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UP Board is a Raspberry Pi Clone with an Intel Atom X5 Processor (Crowdfunding)

Many ARM based “insert-fruit-name-here” Pi boards are available on the market, and they all look like the Raspberry Pi board to some extends, but thanks Emutex we’ll soon get the “UP board” powered by Intel Atom x5-Z8300 and in Raspberry Pi form factor including the ubiquitous 40-pin Raspberry Pi headers, DSI and CSI connectors, and mostly the same port placements, with some extra goodies like a USB 3.0 port and Gigabit Ethernet. Up Board specifications: SoC – Intel Atom x5-Z8300 “Cherry Trail” quad core processor @ 1.44 GHz (Burst frequency: 1.84 GHz) with Intel Gen8 HD graphics @ 500 MHz System Memory –  1 GB DDR3L-1600 Storage – 16 or 32 GB eMMC Video Output / Display – HDMI, DSI connector Audio I/O – HDMI Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet USB – 4x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x USB 2.0 pin header, 1x micro USB 3.0 port (under the board) Camera […]

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ZeroPi is an Arduino & Raspberry Pi Compatible Motor Control Board (Crowdfunding)

Pi boards keep on coming… As soon as I finished writing about Roseapple Pi board, yet another one popped out on my twitter feed… But that one is of a different kind, as it won’t run Linux, but instead the board is powered by an Atmel SAMD21 Cortex M0+ micro-controller, and can support lots of electric motors including up to 11 micro servos and 8 DC motors – or 4 stepper motors – simultaneously. ZeroPi board specifications: MCU – Atmel SAMD21J18 ARM Cortex M0+ @ 48 MHz with 32 SRAM and 256KB flash I/O pins via 33-pin header, 4-pin temperature sensor, and 10-pin Raspberry Pi header 35 GPIOs 4x 12-bit ADC channels 1x 10-bit DAC 2x UART 2-channel temperature sensor interface DC current per I/O pin- 7mA DC / Stepper Motor control – 4x 4-channel SLOT interface compatible with common parts such as DRV8825 or A4988 Stepper motor driver and […]

Khadas Edge2 Arm mini PC
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Allo SPARKY Board Supports Raspberry Pi HATs for Multimedia, IoT and VoIP Applications

Allo is a company based in Bangalore, India specializing in VoIP hardware solutions, but they’ve recently developed a single board board powered by Actions Semi S500 quad core processor that supports various Raspberry Pi HATs and can be used for multimedia, IoT, and Telecom application such as Asterix or Freeswitch PBX. Allo SPARKY board specifications: SoC – Actions Semi S500 quad core Cortex A9r4 processor with PowerVR SGX544 GPU @ 500 MHz Memory – 1 or 2GB RAM Storage – Socket for 8, 16, 32 or 64GB pluggable eMMC modules,  micro SD slot up to 32GB, optional NAND flash Video Output – HDMI,  34-pin LCD connector Audio – HDMI, Headphone jack, built-in microphone Video Codec – H.265 (HEVC) and Ultra HD (4K*2K) video playback. Encoding up to 1080p@60fps. Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x USB 3.0 (OTG) port Camera –  24-pin camera interface (Up […]

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Lemon Pi Board is a $35 Raspberry Pi 2 Alternative Powered by Actions Semi S500 SoC (Crowdfunding)

I wrote about ActDuino S500 last month. It’s a development board powered by Actions Semi S500 quad core Cortex A9 processor, but very few details were available, and release date and pricing had not been disclosed. EmbedStudio, a Shenzhen startup, has now launched an Indiegogo campaign (flexible funding) for their Lemon Pi board based on S500 processor. Lemon Pi specifications: SoC – Actions Semi S500 quad core Cortex A9r4 processor with 512KB L2 Cache and a PowerVR SGX544 GPU with OpenGL ES 1.1/2.0, OpenVG 1.0.1, and OpenCL support Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM (Option: 2GB, not part of crowdfunding rewards) Storage – micro SD slot. Option: Up to 64GB eMMC 4.5 flash, not part of crowdfunding rewards. Video Output – HDMI 1.4 with HDCP, 3.5mm jack for CVBS (AV), MIPI DSI Audio – HDMI, AV (Line out / microphone) Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet (RJ45; RTL8201F) USB – 2x USB 2.0 […]

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Raspberry Pi Model B+ Price Drops to $25

When Raspberry Pi 2 was launched, Raspberry Pi Model B+ kept getting sold for $35 despite the lower specifications, but a week later resellers started selling Model B+ for as low as $30 shipped. But the Raspberry Pi foundation now announced an official new price for Raspberry Pi Model B+, which now sells for just $25 on RS Components and MCM Electronics with other resellers to soon follow. This makes R-Pi Model B+ relevant again for applications that do not require the extra horse power or memory brought by R-Pi 2 quad core processor and 1GB RAM.

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Windows 10 IoT Preview for Raspberry Pi 2 and MinnowBoard Max

When Raspberry Pi 2 Model B was released, we were promised a Windows 10 image for the board, and today, Microsoft released “Windows 10 IoT Core Insider Preview” for both the Broadcom BCM2836 based Raspberry Pi 2 and Intel Atom E3800 series based Minnowboard MAX boards. To get started with either board, simply go to Windows IoT – Getting Started page. I’ll quickly go through the instructions for Raspberry Pi 2. Beside the board, you’ll also need a PC running Windows 10 Insider preview (Virtual machine not supported), a 5V power supply, a HDMI cable (optional but recommended), an Ethernet cable, and a 8GB micro SD card, class 10 or better. The you’ll need to configure a connect account, where I had to accept two EULA including “Windows 10 IoT Core Insider Preview EULA”, and once this is done the area of the page for EULA should just be blank, […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs
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UDOO Neo Combines Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Sensors into a Single $49 Board (Crowdfunding)

UDOO Neo was unveiled last February as the first hobbyist board features Freecale i.MX6 Solox Cortex A9 + Cortex M4 processor. I was expecting UDOO to design support board since their earlier UDOO board combined Freescale i.MX6 processor with an Atmel MCU, and the new processor allowed for integrating the same functionality into a single chip. The board is now on Kickstarter where you can pick UDOO Neo Basic for $49 (Early bird is $35), or UDOO Neo for $59 (Early bird was $45) adding an Ethernet port, some sensors, and 1GB RAM, instead of 512 MB for the Basic version. But both versions of the board basically share the same specifications: SoC – Freescale i.MX 6SoloX ARM Cortex-A9 core @ 1GHz with 2D/3D GPU and ARM Cortex-M4 Core @ 166 MHz System Memory – 512MB (Basic) or 1GB DDR3 Storage – micro SD slot, 8-bit SDIO interface (on expansion headers) […]

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Tizen OS Ported to the Raspberry Pi 2

Tizen may not be overly used in devices, but there has been ports of the operating system on various ARM platform, mostly development boards, powered by Allwinner, Rockchip, Freescale SoCs, and more… Seeing the popularity of Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, Samsung Open Source Group decided to port Tizen to the latest version of the hobbyist board. The full instructions are rather long, and provided in the link above, but the main steps – using a Linux based computer – can be summarized as follows: Create a local copy of tizen-distro Add Raspberry Pi 2 BSP Meta repository Initialize the environment and modify some config files Start the build with Yocto: bitbake rpi-hwup-image. This should make a minimal headless? image Create an SD card image with tmp-glibc/deploy/images/raspberrypi2/rpi-hwup-image-raspberrypi2.rpi-sdimg using dd, an optional resize the parition with gparted or fdisk/resize2fs. Insert the SD card in to your Raspberry Pi 2, and have […]

Boardcon Rockchip and Allwinner SoM and SBC products