Reviews - Page 71 of 130 - CNX Software

November 8, 2017December 18, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

Khadas VIM2 Board Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Dual Tuner Board

Khadas VIM2 board is the successor of Khadas VIM board, replacing Amlogic S905X by a slightly more powerful Amlogic S912, but that’s the connectivity features that really makes it stand apart from the first version with Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2. It also exposes a few extra I/Os via pogopins. and among the three variants, two comes with 3GB RAM, and up to 64 GB storage. The company (Shenzhen Wesion) sent me one of the boards, together with various accessories, and I’ll start the review of the board by checking out the hardware and accessories, before testing the board further in another post. I received two packages: one book-like with Khadas marked on top, and another one with various other items. The first package includes the board, a USB to USB type C cable, and a card showing the main specifications, and supported operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04, Android […]

November 8, 2017August 21, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

HiMedia Q10 Pro TV Box Review – Part 1: Unboxing and 3.5″ SATA Bay

HiMedia Q10 Pro Android TV box was launched in March of last year, equipped with a HiSilicon Hi3798CV200 quad-core ARM Cortex A53 processor, 2GB RAM, 16GB flash, and a SATA bay for 3.5″ drives. When I wrote a post about the Best Android TV boxes, on commenter mentioned that while NVIDIA Android Shield was the best box for streaming, he felt HiMedia Q10 Pro offered the best quality for media playback. With now 18 months since launch, you may wonder why I would do a review now. That’s because Himedia keeps updating the firmware, and they asked me to check out and test their latest feature: 4K Blu-Ray navigation on Android 7.0 OS. As usual, I’ll start by checking out the hardware, and will publish a review focusing on Blu-ray playback in a few weeks. The package is more like a suitcase that your usual tiny box, but that’s common […]

October 30, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

NanoPi Duo Quick Start Guide – Ubuntu, Breadboard, Mini Shield & mSATA SSD

As far as I know NanoPi Duo is the only quad core ARM Linux development board that can fit on a breadboard. We’ve already seen it’s much smaller than Raspberry Pi Zero, and the company offer a mini shield exposing USB ports, Ethernet, a few I/Os, and an mSATA slot in in NanoPi Duo Starter Kit Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Assembly. I’ve finally played with it this week-end, and will report what I had to do to blink a LED when connected to breadboard, and my experience using the mini shield with an mSATA SSD, WiFi connectivity, and cooling under load. Flashing Ubuntu 16.04.2 firmware image to NanoPi Duo As with many other Allwinner development boards, you should first check if Armbian is available for the board. NanoPi Duo is not supported, but it’s said to work with Orange Pi Zero image minus support for WiFi. Since the […]

October 26, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

MeLE PCG35 Apo Apollo Lake Mini PC Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 17.10

I completed the review of MeLE PCG35 Apo with Windows 10 Home a few days ago, and as promised, I’ve now installed the freshly released Ubuntu 17.10 in the Intel Celeron J3455 “Apollo Lake” mini PC. I’ll start by shortly explaining the step to install Ubuntu 17.10 in the M.2 slot, although you could also install it to the internal eMMC flash replacing Windows 10, then show what works and what does, and finally include a video reproducing the tests I usually do in Windows 10. How to Install Linux in MeLE PCG35 Apo This partially follows the procedure I used to run (not install) Ubuntu 16.04 on MeLE PCG03 Apo mini PC. First you’ll need to download the ISO of your choice (ubuntu-17.10-desktop-am64.iso in my case), and prepare a bootable USB flash drive with the software of your choice be it Rufus, Startup Disk Creator or others. I did […]

October 25, 2017November 14, 2017 by Karl Johnson - 7 Comments

Tronxy X3S 3D Printer Review – Part 2: Upgraded Heatbed and RAMPS Board

Karl here. So the bed I mentioned in the first part of Tronxy X3S review is not very good. It took about 10-11 minutes to heat up to 60 deg Celsius. I also mentioned I was going to upgrade the board to a RAMPS board. Today we are going to look at both these upgrades. New Heated Bed I can take no credit for this one but I wanted to pass this along. Folger tech sells a 12v 280w heated bed stick on pad. I picked this up for $20, but is now $22. In order to do this upgrade you will need a MOSFET, 12V/30A power supply, and of course the pad above. Super easy installation. Remove the bed and stick on the self adhesive pad centered. Replace the power supply with new one. Should be self explanatory. In order to power this bed a MOSFET is needed. A […]

October 24, 2017October 24, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

JeVois Smart Machine Vision Camera Review – Part 1: Developer / Robotics Kit Unboxing

JeVois-A33 computer vision camera was unveiled at the end of last year through a Kickstarter campaign. Powered by an Allwinner A33 quad core Cortex A7 processor, and a 1.3MP camera sensor, the system could detect motion, track faces and eyes, detect & decode ArUco makers & QR codes, follow lines for autonomous cars, etc.. thanks to JeVois framework. Most rewards from KickStarter shipped in April of this year, so it’s quite possible some of the regular readers of this blog are already familiar the camera. But the developer (Laurent Itti) re-contacted me recently, explaining they add improves the software with Python support, and new features such as the capability of running deep neural networks directly on the processor inside the smart camera. He also wanted to send a review sample, which I received today, but I got a bit more than I expected, so I’ll start the review with an […]

October 23, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

MeLE PCG35 Apo Mini PC Review – Part 2: Windows 10 Home

Laptops and mini PCs powered by the new generation of Intel Gemini Lake processors are coming soon, but companies are still launching Apollo Lake based products with various features. MeLE PCG35 Apo mini PC is one of them, and what makes it interesting compared to most of the competition is support for 80mm M.2 SSDs and 2.5″ SATA drives, on top of featuring a Celeron J3455 processor, one of the most powerful of the family. I took photos of the mini PC, accessories, and internal design in the first part of the review, so I’ll report about my experience with Windows 10 Home, explain how to manage the different drives, and test stability under load. MeLE PCG35 Apo Setup, Drives Configuration, Display Settings Last time, I’ve showed how to install an M.2 SSD and 2.5″ SATA hard drive inside MeLE PCG35 Apo, so I just have to connect a few […]

October 17, 2017October 19, 2017 by Karl Johnson - 45 Comments

ACEPC AK1 Celeron J3455 Mini PC Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Teardown, and First Impressions

Karl here. Today we are going to look at the ACEPC AK1 mini PC. Here are some of the specs pulled from ACEPC’s website. The feature that is most notable to me is the included 2.5” hard drive compartment. Hardware CPU:Intel Celeron J3455 GPU:Intel HD Graphics 500 RAM:4GB DDR3L ROM:32GB eMMC WiFi:Ac3165 Dual Band，2.4G/5G LAN: Ethernet RJ45 10/100/1000M Bluetooth: BT V4.0 Interfaces USB port:2xUSB 3.0;2xUSB 2.0;1xType C;support USB disk and USB HDD Card reader: TF Card (up to 128GB) HDMI Port: HDMI 1.4 Microphone audio: 3.5mm Microphone jack x1 Unboxing & Teardown Some close-up photos to get a better look at the chips, and overall hardware design. First Boot – Storage / Task Manager Storage after first boot: Storage after update: Thermal Testing with Prime 95 Cooling seems adequate. Below is a picture of Prime 95 after 5 minutes. I am glad to see it staying at about […]