CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

November 7, 2023November 17, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

EDATEC launches two fanless cases for the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC

In my review of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC I noted performance was much improved over the Raspberry Pi 4 but that the board required active cooling with the official solutions (active cooler and case with fan) for optimal performance under load and there weren’t any official fanless cases for the latest Raspberry Pi single board computer. EDATEC aims to fill that gap with two fanless cases for the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC, namely the ED-Pi5Case-B with a low-profile, but closed design, and the ED-Pi5Case-O open case with two heatsinks placed on the top and bottom of the Raspberry Pi 5. Both fanless cases are made of aluminum (CNC milled), available in silver or black, and provide easy access to all ports and most interfaces of the Raspberry Pi 5 including the GPIO header, MIPI connectors, PCIe FPC connector, and PoE header. However, the closed enclosure blocks the battery and […]

November 7, 2023November 9, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 77 Comments

Giveaway Week 2023 – TBS7901 mini PCIe DVB-S2X/S2 module

The second prize of Giveaway Week 2023 is a TBS7901 mini PCIe DVB-S2X/S2 module designed to be connected to a PC or board with a mini PCIe socket in order to watch, record, or broadcast free-to-air video received from a satellite dish. I received both M.2 and mPCIe DVB-S2X modules last August, but I haven’t had time to test any of those yet. So I’m keeping the M.2 module for my own testing once time permits and will be giving away the mini PCIe module to one of CNX Software readers. The module comes with a coaxial antenna cable, as well as a TBS-7901PW power board and SATA power cable since DVB-S/S2/S2X satellite TV requires 13V and 18V DC as well which will be outputted won’t the power board using the 12V from a PSU. You’ll probably need a Windows machine too since TBS provides Windows drivers for the TBS7901 […]

November 6, 2023November 24, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

ZimaCube 6+1-bay NAS offers 2.5GbE, PCIe slots, with either Intel Processor N100 or Core i5-1235U SoC (Crowdfunding)

IceWhale Technology, the company behind the line of ZimaBoard x86 SBCs, has now introduced the ZimaCube (Pro) 6+1-bay NAS equipped with either an Intel Processor N100 Alder Lake-N processor or a more powerful Intel Core i5-1235U Alder Lake-P CPU with additional 2.5GbE ports, PCIe expansion slots, and M.2 sockets. Both models support up to six 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA drives, support for M.2 NVMe SSDs, offer 2.5GbE networking, six USB ports, and one or more PCIe expansion with either PCIe Gen3 (Processor N100) or PCIe Gen4 (Core i5-1235U) enabling the addition of a graphics card, high-speed network cards, and more. ZimaCube (Pro) specifications: SoC ZimaCube – Intel Processor N100 quad-core Alder Lake-N processor @ up to 3.4 GHz (Turbo) with 6MB cache, 24EU Intel HD graphics @ up to 750 MHz; TDP: 6W ZimaCube Pro – Intel Core i5-1235U 10-core/12-thread Alder Lake U-Series processor with 2x Performance cores @ 1.3/4.4GHz, […]

November 6, 2023November 9, 2023 by Sponsored Post - 3 Comments

GEEKOM A5 AMD Ryzen 7 5800H mini PC offered for just $327.99 (Sponsored)

GEEKOM A5 is a mini PC powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H processor combined with 32GB RAM and a 512GB SSD whose suggested retail price is $499.99, but is now offered for just $327.99 on Amazon with a $50 “page coupon” plus an extra 16% discount with the coupon CSA516OFF. The mini PC also supports up to four 4K displays via two HDMI 2.0 outputs and two USB-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2) ports, 2.5Gbps Ethernet and WiFi 6 networking, and features three USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, one USB 2.0 port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. GEEKOM A5 specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen 7 5800H 8-core/16-thread processor up to 3.2 GHz / 4.4 GHz (Turbo) with 16MB cache, AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics; TDP: 35W System Memory – 32GB RAM via dual-channel DDR4-3200 SODIMM Storage 512GB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3×4 NVMe SSD, upgradable to 2TB NVMe or […]

November 6, 2023November 15, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 135 Comments

Giveaway Week 2023 – VOIPAC iMX8M industrial development kit

VOIPAC IMX8M Industrial Development Kit Review

The 10th edition of CNX Software giveaway week is on! We’ll have seven items to give away this time around: six items that I will send myself from my review samples and one from a company that will offer one of its own IoT development kits… We’ll start this year’s giveaway week with the VOIPAC iMX8M industrial development kit equipped with an “iMX8M Industrial Pro” system-on-module powered by an NXP i.MX 8M quad-core Cortex-A53 processor, fitted with 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC flash, and a WiFi and Bluetooth module. The VOIPAC iMX8M industrial development kit is quite a feature-rich development board whose main purpose is to evaluate the company’s system-on-module for integration into final products. I tested it last summer showing how to get started with the Yocto BSP by building the image from scratch, booting from the eMMC flash or a microSD card, and testing several features such as networking, […]

November 5, 2023April 30, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 43 Comments

Raspberry Pi 5 review – Part 2: Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, benchmarks, power consumption, and more

Raspberry Pi 5 Review Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm

A few days ago I finally went through the Raspberry Pi 5 kit I received last September going through all the items and booting it with Raspberry Pi OS bookworm. I’ve now had time to perform more tests to check out the performance with benchmarks and test various features on the Raspberry Pi 5. So I’ll report my experience in the second part of the review and compare the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC to the Raspberry Pi 4 and some other Arm Linux SBCs.

System information in Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm

Last time around, I installed the Raspberry Pi 5 in its official case, but for most of the testing, I decided to go back to the bare board fitted with its active cooler since it’s the best cooling option as we’ll see further in the review.

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

November 4, 2023November 4, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Makeblock mBot Neo robot review with Smart World Add-on Pack

MakeBlock mBot Neo, also known as mBot2, is an educational robot that builds upon the previous generation mBot1 robot, and the company has sent us a review sample, following our earlier review of the Ultimate 2.0 10-in-1 educational robot kit, along with the Smart World Add-on Pack. The mBot Neo features a new ESP32-based CyberPi control board with WiFi connectivity for IoT and AI support. The robot is also equipped with a 2nd generation Ultrasonic sensor with improved object detection accuracy and status indicator, a built-in 4-ch RGB line sensor that can detect colors, as well as a new drive motor that comes with an encoder for more precise motion control. The mBot Neo robot kit is expandable with metal parts from other Makeblock models, mBuild modules and various electronic modules can be added making it also possible to build custom robots with third-party structural parts. The mBot Neo robot […]

November 3, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

ESP32 Arduino Core 3.0.0 adds support for ESP32-C6 and ESP32-H2

ESP32-C6 ESP32-H2 ESP32 Arduino Core 3.0.0

Espressif Systems has now released an alpha version of ESP32 Arduino Core 3.0.0 enabling the new ESP32-C6 and ESP32-H2 targets to be programmed with the Arduino IDE, and including a number of new features made possible by the ESP-IDF 5.1 SDK. Announced in 2021, the ESP32-C6 WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5 LE, and 802.15.4 wireless MCU became available in modules and devkits at the beginning of this year, but so far they could only be programmed with the latest version (5.1) of the ESP-IDF framework, and so was the new ESP32-H2 Bluetooth 5.2 and 802.15.4 (Zigbee/Thread) MCU. But fans of Arduino programming can now rejoice as an alpha version of ESP32 Arduino Core 3.0.0 brings support for the new microcontroller, and a stable release is planned for December 2023. But as you can probably imagine ESP32 Arduino Core 3.0.0 will also bring lots of other changes since the ESP32 Arduino Core […]