CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

January 12, 2024March 9, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

MINIX NEO Z100-0dB fanless N100 mini PC review – Part 1: Unboxing, teardown, and first boot

MINIX Z100-0dB (or MINIX NEO Z100-0dB) is a fanless mini PC powered by the popular Intel Processor N100 quad-core Alder Lake-N CPU with up to 32GB RAM, up to 512GB M.2 SSD, various USB 3.2/2.0 ports, a microSD card slot, two HDMI 2.0 ports, and a 2.5GbE RJ45 jack, as well as WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless module. MINIX sent us a sample of the NEO Z100-0dB mini PC for review with 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM and a 512GB M.2 SSD preloaded with Windows 11 Pro. Since we’ve already listed the specifications in the announcement, today, we’ll go through an unboxing and a teardown before giving it a quick try booting Windows 11 Pro. We will then test the performance and features of the mini PC in detail with Windows 11 Pro and Ubuntu 22.04 (or 24.04) in the next parts of the review in several weeks. MINIX NEO […]

January 12, 2024April 17, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 41 Comments

OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY is an upcoming router board developed by OpenWrt and Banana Pi

OpenWrt developers have started the process to develop the “OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY” router board based on MediaTek MT7981B (Filogic 820) SoC and MediaTek MT7976C dual-band WiFi 6 chipset, and designed in collaboration with Banana Pi that will also handle manufacturing and distribution of the router board. As of the OpenWrt 23.05 release, close to 1,800 routers and other devices are officially supported by the lightweight embedded Linux operating system, and many more claim to be running OpenWrt through a fork of the OS. But none of those are made by OpenWrt developers who have now decided to create their own router board in collaboration with Banana Pi since they’ve done such boards including the BPI-R4 WiFi 7 router SBC. OpenWrt One/AP-24.XY preliminary specifications: SoC – MediaTek MT7981B (Filogic 820) dual-core Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.3 GHz System Memory – 1GB DDR4 Storage 128 MB SPI NAND flash for U-boot and Linux 4 […]

January 12, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Reolink Argus PT Ultra review – A solar powered 4K WiFi Pan-and-Tilt smart security camera

Reolink Argus PT Ultra Solar Panel Instllation

Nearly four years ago, I reviewed the solar-powered Reolink Argus PT pan-and-tilt security camera. The device worked (and still works) mostly fine, but it was at a time when security cameras did not implement AI features like people and vehicle detection just yet relying only on PIR motion sensors so I’d get plenty of false positives. The WiFi connection is not overly reliable either especially when I tried to access the camera from outside my house, something that does not happen with the PoE and 4G LTE models from the company. Reolink asked me whether I wanted to review the new Reolink Argus PT Ultra security camera with higher 4K resolution, dual-band WiFi support, as well as people, vehicle, and pet detection, and most of the same other features found on the older Argus PT. So I took up on the offer and I’ve used it for about one month […]

January 11, 2024January 13, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Arduino and Silicon Labs collaborate to bring Matter to Arduino boards and IDE

Arduino and Silicon Labs have joined hands to both bring Matter-compatible SiLabs wireless microcontrollers to the Arduino IDE and then design an upcoming Arduino Nano based on SiLabs MGM240 Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller with Matter, Thread, Zigbee, and Bluetooth LE protocols. Available now: Arduino Core for Silicon Labs devices The first phase of the collaboration involves getting Arduino core for Silicon Labs development boards so that compatible devices can be programmed in the IDE. The good news is that it’s available now and works with four existing wireless boards: SparkFun Thing Plus Matter MGM240P based on MGM240PB32VNA Arm Cortex-M33 MCU with Matter, Thread, Zigbee 3.0, and Bluetooth 5.3 LE connectivity SiLabs xG27 Dev Kit based on EFR32BG27C140F768IM40 Arm Cortex-M33 MCU with Bluetooth LE 5.3, Bluetooth Mesh, Proprietary 2.4 GHz connectivity SiLabs xG24 Explorer Kit based on EFR32MG24B210F1536IM48 Arm Cortex-M33 MCU with Bluetooth 5.3 LE, Bluetooth Mesh, Matter, OpenThread, Zigbee, Proprietary 2.4 […]

January 11, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Spacetouch SPV60 AI audio processor features a 400 MHz Andes D25F RISC-V core

Spacetouch SPV60 is a RISC-V AI audio processor with an Andes D25F 32-bit RISC-V CPU IP core with P-extension (DSP/SIMD) that is also found in the Telink TLSR9 wireless audio microcontroller introduced in 2020. But the SPV60 is clocked at a higher 400 MHz frequency, adopts a CPU + NPU + uDSP heterogeneous multi-core architecture with a 100 GOPS AI accelerator and a micro DSP capable of handling 1024-point FFT and iFFT among other mathematical functions, and offers a range of peripherals interfaces such as USB 2.0, SPDIF, I2C, PDM for microphone arrays, and more. Spacetouch SPV60 specifications: CPU Andes D25F 32-bit RISC-V core with P extension (DSP/SIMD ISA) clocked at up to 400MHz 5-stage pipeline Hardware multiplication/division operations Single precision floating point accelerator 32KB I-Cache and 16KB D-Cache; 32KB L2 Cache Spacetouch-designed uDSP – Support for 1024-point FFT and IFFT, FIR, COS, SIN, SQRT, Arctan, LOG, and other functions […]

January 11, 2024July 5, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

SunFounder PiCar-X 2.0 review – A Raspberry Pi 4 AI robot car programmable with Blockly or Python

SunFounder PiCar-X 2.0 is an AI-powered self-driving robot car using the Raspberry Pi 3/4 as the main processing board. It is equipped with a camera module that can be moved by a 2-axis servo motor, allowing the camera to pan or tilt, an ultrasonic module for detecting distant objects, and a line detection module. The PiCar-X robot can also perform computer vision tasks such as color detection, face detection, traffic signs detection, automatic obstacle avoidance, and automatic line tracking. The PiCar-X can be programmed with two computer languages: Blockly-based Ezblock Studio drag-and-drop program and Python, and the robot works with OpenCV computer vision library and TensorFlow for AI workloads. Finally, you can also control the robot through the SunFounder controller application on your mobile phone. The company sent us a sample of the Picar-X 2.0 for review, so let’s get started. SunFounder PiCar-X 2.0 robot overview The PiCar-X robot kit […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

January 10, 2024February 6, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Lichee Console 4A portable RISC-V development terminal review – Part 1: Unboxing, teardown, and hands on

Sipeed has just sent me a “Lichee Console 4A portable RISC-V development terminal” for review. It’s a quad-core RISC-V mini laptop based on the Alibaba T-Head TH1520 processor with a 7-inch touchscreen display, and my model is equipped with a Lichee LM4A module fitted with 16GB RAM and 128GB eMMC flash. I’ll start the review of the RISC-V developer kit with an unboxing, a teardown, and a quick try with the preinstalled Debian 12 “Bookworm” image, before testing the latter in the second part of the review. The second part will take some time as we have about twenty reviews planned for now, four of which I’ll be taking care of myself… Lichee Console 4A unboxing I received the device in a package indicating I had been sent the 16GB+128GB model and reading “Lichee Console 4A portable RISC-V developer terminal” which makes it clear it’s based on RISC-V, is portable […]

January 10, 2024January 10, 2024 by Tomisin Olujinmi - 9 Comments

Espressif announces the ESP32-C61 WiFi 6 SoC with improved affordability and wireless connectivity

Espressif has announced the ESP32-C61 SoC, a new ESP32-Cx chip with improved wireless connectivity, and expanded memory options. The ESP32-C61 builds upon the foundation laid by previous ESP32-Cx chips, such as the ESP32-C2 and ESP-C3, and its specifications appear to be quite similar to the ESP32-C6 launched in early 2023, but this SoC also adds support for the BLE Mesh 1.1 protocol and Quad SPI PSRAM at a frequency of up to 120MHz. It supports WiFi 6 on two modes (802.11ax and 802.11b/g/n) and includes a Bluetooth 5 (LE) radio with support for long-range operation through advertisement extension and coded PHY. The TWT (Target Wake Time) feature is supported in 802.11ax mode to save power, as well as OFDMA (Uplink/Downlink) and MU-MIMO (Downlink) for a high-quality, low-latency connection between devices. ESP32-C61 specifications: CPU – Single-core, 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller that can be clocked up to 160MHz Memory: 320KB on-chip SRAM 256KB […]