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Smaller & Faster than Raspberry Pi Zero: Meet NanoPi NEO ARM Linux Development Board

Raspberry Pi Zero has two noticeable attributes compared to other Raspberry Pi boards: it’s smaller and it’s cheaper. FriendlyARM has now designed another model for their NanoPi family, that about 12% smaller, although not quite as thin at all due to its Ethernet jack and USB connector, and much faster than Raspberry Pi Zero, with NanoPi NEO board powered by Allwinner H3 quad core processor. NanoPi NEO specifications: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz System Memory – 256 or 512 MB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB – 1x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port, 2x USB via headers Expansion headers 24-pin header with I2C, 2x UART, SPI, PWM, and power signals 12-pin header with 2x USB, IR pin, microphone and Line OUT signals Debugging – 4-pin […]

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$99 MATRIX Creator Raspberry Pi Add-on Board Features Plenty of Sensors, a 2.4 GHz Radio, and More

MATRIX Creator is a round-shaped add-on board for Raspberry Pi boards with various sensors, a microphone array, an LED array, a Xilinx FPGA, an Atmel Cortex-M3 MCU, wireless connectivity via Z-Wave, ZigBee, Thread, and NFC, as well as various I/Os…. MATRIX Creator specifications: FPGA – Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA MCU – Atmel ATSAM3S2C Cortex-M3 MCU Connectivity – ZigBee, Thread, Z-Wave and NFC Sensors – Ultraviolet, pressure, humidity, temperature, 3D accelerometer, 3D gyroscope, 3D magnetometer Audio – 8x MEMs microphone array with Alexa support Expansion – 2x ADC, 17x digital GPIOs, SPI, I2C, UART; 40-pin connector for Raspberry Pi 2/3 Misc – 35x RGBW LEDs array, IR Rx/Tx, infrared ring for the Raspberry Pi NoIR camera I can’t think of the single application that would make use of all features of this board, but the least we can say is that it’s extremely versatile. The developers are providing MATRIX OS based […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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RisingHF IoT Discovery is a LoRaWAN Evaluation Kit for Raspberry Pi

There are many current and upcoming long range low power wireless protocols for the IoT, but this morning I learned that South Korea launched a LoRa network (aka LoRaWAN), after another launch in the Netherlands earlier this year. While there are also some LoRa hobbyist kits such as LoraONE and LoPy being worked on, I decided to look on Aliexpress, but only got two products were listed: a LoRaWAN temperature and humidity sensor, and a LoraWAN USB modem. Both of them are made by a company called RisingHF. Among the products offered by the company, there’s a potentially interesting development kit called RisingHF IoT Discovery with the following components: 1x Raspberry Pi board 1x RHF0M301 LoRa Gateway based on Semtech SX1301 1x RHF4T002  adapter for Raspberry Pi and RHF0M301 1x RHF3M076 LoRaWAN USB AT Modem End point to connect to computer. It operates at 434MHz, 470MHz,868MHz, and 915MHz 3x RHF76-052 […]

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FFmpeg 3.1 adds support for OpenMAX encoding on Raspberry Pi, VA-API H.264 & H.265 Encoding, and more

FFmpeg is an open source multimedia framework used by many open source, as well as closed source, projects to handle audio and video containers parsing, hardware or software video decoding / encoding, and more. I also used it a few months ago to test H.265 hardware encoding with an Nvidia GPU using the development branch, but the developers have now released FFmpeg 3.1 “Laplace”, so it’s possible to use a stable release to perform H.265 hardware encoding. Some of the most noticeable features of the new version include: Generic OpenMAX IL H.264 & MPEG4 encoders for Raspberry Pi VA-API accelerated H.264/HEVC/MJPEG encoding VAAPI-accelerated format conversion and scaling Native Android MediaCodec API H.264 decoding CUDA (CUVID) HEVC & H.264 decoders CUDA accelerated format conversion and scaling DXVA2 accelerated HEVC Main10 decoding on Windows Many new muxers/demuxers A variety of new filters The complete list of changes for FFmpeg 3.1 can be […]

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Raspberry Pi Zero Based Google’s Project Bloks Aims to Teach Programming to Young Children

Visual programming development tools such as Scratch or Blockly are now becoming more popular to introduce school children to programming, and Google Research is now working on bringing the software visual programming concept to physical blocks “programming” though Project Bloks targeting younger children who may not be able to write or read yet. It might also help older children grasping programming concepts faster than when programming by typing on a keyboard. Project Bloks is comprised of three main hardware components connected together: Pucks – Those are the buttons, dials, switches, and other inputs from the project. Pucks have no active electronics, and even a piece of paper with some conductive ink could be a Puck. Base Boards –  They read a Puck’s instruction through a capacitive sensor, and forward a Puck’s command to the Brain Board.  Each Base Board is also fitted with a haptic motor & LEDs, and can […]

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DIY Wireless Window/Glass Mounted Camera Based on Raspberry Pi Zero Board

A few weeks ago, the Raspberry Pi foundation announced a new version of the Raspberry Pi Zero with a CSI camera connector. Since the solution is quite lightweight, Steven Cassidy had the idea to make a WiFi enabled window camera by soldering a USB WiFi module and fitting the hardware to a plastic part with two suction cups. Once the assembly is done, you can stuck the hardware to a window or glass of your choice in your home, car, aquarium, etc… If you like the concept but would like to have something working out of the box instead of making your own, the Pi Hut has design ZeroView on the same principle, and which will sell for 7 GBP (~$10.3).

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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Raspberry Pi 3 To Get ARM TrustZone Support with Linaro OP-TEE Port

If you ever wanted to experiment with ARM Trustzone, and IoT security, you’ll soon be able to do so with the Raspberry Pi 3 board thanks to a port of Linaro OP-TEE (Open Portable Trusted Environment Execution) by Sequitur Labs. Broadcom BCM2737 SoC found in Raspberry Pi 3 board already had TrustZone hardware for isolation and protection for sensitive material such as cryptographic keys, algorithms and data, but the upcoming software release will mean the feature can now be used, and it’s free for trial/evaluation, and  education. Trustzone is also used for DRM (digital rights management), but in the case of Raspberry Pi 3 it will most likely used to teach how to secure the Internet of Things (IoT). The release is scheduled for July 11, with source code and documentation to be available in OP-TEE github account. All you’ll need to get started is a Raspberry Pi 3 board, […]

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Android TV 6.0 Ported to Raspberry Pi 3 with 2D/3D GPU Acceleration, but no Hardware Video Decoding (Yet)

Google might be working on Android or Brillo for Raspberry Pi 3, with a new repository created in AOSP, meaning that, if that’s Android,  you won’t probably get the Google Mobiles Services by default, but those can be side-loaded to get access the the Play Store, Youtube, etc… In the meantime, a group of developer have been working Android 6.0 TV port for Raspberry Pi 3. That’s the same team who worked on previous images for Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi 2 boards using “peyo” port, and that did not have any support for 2D/3D graphics acceleration, nor hardware video decoding. But they’ve made some improvements for their Android TV 6.0.1 release for Raspberry Pi 3, as 2D/3D GPU acceleration is enabled using the Mesa drivers, and Kodi user interface, game emulators, WelGL in Chrome browser all work relatively well using 1280×720 frame buffer resolution as you can see from […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products