […]

Banana Pi BPI-R64 Router Board is Powered by Mediatek MT7622, Supports 802.11ac WiFi, Optional PoE Module

Banana Pi BPI-R64

SinoVoIP launched several Banana Pi router boards in the past starting with Allwinner A20 based Banana Pi BPI-R1 in 2014, and followed by Banana Pi BPI-R2 board powered by a Mediatek MT7623 processor last year. Such boards normally include multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports, as well as at least one SATA connector, and in some cases an mPCIe connector for WiFi or LTE cards. THe company also launched Banana Pi BPI-W2 board a few months ago, but that model is more geared towards multimedia router use cases. The company has now unveiled Banana Pi BPI-R64 router board based on Mediatek MT7622 dual core Arm Cortex-A53 processor, five Gigabit Ethernet port, on-board 802.11ac WiFi, one “laptop” SATA port, as well as an optional PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) add-on board.Banana PI RPI-R64 board specifications provided by the company – which has not always shown to be accurate -: SoC – MediaTek MT7622 dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 […]

Zidoo X20 High-End 4K Media Player Launched for $486 and Up

Zidoo X20

Unveiled last January, Zidoo X20 Pro is a high-end Android + Linux (OpenWrt) media player powered by Realtek RTD1296 media processor, and equipped with three HDMI ports, two SATA bays, ES9038 professional DAC, and more. The only thing is that it was not available just yet, but Zidoo X20 Pro, or more exactly its little brother Zidoo X20, has now started to show up on Aliexpress and Futeko for $486 and up. Zidoo X20 specifications: SoC – Realtek RTD1296 quad core Cortex A53 processor with ARM Mali-T820 MP3 GPU System Memory – 2 GB DDR4 Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash, 2x SATA 3.0 bays for 2.5 or 3.5″ drives Video 1x HDMI 2.0a output up to 4K @ 60 Hz 1x HDMI 1.4 output up to 4K @ 30 Hz 1x HDMI 2.0 input supporting PiP, stream recording, and UDP broadcasting 1x RCA composite output Decode – HDR10, 10-bit […]

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