pine64 News - Page 5 of 16 - CNX Software

November 25, 2021February 29, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 25 Comments

Seaberry Mini-ITX carrier board for Raspberry Pi CM4 exposes 11 PCIe slots and sockets

SeaBerry mini-ITX motherboard Raspberry Pi CM4

The Raspberry Pi CM4 may only have a one PCIe x1 Gen 2 interface, but this has not stopped ALFTEL from designing Seaberry, a mini-ITX carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 with eleven slots and sockets making use of the single 5 Gbps PCIe Gen 2 interface. The board also offers two SATA ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, one RJ45 console port, two HDMI ports, a micro SD card slot, two USB 2.0 ports, as well as the usual 40-pin GPIO expansion header, besides the PCIe x16 slot, a PCIe x1 side slot, and M.2 and mPCIe sockets. Seaberry carrier board specifications: Compatible systems-on-module Raspberry Pi CM4 module (Regular or Lite) Radxa CM3 Pine64 SoQuartz Storage – 1x MicroSD card for Raspberry Pi CM4 Lite, 1x M.2 socket for NVMe SSD (See PCIe expansion section) Video Output – 2x HDMI output ports, 1x MIPI DSI connector Camera […]

November 16, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Pine64 hostboards for SOQuartz System-on-Module

While the Rockchip RK3566 powered SOQuartz system-on-module is designed to be compatible with most Raspberry Pi CM4 baseboards, Pine64 is working on three baseboards, which it calls hostboards, for SOQuartz, with the latest introduced in the Pine64’s November update designed to fit in a server rack. That means we now have the “small form factor” hostboard that’s about the size of a business card, the Model-A hostboard with more features and the same dimensions as Pine A64 SBC, and the new Blade hostboard compatible with server racks. Let’s have a look at the three baseboards. Small form factor hostboard Key features: Compatible with SOQuartz SoM with quad-core Cortex-A55 processor with 2GB to 8GB RAM, optional eMMC flash up to 128GB, and optional WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 module Display Interfaces HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60 1x MIPI DSI connector Camera interfaces – 2x MIPI CSI connectors Networking – Gigabit Ethernet […]

November 8, 2021July 4, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

SOQuartz – Raspberry Pi CM4 compatible Rockchip RK3566 SoM launched for $35 and up

SoQuartz Raspberry-Pi CM4 compatible module

Radxa CM3 Raspberry Pi 4 alternative was just introduced yesterday, but today, Pine64 SOQuartz Compute Module has just become available for $34.99 and up. Pine64 announced the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 compatible Rockchip RK3566 system-on-module (SoM) last June, and today the company/community launched three SOQuartz models with a wireless module and equipped with either 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB RAM. SOQuartz system-on-module preliminary specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor up to 1.8 GHz with 32-bit RISC-V MCU, Arm Mali-G52 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan 1.1, 0.8 TOPS NPU for AI acceleration System Memory – 2GB to 8GB LPDDR4 Storage Optional 128 Mbit SPI flash Optional eMMC module from 16GB up to 128GB capacity or soldered-on eMMC module (see bottom of board) Wireless module – Azurewave AW-CM256SM WiFi 5 802.11ac & Bluetooth 5.0 wireless module plus an u.FL antenna connector. 2x 100-pin high-density board-to-board connectors with: […]

October 16, 2021October 16, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Raspberry Pi 4, Rockchip RK3399 SBC’s get Arm SystemReady IR certification

RockPro64 RK3399 Arm SystemReady IR certification

The first hardware platforms getting Arm SystemReady IR certification for IoT Edge applications were announced a few months ago with namely NXP i.MX 8 Mini evaluation kit and Compulab IOT-GATE-IMX8 gateway being able to run off-the-shelf operating system images such as Fedora IoT, OpenSuSE Leap 15.3, and Debian 11 thanks to UEFI firmware. But following PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone announcement, and Pine64 October update, we also learned that Rockchip RK3399 based RockPro64 was also Arm SystemReady IR certified, and check Arm’s website directly revealed it was joined by Lenovo Leez P710 “Gateway” SBC, as well as Raspberry Pi 4 and Pi 400 platforms. Let’s check the details and see what off-the-shelf images each board has been tested with. Pine64 RockPro64 RK3399 SBC achieved SystemReady IR v1.0 Level 1 certification meaning it complies with some waivers and workarounds found in the errata document. The board has been successfully tested with Fedora […]

October 15, 2021December 29, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone to feature a power-optimized Rockchip RK3399S processor

Pine64 has now announced the PinePhone Pro Linux smartphone with a Rockchip RK3399S hexa-core processor clocked at 1.5 GHz, that’s a power-optimized version of the popular Rockchip RK3399 processor. It will provide a noticeable upgrade to the PinePhone Linux smartphones launched in November 2019, which, by today’s standards, is quite underpowered. Besides the faster processor, PinePhone Pro also comes with 4GB RAM and 128 GB storage which should make it a better candidate at mobile desktop convergence, as well as a 5.95-inch display with 1440×720 resolution, a 13MP rear camera, a 5MP front-facing camera, and more. PinePhone Pro specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399S with an hexa-core processor comprised of 2x Cortex-A72 core @ up to 1.5 GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 cores, Arm Mali T860 quad-core GPU @ 500Mhz System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 @ 800MHz Storage – 128GB eMMC flash storage, MicroSD slot Display – 5.95-inch 1440 x 720 in-cell IPS with […]

September 6, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 28 Comments

OpenWrt 21.02 released with WPA3, HTTPS, TLS enabled by default

OpenWrt 21.02 has just been released with higher security with WPA3, HTTPS & TLS enabled by default, as well as initial support for the Distributed Switch Architecture (DSA), the Linux standard for configurable Ethernet switches. OpenWrt is the most popular open-source Linux distribution for routers and entry-level Linux-capable embedded systems, and the latest release includes over 5800 commits since the release of OpenWrt 19.07 in January 2020. WPA3 was already supported in OpenWrt 19.07, but not enabled by default, OpenWrt 20.02 changes that, together with TLS thanks to trusted CA certificates from Mozilla. That means LuCi interface, wget, opkg package manager can all support HTTPS out-of-the-box. Note that HTTPS redirection can be disabled for LuCI in the configuration files. Another security change is that SELinux is now supported by OpenWrt, but not enabled by default. OpenWrt 21.02’s DSA implementation replaces the current swconfig system, but not all targets have been […]

August 28, 2021August 28, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

LibreELEC 10.0 minimal Linux OS for media playback released with Kodi 19.1

While most TV boxes and SBCs nowadays ship with or support a version of Android, people who just want the best viewing experience may prefer to switch to a Linux distribution such as LibreELEC or CoreELEC. The good news is that LibreELEC 10.0 has just been released with Kodi 19.1 and Linux 5.10 LTS. LibreELEC 10.0 is said to work well for Allwinner, Rockchip, and “Generic” Intel/AMD devices, while the Raspberry Pi 4 release’s codebase is rather new, and there may still be a few rough edges. Support for the previous generation Raspberry Pi boards has been dropped, and there’s no support for Amlogic platforms as CoreELEC already provides good support. Since LibreELEC 10.0 is based on Kodi 19.1, it benefits from the same features as Kodi 19 “Matrix” release including AV1 video decoding, a new skin, HDR support, and more. LibreELEC 10.1 support a wide range of single board […]

August 16, 2021September 26, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

PineNote is a community supported 10.3-inch e-Reader based on Rockchip RK3566 SoC

We’ve covered several e-readers in the past, but the PineNote 10.3-inch e-reader will be a bit different, as the hardware & software will be entirely developed by the community like other Pine64 platforms such as Pinebook Pro, PineCone, Rock64 single board computer, etc… Based on the Rockchip RK3566 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor, PineNote will be one of the fastest e-readers on the market, and leverage the code already written for Quartz64 single board computer, including mainline Linux support. PineNote (preliminary) specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3566 quad-core A55 processor with Mali-G52 EE GPU, 0.8 TOPS NPU (AI accelerator) System Memory – 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM Storage – 128GB eMMC flash Display – 10.3-inch panel with 1404×1872 resolution (227 DPI), 16 levels of grayscale, front light with cool (white) to warm (amber) light adjustment, capacitive glass layer for finger touch-based input, and a Wacom electromagnetic resonance layer (EMR) for EMR pen input. There’s […]